The most vivid recent instance is afforded by the wedding of President Cleveland. It will be remembered that this took place in the White House in June, 1886, and that subsequently the couple spent their honey-moon in Deer Park, Maryland. Naturally, the President did not care to have his domestic affairs paraded before the world. No reportorial witnesses were permitted within the White House. But the divine voice of the public cried out for news, the great ear of the public was extended for gossip, and the reporters were not to be baffled. They could not gain admittance, but they surrounded the White House, they caught glimpses of the bride and the bridal guests as they drove up to the White House steps, they recorded that the bride's cheeks were tinged with soft color, that her observing eye caught sight of the fact that one of the ladies in descending from her carriage allowed a glimpse of "rather more of her anatomy" than was usual in public, whereupon Miss Folsom "with a dainty kick gathered her skirts about her, and jumped to the walk with only her boot-tips protruding." Nothing of the ceremony itself could be seen by the reporters. Expecting that the President would try to slip away unobserved, "a number of newspaper men," we are quoting from the reports,"stationed themselves near the southwest entrance to the grounds with carriages convenient, to follow the President in case he should make his exit by that gate." This was reported to the President, who baffled his tormentors by taking another and almost unused route. Balked of their prey, the reporters made a wild break for the station in time to see the train move off towards Deer Park, "where the couple hope to spend their honey-moon in quiet.... The Chicago Limited, which followed the President's special, carried a number of special correspondents, who will reach Oakland about sunrise. None of the hotels open at this season, and the question of providing the journalistic pilgrims with food and shelter will have to resolve itself when the unexpected colony invade the mountain precincts of the President's retreat." And in very truth they found scant accommodations when they arrived at their destination. Many slept on the bare ground. None had sufficient food. Yet for two weeks they nobly held their ground,-a starving army besieging a home of plenty. The President had taken the precaution to employ eight detectives to guard the approaches to his retreat. These being found insufficient, the number was increased to twelve. The interviewers hid behind bushes and strove to sneak under fences. But the Argus-eyed watchers were too many for them. The bridal couple passed their honey-moon in unchronicled privacy. Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, himself a newspaper man of large experience, tells this story: One of the funniest interviews of the past three years was that which was unconsciously given by Senator Ingalls to Mr. Lewsley, then of the Washington Post, but now connected with The World. Mr. Lewsley was sent to interview Senator Ingalls on politics. Senator Ingalls did not want to talk, and he turned the conversation, at every question that Lewsley put, to the subject of shaving. When Lewsley asked him as to the prospects of the party, Senator Ingalls remarked that Mr. Lewsley's beard needed trimming, and, "as a friend," told him, "a gentleman could not go through life without shaving himself at least once a day." "You should shave the first thing in the morning," said Ingalls. " You will want a cup of hot water; and as to the razor Here Lewsley broke in, "But, Senator, I want to ask you as to the Presidential situation." "I was speaking of the razor, Mr. Lewsley. I would advise you to get one of the Sheffield make, with a hollow blade, and the lighter and smaller the better; and "But, Senator Ingalls," interrupted Lewsley, "I want to talk to you about the political" Ah, Mr. Lewsley, I forgot to speak about the soap. The finest soap you will find on the market is that made in New England by a man named- And then Ingalls mentioned the name of one of the noted soap men of the United States, and went on with a quarter of a column of eulogy in his usual linguistic pyrotechnics upon the virtues of this shaving-soap. Mr. Lewsley, finding he could not get what he wanted, left, and, having a certain amount of space to fill, he wrote up the interview on shaving, quoting Ingalls's words as they were uttered. The next day everybody in Washington was laughing over this interview, and by the following week it was copied into nearly every paper in the United States. Senator Ingalls did not object to it until he saw it on one of the advertising pages of Harper's Weekly. The shaving-soap man had taken a picture of Senator Ingalls and had paid for a whole page of