" The first branch of the
figure--that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel--I admit
is not merely figuratively, but literally true. Who that looks but for a
moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons, and their
hundreds of others, scampering away with the public money to Texas, to
Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find
refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly
affected in their heels with a species of "running itch"? It seems that
this malady of their heels operates on these sound-headed and
honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in the comic song
did on its owner: which, when he had once got started on it, the more he
tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing
this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems too
strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier, who was always
boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably
retreated without orders at the first charge of an engagement, being
asked by his captain why he did so, replied: "Captain, I have as brave a
heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but, somehow or other, whenever danger
approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it.
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