beasts of the forest would have swooped down upon the unprotected homes of the Dutch farmers like fiends incarnate; burned their buildings, destroyed their crops, stolen their cattle and butchered their babes, just as did those copper-colored hounds of Hell hired by the British crown. to help conquer its American colonies. May the curse of the living God rest through time and eternity upon a government guilty of such inhuman warfare! Had the conspiracy proven successful, England would have accepted the conquered territory as a matter of course, and knighted Dr. Jameson for valuable services; but the Boers having demonstrated their ability to defend themselves—and Little Billee cabled his congratulations,—she hastened to disavow all responsibility for the raid. Well, it is an axiom of ethnologists that those who will steal will lie, that those who will bully the weak will cower to the strong! The fact that the English in South Africa were systematically preparing to subvert the Boer Republic was known in every European capital six months ago. It was the talk of all the coffeehouses and club rooms of London. The very bootblacks of Cape Town were familiar with the fact. The Jameson expedition was fitted out under the very eye of English officials high in authority and participated in by representatives of the most aristocratic families of England. To say that Joseph Chamberlain knew nothing of this, that it had not been discussed by the British ministry and called to the attention of the Queen, were to write the whole aggregation down as a herd of asses. Of course, Dr. Jameson was not "commissioned" to reduce the Transvaal vie et armis, any more than was Warren Hastings to subjugate India, but the South African Company knew full well that if it could accomplish in the Dark Continent what the East India Company did in Asia, it would reap a like reward. So it sent its emissaries among the savages with bribes, encouraged the uitlanders to revolt and sent a regiment of fine-haired adventurers to their assistance. And all this time Britannia was winking the other eye-never thought to call a halt until Jameson was in the territory of the Transvaal, with all the telegraph wires conveniently cut behind him! Then she made a pretext of trying to stop him-but the Boers had already attended to that. She was sorry-that Jameson didn't succeed! Instead of cabling President Krueger to hang the invaders, she became awfully anxious for their safety, while her new poet laureate tuned his penny jewsharp and twittered of the glory of this new Six Hundred! that so bravely rode into the calaboose of the Boers! And the London papers could not conceal their chagrin that the conspiracy miscarried -attributed its failure to "anti-English sentiment of the Americans in the Transvaal." And now John Bull is trying to make Continental Europe believe that if a dangerous league against him is the result of his crimes in South Africa, he will have the sympathy and support of his "American Cousins!" Not much, Mary Ann! *** SALMAGUNDI. HON. HARNETT GIBBS is keeping himself busy interpreting the mene, mene, tekel uphrarsin traced on the walls of the Democratic wigwam. The "Lamentations of Jeremiah " the Prophet are jig music by contrast with the political pessimism of Barney the Bellyacher. Every time Hubbard City goes dry another saloon hangs out its sign. Prohibition appears to create what Congressman Crowley calls "tirst." 'America is "the land of religious liberty," but you must conform to the opinions of the majority anent the Christian Sabbath or go to the calaboose. The Atheists deny the existence of God because he 'doesn't move in their set. In the Anglo-American controversy anent the Venezuelan boundary, the A. P. Apes all insist that Uncle Sam is in the wrong and should back down, while the Irish Catholics declare that, right or wrong, they'll “stand by him until Hell is frozen a foot deep." The A. P. Apes are the ducks who should be disfranchised. There is not so much stalwart Americanism in the whole cowardly mob as can be found in Phil Sheridan's corpse. The marriage of O. H. P. Belmont to Mrs. Alva S. Vanderbilt should prove a happy one. They knew exactly what they were getting. If the gold-bug tail wags the Democratic dog in the coming campaign, Fido will lose his pants at the forks-ofthe-creek. Father Pat Brannan, in his Dallas lectures, alluded to Balaam's burro as a "jackass." The son Beor rode a jennet, Balak being the only talking Jackass concerned in that remarkable journey. He mistook Balaam for a prototype of President Cleveland and imagined that he could enforce the Monroe Doctrine with his mouth. Joe Chamberlain declares that "Great Britain stands splendidly isolated." And so did Robinson Crusoe. Josef Phewlitzer threw his heroic form between John Bull and Brer Jonathan and averted an effusion of blood. All honor to Phewlitzer! Great Britain should build him a monument grander than Rome erected to the goose whose idle gabble saved the Imperial City. The ICONOCLAST is becoming the prime favorite with Texas' society ladies, and no boudoir is now considered complete without it. The "Apostle's" life-long ambition to manipulate the organ of the well-fed dames and 'damsels of upper-tendom is at last realized. Theo. A. Havemeyer, head of the sugar trust, had enough boodle left after buying the Fifty-third Congress, to purchase a patent of nobility, which fact proves that our politicians are not experts at sizing up a man's pile. The First Baptist Church of Waco recently declared that some of its members, were trying to ride the blind baggage instead of paying fare to the Celestial City, and a fight ensued. The choir no longer sing, "Salvation's free for you and me; Dublin, Texas, is one local option town where it is impossible to get a drink of whiskey for love or for gold. A revenue officer might call it whiskey; but a chemist would classify it as a combination of bed-bug poison and creosote. There is a little paper published somewhere in Kentucky, called, if I mistake not, the Blue-Jeans Blade, the editor of which runs largely to whiskers and pink lemon ade. He has been having one cat-fit after another because of the imposing ceremonies with which Mgr. Saltolli was induced into the cardinalate, while the berretta gives him a pain in the umbilicus. As the ceremonies, while ornate, cost little and pleased thousands of people, and the Blue-Jeans man does not have to paint his rye-straw hat a flaming red, I fail to see where he has any kick coming. Perhaps, like a roan mule, he recalcitrates in a spirit o' pure cussedness. The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough appear to be long on parents. The Duke can boast a father and mother, step-father and step-mother, and when "Willie K,” remarries, as he is expected to do, Consuelo will be able to call him. It is said to take "three generations to make a gentleman!" but a duke or duchess may be evolved in one if enough people, unhandicapped by moral character, set deliberately about it. The Prohibitionists would confine the world to cold water because their leaders lack sufficient moral stamina to stay sober. The ICONOCLAST is in frequent receipt of anonymous epistles intended to be very insulting. Such things can not possibly offend, but are calculated to shake one's faith in humanity, to make him ashamed of his race. When a creature is so unutterably vile that he will fling insults which he fears to father, it were fulsome flattery to intimate that he is a cross between a mangy hyena and a fleabitten female fice practicing illicit polyandry. |