It is not well for the Democratic party to lay the flattering unction to its soul, that the mass of the people had become converted to the principles enunciated by that party in Chicago, at the Convention where Mr. Cleveland was nominated. It would be as delusive and disappointing to them, in some future election, as it has proved to the Republican party upon the occasion of their late discomfiture. On the other hand, the Republican party should be well convinced, by its downfall, that the people will not endure the wrapping up, in silken garments, of the progeny of the deformed and diseased state of European society, palming the enshrouded babe off as an offspring of that land that lit the torch of freedom for the world.
SOCIETY AS THE PEOPLE FOUND IT, NOVEMBER 8, 1892.
Society, as the people found it, on last election day, was certainly not as attractive as that autocratic gentleman, the distinguished Ward McAllister found it, and has helped to make it, as related by him in a book which has been published with much flourish of trumpets, entitled “Society as _I_ Have Found It.”
While the volume itself hardly rises to the dignity of a dime novel, it still, doubtless, is a true statement and record of the doings and pretensions of the very class of people who, by their presumption, have aroused the silent and sullen indignation of America. The book referred to, and its writer, Ward McAllister, of course, received a large share of criticism and ridicule. The absurdities of the book impressed the critics of the newspapers all over the land. It was made a butt for the squibs, sarcasm, and ridicule of some man on every newspaper throughout the country. Passages were selected from the book wherein Mr. McAllister poses himself in the position of a first-class cook, and where he recounts how he has been playing the millinery maid for some lady of fashion. Of course, it struck every one as ridiculous that any manly man who claimed to be an American should be impressed by the criticism made upon the “cut of the tails of his dress-coat,” or to pay any attention to the advice of “a well-dressed Englishman, well up in all matters pertaining to society,” as to the peculiar fashion to be adopted concerning a man’s hat; how he should wear his watch-chain, etc. All such things were so extremely amusing and so utterly farcical to the brainworkers attached to the newspapers, that they held up the book and McAllister as objects to create merriment. That was the only possible view that could be taken by them of anything so absurdly funny as a man’s highest ambition, his idea of dignity, his aim in life being so small as that evidenced in McAllister’s autobiography.