_PUCK, October 27th, 1880._
The picture of the Democratic party as Rip Van Winkle was suggested by
the fact that in 1880, when it appeared, (Oct. 27) the party had been
for just twenty years wrapt in the sleep of political inactivity. The
figure of the old sleeper is the one made familiar by Mr. Jefferson’s
wonderful interpretation. He starts up from his twenty years’ slumber
to see a spectral host flit by him, as he lies upon the mountain
crag--Douglas, Greeley, McClellan, Seymour, Tilden, and Hancock the
Superb, leading the doomed line of hapless Presidential candidates. The
mean realities of life are represented by the two fiery-eyed owls in
the tree at the old man’s back--General B. F. Butler and Mr. John Kelly
of Tammany Hall, who never appeared in national politics, except as
secret and mischievous birds of prey.
Down in the right-hand lower corner of the picture a pocket-flask
labelled “Bourbon” may puzzle the reader who turns this page a
generation hence. It is a sly reference to a jest well known and well
understood at the time,--it had a much earlier origin. The Democrats
were called Bourbons because it was supposed that “they never learned
anything and never forgot anything.” As it happened, Bourbon County,
Kentucky, had given its name to a brand of whiskey at that time in
great favor. As whiskey was America’s democratic drink, in the broader
sense of the word, by a natural association of ideas Bourbon whiskey
was set down as the drink of the Democratic party. It was generally
known as “Bourbon” and pronounced “Burbin.”
[Illustration]