_PUCK, August 31st, 1881._
The situation, which this cartoon, published in PUCK of August 31st,
1881, commemorates after a peculiarly forcible fashion, is too
unpleasant to invite further comment than is absolutely necessary
to explain it. During the latter part of the Summer of 1881, while
President Garfield lay dying from an assassin’s bullet, certain
politicians of a peculiarly coarse fibre were unwilling to wait for
his death to make their arrangements for the distribution of the
spoils of office under his successor. These were not men who were in
any way concerned in shaping the course of the government in matters
of statecraft or policy; they were simply out for the spoils, as the
phrase goes, and their undisguised eagerness was scandalous under the
circumstances.
PUCK said at the time, with more moderation than, viewed in the light
of subsequent events, the occasion called for: “Whether presidents live
or die, the game of politics goes on. It is humiliating and deplorable,
but it is nevertheless true that many professional politicians of more
or less reputation are carefully laying their plans of procedure in the
event of the decease of the dying President, We will not wrong these
gentlemen by saying that they desire his death; but it is scarcely
decent to raise even a discussion on the most trivial matter connected
with mere machine politics, before the vital spark has fled from the
body of the chief magistrate. Although his presumptive, or, to use a
monarchical term, his apparent successor has acted throughout in a
manly and modest way, there are political friends of his whose demeanor
has not been distinguished by the sympathy and consideration that, at
least, might be expected on such an occasion.”
[Illustration]