The entire public thought of a vast section of the country
has revolved around the figure of a worthless old grafter in a tattered
gray shirt. Every question is settled when some moth-eaten ne'er-do-well
lets out what is known as a 'rebel yell.' The most polished and profound
speech conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform and
brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. The cry for
progress, for material advancement, for moral and social betterment, is
stifled, that everybody may have breath to shout for a flapping
trouser's leg worn by a degraded old sot. All that your Southern
statesmen have had to give a people who were stripped to the bone is
fulsome rhetoric about the Wounded Warrior of Wahoo, or some other
inflated nonentity, whereupon the mesmerized population have loyally
fallen on their faces and shouted, 'Praise the Lord.' And all the while
they were going through this wretched mummery, they were hungry and
thirsty and naked--destitute in a smiling land of plenty. Do you wonder
that I think old-soldierism is the meanest profession the Lord ever
suffered to thrive? I tell you Baal and Moloch never took such toll of
their idolaters as these shabby old gods of the gray shirt.
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