city. After some
unsuccessful ventures in illustrated journalism, he started a pictorial
weekly in New York in 1875. It was originally printed in German, but in
less than a year it was issued also in English. It was not until
1879 that it sprang into general notice through Keppler's success in
reproducing lithographed designs in color. Meanwhile, the artist was
feeling his way from the old style caricature, crowded with figures with
overhead loops of explanatory text, to designs possessing an artistic
unity expressive of an idea plain enough to tell its own story. He had
matured both his mechanical resources and his artistic method by the
time the campaign of 1884 came on, and he had founded a school which
could apply the style to American politics with aptness superior to
his own. It was Bernhard Gillam, who, working in the new Keppler style,
produced a series of cartoons whose tremendous impressiveness was
universally recognized. Blaine was depicted as the tattooed man and was
exhibited in that character in all sorts of telling situations. While
on the stump during the campaign, Blaine had sometimes literally to wade
through campaign documents assailing his personal integrity, and phrases
culled from them were chanted in public processions. One of the features
of a great parade of business men of New York was a periodical chorus
of "Burn this letter," suiting the action to the word and thus making a
striking pyrotechnic display.* But the cartoons reached people who
would never have been touched by campaign documents or by campaign
processions.

* The allusion was to the Mulligan letters, which had been made
public by Mr. Blaine himself when it had been charged that they
contained evidence of corrupt business dealings. The disclosure bad been
made four years before and ample opportunity had existed for instituting
proceedings if the case warranted it, but nothing was done except to
nurse the scandal for campaign use.

Notwithstanding the exceptional violence and novel ingenuity of the
attacks made upon him, Blaine met them with such ability and address
that everywhere he augmented the ordinary strength of his party, and his
eventual defeat was generally attributed to an untoward event among his
own adherents at the close of the campaign. At a political reception
in the interest of Blaine among New York clergymen, the Reverend Dr.
Burchard spoke of the Democratic party as "the party of rum, Romanism,
and reb