Harper's Weekly for this and the interview advertising his soap. Mr. Lewsley bought Harper's Weekly the day it came out, and he had it in his pocket as, going up towards the Capitol, he met Senator Ingalls, and said, Senator, there are some things in my life of which I feel very proud, and some for which I am sorry. I feel, for once, however, that I have done myself great credit, and I have never appreciated that fact as I do now.' "How so?" said Senator Ingalls. "I find that I have been the humble means, Senator, of making you truly famous. I have elevated you to the rank of Patti, Henry Ward Beecher, Lydia Pinkham, Harriet Hubbard Ayer, and the other really great who find their place in the advertising columns of great newspapers." " "What do you mean?" said Ingalls. "I mean this," said Lewsley, and he thereupon handed the Senator the paper. Ingalls screwed his double-spectacled eyes close to the paper a moment without speaking, and then he raised it up and said, "My God, Lewsley, you've ruined me!" "Oh, no, I think not," said Lewsley. "It is just as you have given it to me, is it not?" "Yes, I believe it is," said Ingalls, and there is no use in trying to lie out of it. I couldn't afford to enter the ring with a great professional liar like yourself. I will do one thing, however, I will prevent the reappearance of that advertisement;" and thereupon the Senator went to his room and telegraphed to the soap man that if he did not take that advertisement out of the paper he would be subject to a suit for damages. The result was that the advertisement was dropped. The newspaper man, indeed, is a dangerous person to fool with. He is extremely ingenious in his methods of retaliation. Here is another story in point. One Bennett was city editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer somewhere in the sixties. It was Bennett's plan, if news were scarce, to make small children-offspring of the brain only-fall from the Newport ferry-boat into the Ohio River, where they would infallibly have been drowned but for the gallant rescue of some by-stander, usually a personal friend of Bennett's. One of these friends, Kellum by name, grew very weary after he had figured several times as a savior of drowning innocents, and requested that Bennett should desist. So, in next day's Enquirer, Kellum read that a beautiful little girl, child of a prominent citizen in Newport, had fallen into the river, and that Mr. Kellum, who was standing near and could have rescued her, refused to render the slightest assistance. A few minutes later the maddest man in Cincinnati arrived in the Enquirer office, threatening the direst vengeance on Bennett. But Bennett calmly pulled off his coat, and said, "See here, Kellum, you are a good enough fellow in your way, but I can't stand any interference with my department. If I make any statement in the Enquirer you mustn't come round here contradicting it. That isn't journalism." The following story is told of a Democratic convention in Missouri. Each interviewer from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat wore a badge of white satin pinned to his coat-lapel with a silver star, and bearing this legend: As he finished with his victim, each interviewer handed him a check, which he put in his hat-band, and thus evaded any further bother with the reporters. These checks were inscribed as follows: PUMPED. Keep this check in your hat, and you will not again be disturbed by a reporter. So much for American journalist exploits. Foreigners, especially the English, are rather apt to sneer at them. Yet foreigners, and among them the English, are learning the same tricks. It was an English scribe who during the Franco-Prussian war, when the French general Bataille occupied Saarbrücken for a brief period, and had his meals sent from a hotel in the town to his tent on the hill,-it was an English scribe who disguised himself as a knight of the napkin, and, in consequence, was enabled to send to his paper an account of what he had seen and heard. Again, when the Lieutenancy of the City of London went to Windsor to present its congratulations on the recovery of the Prince of Wales, an English newspaper man, in an imitation Windsor uniform, joined the deputation, and, although stopped at the door of the Throne Room, eventually sat down with the luncheon-party in the Waterloo Chamber. It was a German reporter who, during the visit of Emperor William and King Humbert to Naples, disguised himself as a waiter, and succeeded in establishing himself behind the Kaiser's chair during the banquet that followed the naval review. And, again, it was an Englishman, Mr. Beatty Kingston, who was able during the Franco-Prussian war, as correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, to obtain a copy of the convention entered into between Jules Favre and Prince Bismarck for the capitulation of Paris. Dr. Moritz Busch, in his diary of the war, records the latter's astonishment when it appeared in the Telegraph of the following day. Ipse dixit (L., "He himself said it"), an assertion without proof, a dogmatic expression of opinion which neither courts nor will yield to argument. The phrase comes to us through the Romans from the disciples of Pythagoras, who, when asked the reason of their doctrines, would only reply, 'Avros ¿pa, ("He said so.") The further development of the phrase into ipsedixitism, the practice of dogmatic assertion, is happily rare. That day of ipsedixits, I trust, is over.