I read all the newspapers I could get within a week after this
event, and I do not remember in them a single expression of sympathy
for these men. I have since seen one noble statement, in a Boston
paper, not editorial. Some voluminous sheets decided not to print
the full report of Brown's words to the exclusion of other matter.
It was as if a publisher should reject the manuscript of the New
Testament, and print Wilson's last speech. The same journal which
contained this pregnant news was chiefly filled, in parallel
columns, with the reports of the political conventions that were being
held. But the descent to them was too steep. They should have been
spared this contrast- been printed in an extra, at least. To turn from
the voices and deeds of earnest men to the cackling of politicial
conventions! Office-seekers and speech-makers, who do not so much as
lay an honest egg, but wear their breasts bare upon an egg of chalk!
Their great game is the game of straws, or rather that universal
aboriginal game of the platter, at which the Indians cried hub, bub!
Exclude the reports of religious and political conventions, and
publish the words of a living man.
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