IRRIGATION, POLITICS, AND SECTIONALISM 103 



for wondering whether the union of such 

 heterogeneous and often antagonistic material 

 can endure for ever. And into the midst of 

 his speculations was hurled the cyclone of the 

 Democratic Convention of the year of grace 

 1896.* 



Abuse of the East may be diverting at 

 first, but waxes tiresome by dint of constant 

 iteration. Of course, everyone knows that 

 the Western editor, anxious to ' scare up ' 

 subscribers, must not be taken too literally 

 (after the much-decried and ridiculed English 

 manner); nevertheless, when during the Ven- 

 ezuelan folly editors in ' the wild and woolly ' 

 howled for England to come along and blow 

 the Eastern seaboard cities into eternity, 

 sectional feeling might well be requested to 

 call a halt. The language of those editors, 

 by-the-by, was decidedly more virile than as 

 quoted ; but let that pass. During the height 

 of the Free Silver agitation a citizen of Utah 

 exclaimed to an Eastern acquaintance, ' Why, 

 sir, if the cause of Free Silver is defeated, 



* Since these words were written, that which many 

 persons have long believed to be the sole panacea for 

 internal dissension and discontent has arrived namely, 

 a foreign war. 



