about and how terribly we were wrought up.  His right arm moved mechanically through some such gesture as Canute is supposed to have made when he bade the ocean retire before him, and from his bloodless lips came the memorable words—­hollow, metallic, but memorable words—­“Gentlemen, be calm! be calm!”

  The calmness of this man in that supreme moment was simply awful.

He had been betrayed by one who should have been bound to him by every tie of gratitude.  He had seen his political idol overthrown.  He had witnessed the defeat and humiliation of what he believed to be the pure and patriotic spirit of American manhood.  His highest ambition had been foiled, his sweetest hopes frustrated.  Yet he was calm.  Ever and anon the sky that arches the Neapolitan landscape reaches down its lips, they say, and kisses the bald summit of Vesuvius; as if it recognized the grand impressiveness of this scene, the Mediterranean at such times hushes its voice and lies tranquil as a slumbering child; all nature stands silent before the communion of the clouds and the Titans.  But this ineffable peace, this majestic repose, is protentous.  To rest succeeds activity; after calm comes tempest; out of placid dream bursts reality.

Mr. Stone’s calmness, like the whittler’s stick, tapered up instead down.  He who had, at five o’clock on that never-to-be-forgotten day, come upon us with the insinuating placidity of hunyadi janos—­he who had addressed us in the tone of prehistoric centuries—­he who bade us be calm, and at the same time gave us the finest tableau of human calmness human eye ever contemplated—­he it was whom we found at eleven o’clock that very night, frothing at the mouth, biting chunks out of the hard-wood furniture, and tearing the bowels out of everything that came his way.

This singular madness has raged, unabated, for four years.  It was so infectious that his associates caught it—­all but three.  The men about the Daily News office who clung to the Republican party through thick and thin, who endured, therefore, every scoff, jibe, and taunt which sin could devise, and who, preferring honorable death to the rewards of treachery, proudly cast their votes for the nominees of the grand old party,—­these three men are entitled to places in the foremost rank of Christian martyrs.  Two of them were Joe Bingham and Morgan Bates.  Bingham is dead now; peace to his dust.  He never was his old hearty self after the defeat of Blaine; and when, upon the heels of this calamity, he moved to Indianapolis, Ind., he could stand it no longer and yielded up his life.  He was a stanch soldier in a holy cause; and there is consolation in the fact that he is now at last enjoying the eternal rewards that are prepared for all true Republicans.

As for Morgan Bates, he got somewhat even with his malicious persecutors by writing and producing plays; but retaliation is never satisfactory to