The Herald

A RECORD BREAKER.

It was the divine "Williams" who said, "some men are born great, others achieve greatness and still others have greatness thrust upon them."

The case of the Populist Senator Allen, of Nebraska, seems to us to differ from any of these grades, which, hitherto, have been thought to be amply sufficient to cover all variations of fortune. During the session night before last this big Populist actually stumbled on greatness. At the time when the country needed somebody to protect it from the great undermining assault of Wall street, the senate wall—the only bulwark that stands between the people and the one man power—required to be surmounted by a champion of undoubted power and courage. Allen happened to be around, and at once availed himself of the opportunity to give his lungs a thorough airing. For fourteen hours he stood in the breach; and during that time all past records as to windy suspiration of forced breath were exceeded. Yea, they were all blotted out, and not so much as a reminder was left of them. As a single-handed talker and sounder of the individual bazoo, Allen has simply swept the rag from the bush, gathered in the persimmons with his larynx and left old Loquacity herself without a leg to stand on, and all for a patriotic purpose. Time was when a great crowd gathered around the walls of Jericho and raised such a clamor that the very walls themselves fell down. In this case the matter turned out differently. It was as though a single defender on the exposed walls of Jericho had raised such a din that the besieging hordes of the Israelites were laid out by the clamor raised by the champion of the Jerichoites. There is good leather in Allen, and long may he wave! He enabled the American party to win the day, or the night rather, in fine style.

It may be said that it is cruel to talk men to death, and that fourteen hours of incessant speechifying in the limited range of keys allotted to oratory, are more than human flesh and blood can bear. Under ordinary circumstances there is something in this. But then, all the same, the speaker, Populist though he be, had the satisfaction of knowing that, by his rasping and cacophonous notes, he was keeping the monocrats awake, and stimulating that tendency to insomnia at work which will, happily, rid the country of some of its dyspeptic so-called statesmen and real enemies. When this noble reverberator of swelling periods filled the senate chamber with his sonorous refrains he must have felt as did the Horatii when they held the bridge in the "brave days of old."

All honor to Allen of Nebraska, of Populist fame. From all accounts he must be cousin German to the late Billy Allen—Foghorn Allen—of Ohio, of happy memory. The Nebraska statesman has made name and fame in a day; or rather, in fourteen hours. He has shown his ability to talk the Cleveland silver contingent to death, and in thorough style. The man who can exhaust Dan Voorhees and make him cry peccavi, even though the weakness be only momentary, has written his name in large and luminous letters over the front of the national capitol. However short lived may be his party, he has left a record for square longwindedness that will probably never be surpassed. Not even the cyclones that blow across the smooth plains of Nebraska with rip-snorting energy can dare to claim superiority to the gentleman that hails from that ambitious young commonwealth. Allen is worthy even to represent the cave of the winds.