all would admit that a candidate was among the
necessaries of life. Now, where not only immediate policy, but the very
creed which that policy is to embody, is dependent on circumstances,
and on circumstances so shifting and doubtful as those of a campaign,
it is hard to find a representative man whose name may, in some
possible contingency, mean enough, without, in some other equally
possible contingency, meaning too much. The problem was to hunt up
somebody who, without being anything in particular, might be anything
in general, as occasion demanded. Of course, the professed object of
the party was to save their country, but which _was_ their country, and
which it would be most profitable to save, whether America or Secessia,
was a question that Grant or Sherman might answer one way or the other
in a single battle. If only somebody or something would tell them
whether they were for war or peace! The oracles were dumb, and all
summer long they looked anxiously out, like Sister Anne from her tower,
for the hero who should rescue unhappy Columbia from the Republican
Bluebeard. Did they see a cloud of dust in the direction of Richmond or
Atlanta? Perhaps Grant might be the man, after all, or even Sherman
would answer at a pinch. When at last no great man would come along, it
was debated whether it might not be better to nominate some one without
a record, as it is called, since a nobody was clearly the best exponent
of a party that was under the unhappy necessity of being still
uncertain whether it had any recognizable soul or not. Meanwhile, the
time was getting short and the public impatience peremptory.

"Under which king, bezonian? Speak, or die!"

The party found it alike inconvenient to do the one or the other, and
ended by a compromise which might serve to keep them alive till after
election, but which was as far from any distinct utterance as if their
mouths were already full of that official pudding which they hope for
as the reward of their amphibological patriotism. Since it was not safe
to be either for peace or war, they resolved to satisfy every
reasonable expectation by being at the same time both and neither. If
you are warlike, there is General McClellan; if pacific, surely you
must be suited with Mr. Pendleton; if neither, the combination of the
two makes a _tertium quid_ that is neither one thing nor another. As
the politic Frenchman, kissing the foot of St. Peter's statue (recast
out of a Jupiter)