While we were curiously looking at the Tilden homestead, an old man came walking slowly down the road, a rake over his shoulder, one leg of his patched trousers stuck in a boot-top, a suspender missing, his old straw hat minus a goodly portion of its crown.  He stopped, leaned upon his rake, and looked at us inquisitively, then remarked in drawling tone,—­

“I know’d Sam Tilden.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, I know’d him; he was a great man.”

“You are a Democrat?”

“I wuz, but ain’t now,” pensively.

“Why ar’n’t you?”

“Well, you see, I wuz allus a rock-ribbed Jacksonian fr’m a boy; seed the ole gen’ral onc’t, an’ I voted for Douglas an’ Seymore.  I skipped Greeley, fur he warn’t no Dem’crat; an’ I voted fur Tilden an’ Hancock an’ Cleveland; but when it come to votin’ fur a cyclone fr’m N’braska,—­jest wind an’ nothin’ more,—­I kicked over the traces.”

“Then you don’t believe in the divine ratio of sixteen to one?”

“Young man, silver an’ gold come out’r the ground, jes’ lik’ corn an’ wheat.  When you kin make two bush’ls corn wu’th a bush’l wheat by law an’ keep ’em there, you can fix the rasho ‘twixt silver an’ gold, an’ not before,” and the old man shouldered his rake and wandered on up the road.

Before leaving the birthplace of Tilden, it is worth noting that for forty years every candidate favored by Tammany has been ignominiously defeated; the two candidates bitterly opposed by the New York machine were successful.  It is to the credit of the party that no Democrat can be elected president unless he is the avowed and unrelenting foe of corruption within and without the ranks.

The farmer with whom we were staying had earlier in the summer a flock of sixty young and promising turkeys; of the lot but twenty were left, and one of them was moping about as his forty brothers and sisters had moped before, ready to die.

“Ah, he’ll go with the others,” said the farmer.  “Raising turkeys is a ticklish job; to-day they’re scratching gravel for all they’re worth; to-morrow they mope around an’ die; no telling what’s the matter.”

“Suppose we give that turkey some whiskey and water; it may help him.”

“Can’t do him any harm, fur he’ll die anyway; but it’s a waste of good medicine.”

Soaking some bread in good, strong Scotch, diluted with very little water, we gave the turkey what was equivalent to a teaspoonful.  The bird did not take unkindly to the mixture.  It had been standing about all day first on one leg, then on another, with eyes half closed and head turned feebly to one side.  In a few moments the effect of the whiskey became apparent; the half-grown bird could no longer stand on one leg, but used both, placing them well apart for support.  It began to show signs of animation, peering about with first one eye and then the other; with great gravity and deliberation it made its way to the centre of the road and looked about for gravel;