CHAPTER XXVI

PROPRIETY IN DEBATE

THE race of demagogues we have always with us. They have existed in every government from Cleon and the Sausage-maker. They command votes and seem to delight popular and legislative assemblies. But they rarely get very far in public favor. The men to whom the American people gives its respect, and whom it is willing to trust in the great places of power, are intelligent men of propriety, dignity and sobriety.

We often witness and perhaps are tempted to envy the applause which many public speakers get by buffoonery, by rough wit, by coarse personality, by appeal to vulgar passions. We are apt to think that grave and serious reasonings are lost on the audiences that receive them, half asleep, as if listening to a tedious sermon, and who come to life again when the stump speaker takes the platform. But it will be a great mistake to think that the American people do not estimate such things at their true value. When they come to take serious action, they prefer to get their inspiration from the church or the college and not from the circus. Uncle Sam likes to be amused. But Uncle Sam is a gentleIn the spring of 1869, when I first took my seat in Congress, General Butler was in the House. He was perhaps as widely known to the country as any man in it except President Grant. He used to get up some scene of quarrel or buffoonery nearly every morning session. His name was found every day in the head-lines of the newspapers. I said to General Banks one day after the adjournment: "Don't you think it is quite likely that he will be the next President of the United States?" "Never," said General Banks, in his somewhat grandiloquent fashion. "Why,"

man.

said I, "don't you see that the papers all over the country are full of him every morning? People seem to be reading about nobody else. Wherever he goes, the crowds throng after him. Nobody else gets such applause, not even Grant himself."

"Mr. Hoar," replied General Banks, "when I came down to the House this morning, there was a fight between two monkeys on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was an enormous crowd, shouting and laughing and cheering. They would have paid very little attention to you or me. But when they come to elect a President of the United States, they won't take either monkey."

The men who possess the capacity for coarse wit and rough repartee, and who indulge it, seldom get very far in public favor. No President of the United States has had it. No Judge of the Supreme Court has had it, no Speaker of the House of Representatives, and, with scarcely an exception, no eminent Senator.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FISH-BALL LETTER

IN August, 1890, the Pittsburg Post, a Democratic paper, made a savage attack on me. He attributed to me some very foolish remark and declared that I lived on terrapin and champagne; that I had been an inveterate officeseeker all my life; and that I had never done a stroke of useful work. Commonly it is wise to let such attacks go without notice. To notice them seriously generally does more harm than good to the party attacked. But I was a good deal annoyed by the attack, and thought I would make a good-natured and sportive reply to it, instead of taking it seriously. So I sent the editor the following letter, which was copied quite extensively throughout the country, North and South; and I believe put an end, for the rest of my life, to the particular charges he had made:

UNITED STATES SENATE, WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 10, 1890.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PITTSBURG POST:

My Dear Man: Somebody has sent me a copy of your paper containing an article of which you do me the honor to make me the subject. What can have put such an extravagant yarn into the head of so amiable and good-natured a fellow? I never said the thing which you attribute to me in any interview, caucus or anywhere else. I never inherited any wealth or had any. My father was a lawyer in very large practice for his day, but he was a very generous and liberal man and never put much value upon money. My share of his estate was about $10,500. All the income-producing property I have in the world, or ever had, yields a little less than $1,800 a year; $800 of that is from a life estate and the other thou

sand comes from stock in a corporation which has only paid dividends for the last two or three years, and which I am very much afraid will pay no dividend, or much smaller ones, after two or three years to come. With that exception the house where I live, with its contents, with about four acres of land, constitute my whole worldly possessions, except two or three vacant lots, which would not bring me $5,000 all told. I could not sell them now for enough to pay my debts. I have been in my day an extravagant collector of books, and have a library which you would like to see and which I would like to show you. Now, as to office-holding and working. I think there are few men on this continent who have put so much hard work into life as I have. I went one winter to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, when I was twenty-five years old, and one winter to the Massachusetts Senate, when I was thirty years old. The pay was two dollars a day at that time. I was nominated on both occasions, much to my surprise, and on both occasions declined a renomination. I afterward twice refused a nomination for Mayor of my city, have twice refused a seat on the Supreme Bench of Massachusetts, and refused for years to go to Congress when the opportunity was in my power. I was at last broken down with overwork, and went to Europe for my health. During my absence the arrangements were made for my nomination to Congress, from which, when I got home, I could not well escape. The result is I have been here twenty years as Representative and Senator, the whole time getting a little poorer year by year. If you think I have not made a good one, you have my full authority for saying anywhere that I entirely agree with you. During all this time I have never been able to hire a house in Washington. My wife and I have experienced the varying fortune of Washington boarding houses, sometimes very comfortable, and a good deal of the time living in a fashion to which no mechanic earning two dollars a day would subject his household. Your "terrapin" is all in my eye, very little in my mouth. The chief carnal luxury of my life is in breakfasting every Sunday morning with an orthodox friend, a lady who has a rare gift for making fish-balls and

coffee. You unfortunate and benighted Pennsylvanians can never know the exquisite flavor of the codfish, salted, made into balls and eaten on a Sunday morning by a person whose theology is sound, and who believes in all the five points of Calvinism. I am myself but an unworthy heretic, but I am of Puritan stock, of the seventh generation, and there is vouchsafed to me, also, some share of that ecstasy and a dim glimpse of that beatific vision. Be assured, my benighted Pennsylvania friend, that in that hour when the week begins, all the terrapin of Philadelphia or Baltimore and all the soft-shelled crabs of the Atlantic shore might pull at my trousers legs and thrust themselves on my notice in vain. I am faithfully,

GEO. F. HOAR.