Trials of a Stump-Speaker

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVIII. VALUE OF STUMPER'S SERVICES. We cannot estimate the value of the services of a stumper without inspecting that fictitious organism known as a political party. We must first ascertain the elements that enter into its composition and their relations to each other. The only permanent thing about such an institution is its name, yet the popular opinion is, that a political party is an immortal being which lived in the days of Thomas Jefferson and will continue its identity through generations of posterity. When the sun shall grow dim with age and burn low in its socket and the earth shall turn to a frozen globe and Gabriel shall appear in the clouds to summon the quick and the dead, there will doubtless be some sitting on the icebergs and shivering and demanding front seats because they belonged either to the party of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. This popular notion of the identity of the political party is easily shown to be false. The men who compose such an organization are ever changing, as the drops of water in a river. Like the flowing stream which is sometimes clear and sometimes muddy, depending upon the environment, so the political party may at times be animated by lofty emotions and noble aspirations and at others be stagnant and putrid and reek with corruption. And this environment greatly changes as the years go by. There is a kind of skeleton or framework about which the masses who follow the name of the political party cluster. This is composed of an aggregation of persons who make politics a business, either directly or indirectly. From its heart in the city of New York to its toes out in the wilds of the West, the blood of the political being is circulated by fellows whose sole inspiration is the hope of reaching the pu...