[Illustration: AMBITION'S DREAM.]
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 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:
"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;
Though 'round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
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:
"Tread softly 'round this sacred heap,
It guards ambition's restless sleep;
Whose greed for place ne'er did forsake him,
Don't mention office, or you'll wake him!"
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:
"Man's a vapor full of woes,
Cuts a caper--down he goes!"
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.