Your Uncle Mark Hanna
by Homer C. Davenport

When your Uncle Hanna is given his choice of Sunday church texts, he invariably declares in favor of the verse that runs to this effect: "To him who hath, to him shall be given; while from him who hath not, that little shall be taken away." He has twenty million and it pleased him to listen to these benign promises to him. Of course, I do not claim to have quoted the scriptures correctly. I haven't my bible with me and am obliged to bang away, as it were, off hand.

I like to sit and gaze down on Hanna from the galleries of the Senate. No, your Uncle Hanna takes no very active Senate part. He's afraid if he does the Senate bad men will pounce upon him and chew his mane. In his Senate seat he never bats an eye nor wags an ear, but I like to look at him. His face beams with goodness, he has a headlong eagerness to give things away -which belong to Uncle Sam.

Your Uncle Hanna was foaled in Ohio. When he was six months old, the elder Hanna, just to test his bent, offered him a rose and a silver quarter, both at the same time. Your Uncle Hanna looked over the two propositions for a moment and then collared the quarter-thereby manifesting that business instinct which has since gone on with its accumulations until today he enumerates a president, a White House, a whole administration.

I understand that your Uncle Hanna doesn't love Davenport. His affections are not permitted to run about in the grass on their own hook like a garter snake.