-J. H. NEWMAN: Letters, 1875. Irish. No Irish need apply. In advertisements for servants in American papers this phrase was repeated so often that it grew to be a popular by-word and the shibboleth of the Know-Nothing party and their sympathizers. He was one of the whitest men that was ever in the mines. He never could stand it to see things go wrong. He's done more to make this town quiet and respectable than anybody in it. I've seen him lick four Greasers in eleven minutes myself. If a thing wanted regulating, he warn't a man to go browsing around after somebody to do it, but he would prance in and regulate it himself. He warn't a Catholic. Scasely. He was down on them. His word was "No Irish need apply!" But it made no difference about that when it come down to what a man's rights was; and so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic bone-yard and started to stake out town-lots in it, he went for 'em. And he cleaned 'em, too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself.-MARK TWAIN: Roughing Il, p. 334. Iron and blood (Ger. “Eisen und Blut"), a famous phrase of Bismarck's, persistently misquoted in the more euphonic form "blood and iron." The germ of the phrase in Bismarck's mind is found in a letter from St. Petersburg to Baron von Schleinitz, the Prussian minister of foreign affairs, written May 12, 1859, which did not, however, see the light of print until 1866: "I perceive in our relations with the Bund a fault of Prussia's which we must heal sooner or later ferro et igne." The more famous phrase was uttered in a speech before the Budget Commission of the Prussian House of Delegates, September 30, 1862: “It is desirable and it is necessary that the condition of affairs in Germany and of her constitutional relations should be improved; but this cannot be accomplished by speeches and resolutions of a majority, but only by iron and blood." Yet the phrase was an old one even in Germany. Heine had anticipated it as it stood in the first draught when, in some manuscript memoranda printed after his death, he said, "Napoleon healed the sick nation through sword and fire." (SCHERER: History of German Literature, ii. 116.) Schenkendorf, in "Das Eiserne Kreuz," had anticipated the second form when he said that only iron and blood could save his countrymen; but he had borrowed from Arndt's famous lines, Zwar der Tapfere nennt sich Herr der Länder Lehre an den Menschen. And, centuries before, Quintilian, in his " 'Declamations," had defined slaughter as meaning blood and iron: "Cædes videtur significare sanguinem et ferrum." But the phrase caught the fancy of the world as descriptive of the character and methods of Bismarck himself, and is the undoubted origin of his famous sobriquet, the Iron Chancellor. Iron Duke, a sobriquet by which the Duke of Wellington was generally known in his later days. It was originally applied, not to the man, but to an iron steamboat called "The Duke of Wellington," which plied between Liverpool and Dublin. The name so well expressed the popular idea of the sternness of his character and his want of feeling towards the masses that it was soon transferred from the steamboat to the old soldier himself. Iron entered into his soul, The, a common phrase for extreme agony,probably a reminiscence of the ancient custom of torturing the flesh with instruments of iron. The phrase seems to have been first used in the PrayerBook version of Psalm cv. 18: "Whose feet they hurt in the stocks: the iron entered into his soul." The passage is translated in the King James Bible as "He was laid in irons," and in the Revised Version, "He was laid in chains of iron." I saw the iron enter into his soul, and felt what sort of pain it was that ariseth from hope deferred.-STERNE. Ironclad oath, the name given to the oath of office prescribed by Congress after the close of the civil war as a safeguard against future disloyalty on the part of citizens of the reconstructed Southern States. 