"Why, the poor officeseeker at Washington begging a bit of that pie, which,
having got his own slice, a cruel, hard-hearted President would eliminate
from the bill of fare, he likewise is a workingman, and I can tell you a
very hard-working man with a tough job of work, and were better breaking
rock upon a turnpike in Dixie or splitting rails on a quarter section out
in the wild and woolly West.
"It is true that, as stated on the program, I am a Democrat--as Artemus
Ward once said of the horses in his panorama, I can conceal it no
longer--at least I am as good a Democrat as they have nowadays. But first
of all, I am an American, and in America every man who is not a policeman
or a dude is a workingman. So, by your leave, my friends, instead of
sticking very closely to the text, and treating it from a purely party
point of view, I propose to take a ramble through the highways and byways
of life and thought in our beloved country and to cast a balance if I can
from an American point of view.
"I want to say in the beginning that no party can save any man or any set
of men from the daily toil by which all of us live and move and have our
being."
Then I worked in my old lecture.
It went like hot cakes. When next I met William McKinley he said jocosely:
"You are a mean man, Henry Watterson!"
"How so?" I asked.
"I accepted the invitation to answer you because I wanted and needed the
money. Of course I had no time to prepare a special address.
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