THE AMENITIES OF POLITICS.

“THERE is one thing,” said Mr. Leatherby, as he was walking down town one drizzling, disagreeable morning during the last presidential campaign, “that disgusts me with politics, and that is, the violent and abusive tone in which our daily papers conduct the discussion of every issue and question which they touch upon.”

“Indeed you may well be disgusted at it,” replied old Mr. Bartholomew, who had just joined him. “It is as much as a man can do to lift a newspaper off his door step with a pair of tongs. Time and again I throw the paper down half read, and I have seriously thought of stopping it altogether, for I consider its presence in my family a contamination.”

“It is, in truth,” replied Mr. Leatherby; “it is worse than a contamination. It is corrupting; it has a degrading, brutalizing influence, that is, I am convinced, undermining the foundations of our moral structure. The daily press of to-day is one great engine of abuse, defamation, bad grammar, worse language and worst morals.”

“I can not see, for my part,” said Mr. Bartholomew, “why men can not discuss politics as freely, as earnestly, and as entirely free from acrimonious expressions and feeling, as purely exempt from abusive language of any kind, from any heat and anger, in fact, as they could discuss the grade of a street or the style of a coat.”

“And so think I,” said Mr. Leatherby. “I can not, for my part, conceive of an intellect so warped and narrow, a mind so shallow, that it can not carry on a discussion upon any question in politics without falling into the asperities, vulgarity, abusive detraction, and shameful slander that is the reproach and disgrace of the newspaper press.”

“It is a form of idiocy, I believe,” replied old Mr. Bartholomew. “It is an indication of a feeble mind that looks upon abuse as an argument, and bullying as logic. I am and always have been a Republican, but I can express my disapproval of many Democratic measures in a gentlemanly manner; and if I had not mind enough to keep my temper, I would consider that I had no right to talk politics.”

“You are perfectly correct,” rejoined Mr. Leatherby, earnestly; “and while we disagree on some points in political controversy, I being a life-long Democrat, yet we can freely and with mutual pleasure, and, I trust, profit, meet and discuss our differences in a friendly way, without giving way to the insane and detestable exhibition of temper, ignorance, and prejudice which marks the tone of the morning paper.”

“I had not noticed it so much in the Hawkeye,” replied Mr. Bartholomew, with a show of awakening interest in the conversation; “but when that trashy Democratic sheet that pollutes the evening air is brought to me by my neighbor, an ignorant dolt who can neither read nor write, but takes the paper as a party duty, and asks me to read it for him, I am amazed that the gods of truth and decency do not annihilate the infamous, puerile sheet with their thunderbolts.”

“You must bear in mind, however,” rejoined Mr. Leatherby, speaking a trifle louder than was necessary in addressing a companion whose hand was resting on his arm, “the Gazette has such a tide of corruption, such an avalanche of political bigotry and villainy to rebuke, that its voice must be raised in order to be heard: and it must speak boldly, defiantly, and in the thunder tones of righteous denunciation, to startle the people into a realizing sense of the peril which threatens the country from Republican misrule and tyranny.”

“By George!” shouted Mr. Bartholomew, “the Republican party is the last, the only bulwark between the republic and eternal ruin. I tell you, sir, once let the Democratic party obtain control of this government, once let that infamous organization of political thieves, knucks, outlaws, and castaways take charge of our political machinery, and we will find ourselves in the hands of a horde of the most abandoned profligates, the most utterly unprincipled, the most vicious, demoralized, unconscionable, diabolical set of scoundrels that ever cheated the gallows.”

“By the long-horned spoon!” roared Mr. Leatherby, jerking his arm away from Mr. Bartholomew’s hand; “if the satanic and infernal plans of the Republican party were carried out, with all their attendant knavery and debauchery, this government would be a rule of branded malefactors and convicts, a government of felons, a penal colony in which the most hopelessly irreclaimable, graceless villains would administer the law. The bad faith of the Republican party, its ignominious record, its vicious tendencies, has shocked the Christian world, and——”

“You’re a liar!” yelled Mr. Bartholomew, “and you are just like the rest of your besotted, low-lived, ignorant class—a low, mean, pitiful, beggarly, unscrupulous and treacherous set, whose impudence in asking for the votes of honorable men is only equaled by your rapacious and unbridled greed for office; your——”

“You are an old fool!” howled Mr. Leatherby; “a censorious, clamorous, scurrilous, foul-tongued old reprobate, and I disgrace my name when I talk to you on the street. You mistake vituperation and abuse for argument, and you reply to a simple plain statement of facts with malignant and defamatory slander and calumny, because you can’t answer.”

“Shut up!” shrieked Mr. Bartholomew. “Don’t you say another word to me, or I’ll slap your ugly mouth! By George, I’ll kick your head off!”

“You can’t do it!” roared Mr. Leatherby, pulling off his coat, and dancing around Mr. Bartholomew. “I can lick the whole Republican party, from the big whisky thief and ring master in the White House down to the sneak thief that picks pockets at mass meetings! I can——”

“You’re a fighting liar, and you daren’t take it up!” howled Mr. Bartholomew, pulling off his coat.

Then Mr. Leatherby ran up and kicked him twice while he was struggling in the arms of his coat, but the old gentleman got loose in a flash and hit Mr. Leatherby a resounding thwack on the nose with his cane, and when Mr. Leatherby stopped to hold a handkerchief over his bleeding proboscis, Mr. Bartholomew got in a couple more real good ones with his cane; then Mr. Leatherby went for the rocks in the macadamized street. He broke two windows in a grocery before he hit Mr. Bartholomew, when he caught the old gentleman on the side of the head and dropped him. Then Mr. Bartholomew took to the stone pile and hit a young lady on the other side of the street, and Mr. Leatherby hurled a tremendous big rock, which missed the old gentleman and blacked the eye of a policeman who was coming to separate them, but was so incensed that he arrested them, and they were each fined $10 and costs for fighting in the street. And they both firmly believe that the unbridled hatred and unreasonable recriminations and abuse of the daily papers are iniquitous in their influence, and should be suppressed for the good of society.

It was a sad scene when the authorities took a poor man from Happy Hollow, and sent him out to the poor house. The parting between the poor man and his eleven dogs, which he distributed among his sympathizing relatives, was affecting in the extreme. We believe the man had a few children, too, but not enough to make a fuss about.

A bashful young man, while out driving with the dearest girl in the world, had to get out and buckle the crupper, and hesitatingly exclaimed that “the animal’s bustle had come loose.”