s the best market for pictures,
for works of art. It is the best market for music and song. It
is the best market for dramatic genius, and it is the best market
for skilled labor, the best market for common labor, and in this
country the poor man to-day has the best chance--he can look forward
to becoming the proprietor of a home, of some land, to independence,
to respectability, and to an old age without want and without
disgrace.

The platform, except upon this question of free trade, means very
little. There are other features in it which I have not at present
time to examine, but shall do so hereafter. I want to take it up
point by point and find really what it means, what its scope is,
and what the intentions were of the gentlemen who made it.

But it may be proper to say here, that in my judgment it is a very
weak and flimsy document, as Victor Hugo would say, "badly cut and
badly sewed."

Of course, I know that the country will exist whatever party may
be in power. I know that all our blessings do not come from laws,
or from the carrying into effect of certain policies, and probably
I could pay no greater compliment to any country than to say that
even eight years of Democratic rule cannot materially affect her
destiny.

--_New York Press_, June 10, 1888.

THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1888.

_Question_. What do you think of the signs of the times so far as
the campaign has progressed?

_Answer_. The party is now going through a period of misrepresentation.
Every absurd meaning that can be given to any combination of words
will be given to every plank of the platform. In the heat of
partisan hatred every plank will look warped and cracked. A great
effort is being made to show that the Republican party is in favor
of intemperance,--that the great object now is to lessen the price
of all intoxicants and increase the cost of all the necessaries of
life. The papers that are for nothing but reform of everything
and everybody except themselves, are doing their utmost to show
that the Republican party is the enemy of honesty and temperance.

The other day, at a Republican ratification meeting, I stated among
other things, that we could not make great men and great women
simply by keeping them out of temptation--that nobody would think
of tying the hands of a person behind them and then praise him for
not picking pockets; that great people were great enough to withstand
temptation, and in that connec