64 Irons in the fire, a familiar locution, found also in the French language, meaning many and various things to attend to. He has too many irons in the fire" is not dissimilar from the American "He has bitten off more than he can chew," and signifies that he has undertaken more than he can perform. The figure is probably borrowed from the smithy. A story is told of Samuel Foote that he was much bored by a pompous physician at Bath, who told him that he thought of publishing his own poems, but had so many irons in the fire that he really didn't know what to do. "Take my advice, doctor," said Foote, "and put your poems where your irons are." But precisely the same story is told of Dr. Johnson. When Miss Brooke, author of "The Siege of Sinope," said she had too many irons in the fire to read her play over carefully, Johnson retorted, "Put your tragedy where your irons are. And before either Johnson or Foote the story appeared thus in the "Nain Jaune," a French collection of bons mots: "A gentleman who had the unfortunate talent of throwing once a month a volume to the public asked a friend to speak frankly of one he was threatening to bring out: If that is worth nothing, I have other irons in the fire.' 'In that case,' replied the friend, 'I advise you to put your manuscript where you have put your irons' ('Dans ce cas je vous conseille de mettre votre manuscrit où vous avez mis vos fers').” Ironsides, a surname given to Edmund II., King of the Anglo-Saxons (989-1016); furthermore, a name given to Cromwell's soldiers after their victory at Marston Moor. The United States frigate Constitution was familiarly known as "Old Ironsides." She was launched at Boston, September 20, 1797, and became celebrated for the prominent part she took during the expedition to suppress the Barbary corsairs, particularly in the bombardment of Tripoli, in 1804, and for the gallantry displayed by her officers and men during the War of 1812. Irony. In the well-known "Verses on his own Death" Swift humorously asserts that Arbuthnot is no more my friend, This, even as a bit of humorous exaggeration, is an absurd claim. That the great Dean was one of the mightiest masters of irony in the English language may be granted. But irony (ɛipuveia, "dissembling") was a well-known figure in Greek literature, and was handled with marvellous dexterity by Aristophanes, by Plato, and by Socrates. It was so pervading an element in the latter's discourse that even his contemporaries spoke of it as his "customary irony,” and in more modern times Socratic and ironic have come to be almost convertible terms: Most socratick Lady! Or, if you will, ironick! BEN JONSON: New Inn. Nay, a still more ancient instance is found in the Old Testament, in Elijah's ridicule of the prophets of Baal (I. Kings xviii. 27), when in answer to his challenge they clamor to their god to send fire from heaven upon the altar: "And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked." Even if the Dean confined his boast to the English language he would find it difficult of vindication. Nowhere in Swift is there irony more admirably sustained than in Antony's speech over the corpse of Cæsar, deriving as it does additional intensity from contrast with his impassioned soliloquy in the preceding scene, which reveals the world of fury that Antony is really suppressing when he reiterates that Brutus is an honorable man. As good a definition of irony as any is that by E. P. Whipple. Irony, he says, is a kind of saturnine, sardonic wit, having the self-possession, complexity, and continuity of humor, without its geniality. It is "an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment; insinuating the most galling satire under the phraseology of panegyric; placing its victim naked on a bed of briers and thistles thinly covered with rose-leaves; adorning his brow with a crown of gold, which burns into his brain; teasing and fretting, and riddling him through and through, with incessant discharges of hot shot from a masked battery; laying bare the most sensitive and shrinking nerves of his mind, and then blandly touching them with ice, or smilingly pricking them with needles." It is with special reference to the irony of Swift that Whipple pens this characterization, and he deems that the most exquisite piece of irony in modern literature, and at the same time the most terrible satire on the misgovernment of Ireland, is Swift's pamphlet entitled "A Modest Proposal to the Public for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Country, and for making them Beneficial to the Public." It was published in 1729, when people were starving in hundreds from the famine and the dead were left unburied before their doors. And what was Swift's plan? It was to turn the children into food. "I have been assured," he says, "by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt it will equally serve as a ragout." He argues out the propo |