ome 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 gentleman. In 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," said I, "don't you
see that the papers all over the country all 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 office-seeker 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 taki