But perhaps the prince of Humbugs, the incarnation of fraud, the apotheosis of audacity, is the street-corner politician. He towers above his fellow fakes like Saul above his brethren. I have been time and again instructed in the most intricate problems of public polity--questions that have perplexed the wisest statesmen of the world-- by men who had never read a single standard work on political economy, and who could not tell to save their souls--granting that they possess such perishable property-- whether Adam Smith wrote the "Wealth of Nations" or the Lord's Prayer; who were not familiar with the constitution of their own state, or the face of a receipted wash-bill; who could scarce tell a sloop from a ship, a bill of lading from a sight draft; a hydraulic ram from a he-goat unless they were properly labeled. Yet no question can arise in metaphysics or morals, government or generalship, upon which these great little men do not presume to speak with the authoritative assurance of a Lord Chief Justice--or a six-foot woman addressing a four-foot husband. They invariably know it all. They could teach Solomon and the Seven Wise Men wisdom, and had they been on earth when Almighty God wrote the Ten Commandments they would have moved an amendment or drafted a minority report. And these are the fellows who frame our political platforms and dominate our elections--whose boundless cupidity, colossal ignorance and supernal gall bring about starvation in a land of plenty--divide the most industrious and progressive people that ever graced the footstool of Almighty God into bloated millionaires and groveling mendicants. Even patriotism has become a Humbug--has been supplanted by partisanship, and now all are for party and none are for the state. On July 4 we shout for the old flag, and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropriation. The man who is kicked by a nightmare while dreaming of the draft demands a pension and every burning patriot wants an office. Twice, yea, thrice within the memory of men now living, America has been on the very verge of an industrial revolution, a Reign of Terror; yet we continue to hang our second Providence on a job-lot of political Jacksnipes who carry their patriotism in their pockets and their sense under their surcingles. While we who feed three times a day; who have a cocktail every morning and a clean shirt occasionally, are boasting of our allegiance to "the grand old party," or prating of the principles of Jeffersonian democracy--are blindly trailing in the wake of some partisan band-wagon like a brindle calf behind a Kansas hay-cart-this nation, born of our father's blood and sanctified by our mothers' tears, is dominated by political self-seekers who have taken for their motto, "After us the deluge." Once after holding forth at some length on Humbugs, a physician said to me: "Ah-er--you-ah--didn't mention the medical profession." "No," I replied, "the power of language hath its limits."