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Bob Roach's Plan for Circumventing a Democrat

Where did all these Democrats come from? They grow thicker and thicker and act more and more outrageously at each successive election. Now yesterday they had the presumption to elect S. H. Dwinellean to the Judgeship of the Fifteenth District Court, and not content with this, they were depraved enough to elect four out of the six Justices of the Peace! Oh, 'Enery Villiam, where is thy blush! Oh, Timothy Hooligan, where is thy shame!an It's out. Democrats haven't got any. But Union men staid away from the election—they either did that or else they came to the election and voted Democratic tickets—I think it was the latter, though the Flag will doubtless say it was the former. But these Democrats didn't stay away—you never catch a Democrat staying away from an election. The grand end and aim of his life is to vote or be voted for, and he accommodates to circumstances and does one just as cheerfully as he does the other. The Democracy of America left their native wilds in England and Connaught to come here and vote—and when a man, and especially a foreigner, who don't have any voting at home any more than an Arkansas man has ice-creame for dinner, comes three or four thousand miles to luxuriate in occasional voting, he isn't going to stay away from an election any more than the Arkansas man will leave the hotel table in “Orleans” until he has destroyed most of the ice cream. The only man I ever knew who could counteract this passion on the part of Democrats for voting, was Robert Roach, carpenter of


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the steamer Alecke Scottan, “plying to and from St. Louis to New Orleans and back,” as her advertisement sometimes read. The Democrats generally came up as deck passengers from New Orleans, and the yellow fever usede to snatch them right and left—eight or nine a day for the first six or eight hundred miles; consequently Roach would have a lot on hand to “plantan” every time the boat landed to wood—“plant” was Roach's word. One day as Roach was superintending a burial the Captain came up and said:

“God bless my soul, Roach, what do you mean by shoving a corpse into a hole in the hill-side in this barbarous way, face down and its feet sticking outan?”

“I always plant them foreign Democrats in that manner, sir, because, damn their souls, if you plant 'em any other way they'll dig out and vote the first time there's an election—but look at that fellow, now—you put 'em in head first and face down and the more they dig the deeper they'll go into the hill.”

In my opinion, if we do not get Roach to superintend our cemeteries, enough Democrats will dig out at the next election to carry their entire ticket. It begins to look that way.

Explanatory Notes
an S. H. Dwinelle] Clemens' account of the October 18 election results is accurate. Samuel H. Dwinelle was the incumbent judge of the Fifteenth District Court. He continued to hold this office until 1880, six years before his death.
an Oh, 'Enery Villiam . . . thy shame!] Compare Hamlet, act 3, scene 4, line 82: “O shame! where is thy blush?”
an Aleck Scott] Built in 1848 in St. Louis, the Aleck Scott was a boat of seven hundred tons still in the St. Louis–New Orleans trade in 1859. It was converted into a ram for the United States Navy in 1862 (William M. Lytle, Merchant Steam Vessels of the United States: 1807–1868 Mystic, Conn.: The Steamship Historical Society of America, 1952, p. 5). Isaiah Sellers, the pilot whom Clemens ridiculed in “River Intelligence” (no. 24), was pilot of the Aleck Scott for many years.
an plant] Meaning “bury,” a favorite word of Clemens'. He used it, for example, in “Origin of Illustrious Men” (no. 193), in chapter 47 of Roughing It, and in chapter 10 of Huckleberry Finn.
an feet sticking out] As the ship's carpenter, Roach would have had the responsibility of building coffins for the dead, and perhaps even for supervising their burial en route. Yet it would appear that the corpse in this sketch was buried without the benefit of a coffin—not the usual practice. Absalom Grimes reported the river-bank burial of Clemens' friend Sam Bowen, who died while working as a pilot in 1878. According to Grimes, when the erosion of the bank exposed Bowen's coffin, Clemens paid for having it removed and reinterred (Absalom Grimes: Confederate Mail Runner, ed. M. M. Quaife New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925, pp. 18–19).