Love Feast

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LOVE FEAST

   Hillary's recent 52nd birthday party was described as a political lovefest (NEW YORK OBSERVER).  Governor George Pataki's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for Senate was also a love feast.  So much love!
   From William Safire's NEW POLITICAL DICTIONARY (1993--hey, is the revision coming out next year?), pg. 422:

LOVE FEAST (...)  The religious phrase was probably introduced into politics by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in 1873 in the novel _The Gilded Age_, a story about the politics of Reconstruction.  The newspaper in the fictional Washington, D.C., is so much the supporter of the corrupt status quo that it is called the _Daily Love-Feast_.

     We can place "love-feast" a little earlier in the Reconstruction period.
     I've been searching through HARPER'S WEEKLY (the computer index).  While looking for something else, I found this, from 29 April 1871, pg. 379, col. 1:

     _A PATRIOTIC LOVE-FEAST._
     THERE was recently an extraordinary love-feast in the city.  Mr. GREELEY was one of the party, and the ex-rebel General IMBODEN another.  Mr. CHARLES W. GODARD, lately one of the most active Repbulican leaders, took sweet counsel with Mr. JOHN MITCHEL, recently a rebel editor in Richmond, previously an aspirant for an Alabama plantation, and earlier an Irish patriot and exile.  There were other gentlemen present, and all were gathered for an admirable purpose.  Indeed, it is pleasant to read the record of the meeting, and to feel that those who differ so warmly in politics can harmoniously meet and discuss as friends a policy which is truly that of patriotism and peace.  For the object of the meeting was the establishment of a national emigration bureau to assist those who wish to settle in colonies already formed, or to found new settlements. (...)

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MISC.

   Doesn't anyone remember that we just discussed "on the bubble" and its origin at the Indy 500?  Check the archives.
   McGeorge Bundy was a teacher/dean at Harvard from 1949-1960.  His "Were Those the Days?" (quoted in my Gentleman's C posting) appeared in DAEDULUS (not HARPER'S).
   Sorry for the error.  I've been working too hard.  I need a vacation.