Life — September 13, 1900 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Columbia in Eruption. ing upon an unhappy land. the ear and bang the eye of the trembling freeman, who vainly seeks to differentiate the patriot and the liar, the statesman and the spellbinder. The voter will hear much of silver and gold, but will handle none unless — well, unless. He will see Teddy once more charging Shafter and San Juan ; he will hear Beveridge, tho young man garrulons, repel charges; he will be told of the mission of the nation and its military mis- sionaries ; he will see the dolors and scents of imperialism countered by the dollars and cents of expansion ; and he will note the man with the hard head and the soft hand shouting for the Republican Soft-Shell Crab with the reaching claws, The Republican prophet will weep for attacks on financial laws, while the Democratic denouncer damns all profit and loss. Shouts, yells, noise, speeches, calliopes and Grosvenors will shake the Republic ; unselfish patriots will take up the white man’s burden, if they can get their hands on it; the silver man will point the finger of a warning fate at the Yellow Peril (gold) of Canton (Ohio) ; and the country will be saved and put in the bank at interest. The horny- fisted sons of Wall Street, the bone and skinyou of the country, will throw out banners, red fire and their chests and advise the rural anarchist that water-soaked paper, and not gold and silver and crops, is the real wealth of the land. This will be a campaign of education, for the school master is abroad—in the Philippines. The Great In- vertebrate will wait on his piazza in Canton to welcome the Ohio Boxers, who come to shed their last drop of blood and principle for their country’s treasury. Marquis Jo “men 1 TAKE IT. ‘ELE ES HE horrors of a Presidential campaign are burst- The strenuous sombrero, the man on horseback, the resounding lung, the sonorous brass band, the loud regalia, will assault “OW | MONTAGUE, HOW SUDDEN! 4 MUST HAVE TIME TO THINK.’ Hanna, of Cleveland, will pass the collection box with a shotgun to the water-logged monopolies ; Teddy, the Talk- ing Terror of Tongue River, will snort through the land on his steaming automobile bronco, deluging the prairie with language and gore; Lodge, the passionate, political halibut of Massachusetts, will warm up Beveridge and do duet stunts in darkest Indiana ; the Krags of oratory will be stormed by philanthropic imperialists and the Maxims of peace be preached by the advance agents of Christian com- merce and benevolent assimilation. The man who labors with his hands will hang on the words of him who toils with his jaws; the gentle agricul- turist, toying with his stubborn glebe, will figure out whether Providence or President is responsible for crops ; and the coon in the canebrake will marvel why the white man’s burden is always black and tan and hangs from a tree at the end of a rope. Campaign poets will assault tho world with peg-legged rhymes and club-footed metres; Bellona will masquerade ag the Goddess of Liberty ; parsons will preach pragmatically of peace and prosperity and pray for the party paying tho pew rents ; and the Spellbinder will have a front’ like Jove,an eye like Meagher’s—after a jag. When the quadrennial jag is over the country will wake up out of pocket, out of breath, out of patience and, some of it, out of office. Then will the Jelly Fish lie down with the Octopus, and the voice of the Horse Leech be heard in the land. Toxeph Smith, comicbooks.com