Year: 1872

"Eccentricity to the Border of Lunacy."


The New York Herald of the Sth thus tries
to show its feather in the political question.
To contrast this editorial and some of the
HeralFs recent articles is amusing:


Recreation, we admit, is as necessary to
Presidential candidates as to anybody else,
and nobody should say that because man has
received nomination to the Presidency he
should be obliged to wrap himself up in HIM
self and await results through long summer
season, without breath of fresh air. Any
body, however, who has noted the manner in
which Mr.. Greeley has been carried round the
country, like moral wax-work exhibition, for
the past week or two, will regret the use to
which he has come so soon. The muddle of
the matter is that, like the 'iggers' of the late
Artemus Ward, his most moral points are there
by turned into fountain of ridicule, too much
so for rasober-minded voter who has ninety days
left to consider which way he is going to vote
for President. General Grant, with his Ha-
vana, his handshaking and his infnitessimal
oratory among the Thousand Islands, has an
advantage over Mr.. Greeley in this respect,
which a people so sensitive to the grotesque
and the ridiculous as Americans will not be
slow to appreciate. 1t may not be exactly
what one would define as hduteur, or the more
comprehensive term, 'dignity," but is as dis
tinct from the late caperings of Mr.. Greeley
as the role of "walking gentleman" in the
theatre is from that of clown in the circus
The friends of General Grant have made the
fatal error recently of returning the abuse and
invective of the liberals in kind. How much
more effective would it be to hold up the pic
ture of the benevolent Philosopher in his
white hat, shaking hands with the clean me-
chanics and hugging the babies of Bristol
after the manner of the benevolent Pickwick
in the memorable parliamentary election can
vass! If these tactics were adopted it
might suggest itself to many that Pickwick
in parliament would form perfect analogue
to Greeley in the presidential chair; and if
this view were persisted in the foes of the
philosopher might find as many oddities in
his record of isms as in that of the profound
writer on the origin of the Hampstead Ponds
and the discoverer of the famous stone with
the peculiar inscription. We do not wish to in
jure Mr.. Greeley's prospects on this ground,
and we shall not, therefore, follow up the
Pickwickian comparison which, sooth to say,
might be indefinitely extended. After the
baby-hugging at Bristol comes q scene which
should make the friends of the Sage shudder
if they believe that the preposterously absurd
has that power of freezing respect in politics
which it has in everyday life. We refer to the
Rhode Island clambake, where, amid vora-
cious crowd of admirers, he cuts all sorts of
Iudicrous figures in scramble for chowder
The side picture, too, of hungry adorers of
his sapience being hurled ignominously from
the table to languish in vain for the succulence
of the bivalvular repast does not add to the
dignity of the situation.


1t would seem from the samples of how
Greeley's friends intend to run him. in the
campaign that the feature of eccentricity to
the border of lunacy is to be kept well before
the people. The woodchopping performances
before select few, which it was well under
stood would be chronicled for the million the
day after, were passed over with an allowance
for that form of harmless weakness, among the
noted of men which made Frederick the Great
ostentatiously partial to dogs, and even King
David so proud of his harp-twanging ana
heel-kicking that he performed in puoic pc
fore the ark But we scarcely imagined that


the moral waxwork was to Be so extensively
applied as the baby-hugging, clam-scrambling
since would lead us to believe. 1t Is funny
it will amuse thousands sickened OF the asper-
tiles of political personalities; yet the side


splitting sport may be death by ballot to Hor-
ace. as the stone-throwing was to the frog in
the fable. Let the white elephant business be