There, under the shade of the sycamores, on my father's old farm, I used to dream of the years to come. I looked through a vista blooming with pleasures, fruiting with achievements, and beautiful as the cloud-isles of the sunset. The siren, ambition, sat beside me and fired my young heart with her prophetic song. She dazzled me, and charmed me, and soothed me, into sweet fantastic reveries. She touched me and bade me look into the wondrous future. The bow of promise spanned it. Hope was enthroned there and smiled like an angel of light. Under that shining arch lay the goal of my fondest aspirations. Visions of wealth, and of laurels, and of applauding thousands, crowded the horizon of my dream. I saw the capitol of the Republic, that white-columned pantheon of liberty, lifting its magnificent pile from the midst of the palaces, and parks, the statues, and monuments, of the most beautiful city in the world. Infatuated with this vision of earthly glory, I bade [161]
[162] adieu to home and its dreams, seized the standard of a great political party, and rushed into the turmoil and tumult of the heated campaign. Unable to bear the armor of a Saul, I went forth to do battle armed with a fiddle, a pair of saddlebags, a plug horse, and the eternal truth. There was the din of conflict by day on the hustings; there was the sound of revelry by night in the cabins. The mid-night stars twinkled to the music of the merry fiddle, and the hills resounded with the clatter of dwindling shoe soles, as the mountain lads and lassies danced the hours away in the good old time Virginia reel. I rode among the mountain fastnesses like the "Knight of the woeful figure," mounted on my prancing "Rozenante," everywhere charging the windmill of the opposing party, and wherever I drew rein the mountaineers swarmed from far and near to witness the bloodless battle of the contending candidates in the arena of joint discussion. My learned competitor, bearing the shield of "protection to American labor," and armed to the teeth with mighty argument, hurled himself upon me with the fury of a lion. His blows descended like thunderbolts, and the welkin rang with cheers when his lance went shivering to the center. His logic was appalling, his imagery was sublime. His tropes and similes flashed like the drawn blades of charging cavalry, and with a flourish of trumpets, his grand effort culminated in a splendid tribute to the Republic, crowned with Goldsmith's beautiful metaphor:

I received the charge of the enemy "with poised lance, and visor down." I deluged the tall cliff under a flood of "mountain eloquence" which poured from my patriotic lips like molasses pouring from the bung-hole of the universe. I mounted the American eagle and soared among the stars. I scraped the skies and cut the black illimitable far out beyond the orbit of Uranus, and I reached the climax of my triumphant flight with a hyperbole that eclipsed Goldsmith's metaphor, unthroned the foe, and left him stunned upon the field. Thus I soared:

"I stood upon the sea shore, and with a frail reed in my hand, I wrote in the sand, 'My Country, I love thee;' a mad wave came rushing by and wiped out the fair impression. Cruel wave, treacherous sand, frail reed; I said, 'I hate ye I'll trust ye no more, but with a giant's arm, I'll reach to the coast of Norway, and pluck its tallest pine, and dip it in the crater of Vesuvius, and write upon the burnished heavens; 'My Country, I love thee! And I'd like to see any durned wave rub that out!!'"

Between the long intervals of argument my speech grinned with anecdotes like a basketfull of 'possum heads. The fiddle played its part, the people did the rest, and I carved upon the tombstone of the demolished Knight these tender words:

I reached the goal of my visions and dreams under that collossal dome whose splendors are shadowed in the broad river that flows by the shrine of Mt. Vernon. I sat amid the confusion and uproar of the parliamentary struggles of the lower branch of the Congress of the United States. "Sunset" Cox, with his beams of wit and humor, convulsed the house and shook the gallaries. Alexander Stephens, one of the last tottering monuments of the glory of the Old South, still lingering on the floor, where, in by-gone years the battles of his vigorous manhood were fought. I saw in the Senate an assemblage of the grandest men since the days of Webster and Clay. Conkling, the intellectual Titan, the Apollo of manly form and grace, thundered there. The "Plumed Knight," that grand incarnation of mind and magnetism, was at the zenith of his glory. Edmunds, and Zack Chandler, and the brilliant and learned Jurist, Mat. Carpenter, were there. Thurman the "noblest Roman of them all" was there with his famous bandana handkerchief. The immortal Ben Hill, the idol of the South, and Lamar, the gifted orator and highest type of Southern chivalry were there. Garland, and Morgan, and Harris, and Coke, were there; and Beck with his sledge-hammer intellect. It was an arena of opposing gladiators more magnificent and majestic than was ever witnessed in the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. There were giants in the Senate in those days, and when they clashed shields and measured swords in debate, the capitol trembled and the nation thrilled in every nerve.

But how like the ocean's ebb and flow are the restless tides of politics! These scenes of grandeur and glory soon dissolved from my view like a dream. I "saved the country" for only two short years. My competitor proved a lively corpse. He burst forth from the tomb like a locust from its shell, and came buzzing to the national capital with "war on his wings." I went buzzing back to the mountains to dream again under the sycamores; and there a new ambition was kindled in my soul. A new vision opened before me. I saw another capitol rise on the bank of the Cumberland, overshadowing the tomb of Polk and close by the Hermitage where reposes the sacred dust of Andrew Jackson. And I thought if I could only reach the exalted position of Governor of the old "Volunteer State" I would then have gained the sum of life's honors and happiness. But lo! another son of my father and mother was dreaming there under the same old sycamore. We had dreamed together in the same trundle-bed and often kicked each other out. Together we had seen visions of pumpkin pie and pulled hair for the biggest slice. Together we had smoked the first cigar and together learned to play the fiddle. But now the dreams of our manhood clashed. Relentless fate had decreed that "York" must contend with "Lancaster" in the "War of the Roses." And with flushed cheeks and throbbing hearts we eagerly entered the field; his shield bearing the red rose, mine the white. It was a contest of principles, free from the wormwood and gall of personalities, and when the multitude of partisans gathered at the hustings, a white rose on every Democratic bosom, a red rose on every Republican breast, in the midst of a wilderness of flowers there was many a tilt and many a loud huzzah. But when the clouds of war had cleared away, I looked upon the drooping red rose on the bosom of the vanquished Knight, and thought of the first speech my mother ever taught me:

The white rose triumphed. But the shadow is fairer than the substance. The pathway of ambition is marked at every mile with the grave of some sweet pleasure slain by the hand of sacrifice. It bristles with thorns planted by the fingers of envy and hate, and as we climb the rugged heights, behind us lie our bloody footprints, before us tower still greater heights, scarred by tempests and wrapped in eternal snow. Like the edelweiss of the Alps, ambition's pleasures bloom in the chill air of perpetual frost, and he who reaches the summit will look down with longing eyes, on the humbler plain of life below and wish his feet had never wandered from its warmer sunshine and sweeter flowers.