slature, in which the balance of power was held by three
greenbackers, Field made ample amends for all his jibes and jeers over
Logan's assaults on his mother-tongue. His "Sharps and Flats" column
was a daily fusilade, or, rather, _feu de joie_, upon or at the expense
of the Democrats and three legislators, by whose assistance they hoped
to defeat and humiliate Logan. Congressman Morrison, he of horizontal
fame, was the caucus choice of the Democrats. But as the struggle was
prolonged from day to day, it was thought that someone with a barrel,
or "soap," as it had been termed by General Arthur in a preceding
campaign, was needed to bring the Greenbackers into camp. In the
emergency, Judge Lambert Tree, since then our Minister to Belgium, was
drafted into the service, and for several days it looked as if the
Democrats had struck the hot trail to General Logan's seat. The
situation fired Field's Republican soul with righteous indignation, and
his column fairly blazed with sizzling paragraphs. He seized upon Judge
Tree's name and made it the target of his shafts of wit and satire. One
day it was:

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Here we have a tree. How Green the Tree is! Can you See the
Lightning? Oh, how red and Vivid the Lightning is! Will the
Lightning Strike the Tree? Children, that is a Conundrum; we answer
conundrums in our Weekly Edition, but not in our daily.

The next day it was:

The Lightning did not strike the Green Tree. But the Springfield
Politicians did. This is Why the Tree is Green.

And then there came what I regard as one of the most telling pieces of
political satirical humor ever put into English verse, its literary
merit alone justifying its preservation, Field himself considering it
worth copying in the presentation volume of his verse written prior to
1887:

_THE LAMBERT TREE

Oh, tell me not of the budding bay,
Nor the yew by the new-made grave,
And waft me not in spirit away,
Where the sorrowing willows wave;
Let the shag-bark walnut blend its shade
With the elm on the verdant lea--
But let us his to the distant glade,
Where blossoms the Lambert tree.

The maple reeks with a toothsome sap
That flavors the brown buckwheat,
And the oak drops down into earth's green lap,
Her fruit for the swine to eat;
But th