My Memories of Eighty Years by Chauncey M. (Chauncey Mitchell) Depew
page 97 of 413 (23%)
page 97 of 413 (23%)
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The principal of the academy, the manufacturer, the minister,
the lawyer, a very few of the audience, and several women responded. After this frost a farmer rose gradually, and as he began to let out link after link of his body, which seemed about seven feet talI, he reached his full height, and then in a voice which could be heard a mile shouted: "Three cheers for General Grant!" The response nearly took the roof off the house. I left the State the next morning and told Mr. Greeley that he could not carry Maine. Among the amusing episodes of the campaign was one which occurred at an open-door mass meeting at Watertown, N. Y. John A. Dix had been nominated for governor on the Republican ticket, and I was speaking of him and his career. He had changed from one party to the other five or six times in the course of his long career, and each time received an office. There was great doubt as to his age, because in the American Encyclopaedia the date of his birth was given as of a certain year, and in the French Encyclopaedia, which published his biography when he was minister to France, a widely different date was given. In the full tide of partisan oratory I went over these changes of political activity, and how each one had been rewarded, also the doubt as to his age, and then I shouted: "I have discovered among the records of the Pilgrim Fathers that when they landed on Plymouth Rock they found John A. Dix standing on the rock and announcing that unless they made him justice of the peace he would join the Indians." An indignant farmer, who could not hold his wrath any longer, shouted: "That's a lie! The Pilgrims landed more than two hundred and fifty years ago." I saw that my interrupter had swallowed my bait, hook, and line, bob and sinker, pole and all, and shouted with great indignation: "Sir, I have narrated that historical |
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