XIV A KENTUCKY COLONEL COL. WINTERSMITH'S GREAT POPULARITY - HIS ADMIRATION FOR MR. CLAY HIS MARVELLOUS MEMORY – HIS WIT AND HUMOR. NEW men were better known in Washington, a quarter of a century and more ago, than Colonel Dick Wintersmith of Kentucky. He had creditably filled important positions of public trust in his native State. His integrity was beyond question, and his popularity knew no bounds. Without the formality of party nomination, and with hardly the shadow of opposition at the polls, he had held the office of State Treasurer for nearly a score of years. An ardent Whig in early life, he was a devout worshipper at the shrine of Henry Clay. In the later years of his life, he would often with the deepest emotion refer to himself as "the last of the old guard." He never tired of relating interesting incidents of Mr. Clay. It was his glory that he had accompanied "the great pacificator" to Washington, when, with the fond hope of being able by his historic "compromise" to pour oil on the troubled waters, he returned to the Senate for the last time. Wintersmith was the close friend of Theodore O'Hara, and stood beside him when at the unveiling of the monument to the Kentuckians who had fallen at Buena Vista he pronounced his now historic lines beginning "On fame's eternal camping-ground Colonel Wintersmith knew, as he knew his children, two generations of the public men of Kentucky. His memory was a marvel to all who knew him. He could repeat till the dawn, extracts from famous speeches he had heard from the lips of Clay, Grundy, Marshall, and Menifee. More than once, I have heard him declaim the wonderful speech of Sargent S. Prentiss delivered almost a half-century before, in the old Harrodsburg Court-house, in defence of Wilkinson for killing three men at the Galt House. It is hardly necessary to say that the Colonel was the soul of generosity. It was a part of his living faith that "Kind hearts are more than coronets." That he was possessed in no stinted measure of wit and its kindred quality, humor, will appear from an incident or two to be related. The Hon. Ignatius Donnelly, member of Congress from Minnesota, had written a book to prove that Lord Bacon was the veritable author of the plays usually accredited to Shakespeare. Soon after the appearance of Donnelly's book, he met Colonel Wintersmith on Pennsylvania Avenue. After a cordial greeting, the Colonel remarked, "I have been reading your book, Donnelly, and I don't believe a word of it." "What?" inquired Donnelly, with great surprise. "Oh, that book of yours," said the Colonel," in which you tried to prove that Shakespeare never wrote 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth' and 'Lear' and all those other plays." "My dear sir," replied Donnelly with great earnestness, "I can prove beyond all peradventure that Shakespeare never wrote those plays." "He did," replied Wintersmith, "he did write them, Donnelly, I saw him write three or four of them, myself.” "Impossible!" exclaimed Donnelly, who was as guiltless of anything that savored of humor as the monument recently erected to the memory of Hon. John Sherman, "impossible, Colonel, that you could have seen Shakespeare write those plays; they were written three hundred years ago." "Three hundred years, three hundred years," slowly murmured the Colonel in pathetic tone, "is it possible that it has been so long? Lord, how time does fly!" The Colonel often told the following with a gravity that Many years ago, his Upper House by a gave it at least the semblance of truth. State was represented in part in the statesman who rarely, when in good form, spoke less than an entire day. His speeches, in large measure, usually consisted of dull financial details, statistics, etc. He became in time the terror of his associates, and the nightmare of visitors in the galleries. His "Mr. President," was usually the signal for a general clearing out of both Senate Chamber and galleries. "Upon one occasion," said Colonel Dick, "I was seated in the last tier in the public gallery, when my Senator with books and documents piled high about him solemnly addressed the Chair. As was the wont, the visitors in the gallery as one man arose to make their exit. With a revolver in each hand, I promptly planted myself in front of the door, and in no uncertain tone ordered the crowd to resume their seats, and remain quietly until the Senator from Kentucky had concluded his remarks. They did so and no word of complaint reached my ears. Hour after hour during the long summer day the speech drew itself along. At length as the shadows were lengthening and the crickets began to chirp, the speech ended and the Senator took his seat. I promptly replaced my pistols and motioned the visitors to move out. They did so on excellent time. As the last man was passing out, he quietly remarked to me, "Mister, that was all right, no fault to find, but if it was to do over again, you might shoot." XV FORGOTTEN EVENTS OF THE LONG AGO THE WRITER MEETS MISS GRAHAM, SISTER-IN-LAW OF MR. GILES, A REPRESENTATIVE IN THE DAYS OF WASHINGTON HIS MEETING WITH THE DAUGHTER OF THOMAS W. GILMER, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY UNDER PRESIDENT TYLER THE SECRETARY KILLED, AND THE PRESIDENT ENDANGERED BY AN EXPLOSION SPECULATION AS TO POSSIBLE POLITICAL CHANGES HAD THE PRESIDENT BEEN KILLED. D URING my sojourn in Washington I visited the "Louise Home," one of the splendid charities of the late W. W. Corcoran. Two of the ladies I there met were Miss Graham and Miss Gilmer. The turn of Fortune's wheel had brought each of them from once elegant Virginia homes to spend the evening of life in the Home which Mr. Corcoran had so kindly and thoughtfully provided. It was in very truth the welcome retreat to representatives of old Southern families who had known better days. Here in quiet and something of elegant leisure, the years sped by, the chief pastime recalling events and telling over again and again the social triumphs of the long ago. Thus lingering in the shadows of the past, sadly reflecting, it may be, in the silent watches, that "The tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me," these venerable ladies were in sad reality "only waiting till the shadows had a little longer grown." There was something pathetically remindful of the good old Virginia days in the manner in which Miss Graham handed me her card and invited me to be seated. Looking me earnestly in the face, she said, "Mr. Vice-President, you must have known my brother-in-law, Governor Giles." "Do you mean Senator William B. Giles of Virginia?” I inquired. "Yes, yes," she said, "did you know him?" "No, madam," I replied, "I did no, he was a member of Congress when Washington was President; that was a little before my day. But is it possible that you are a sister-in-law of Governor Giles?" "Yes, sir," she answered," he married my eldest sister and I was in hopes that you knew him." I assured her that I had never known him personally, but that I knew something of his history: that he was a soldier of the Revolution; that he began his public career with the passing of the old Confederation and the establishment of the National Union; that as Representative or Senator he was in Congress almost continuously from the administration of Washington to that of Jackson. I then repeated to her the words Mr. Benton, his long-time associate in the Senate, had spoken of her brother-in-law: "Macon was wise, Randolph brilliant, Gallatin and Madison able in argument, but Giles was the ready champion, always ripe for the combat." And I told her that John Randolph, for many years his colleague, had said: "Giles was to our House of Representatives what Charles James Fox was to the British House of Commons the most accomplished debater our country has known." I might have said to Miss Graham, but did not, that her brother-in-law, then a member of the House, had voted against the farewell address of that body to President Washington upon his retirement from the great office. Strange indeed to our ears sound the utterances of Representative Giles! Strange indeed words that even mildly reflect upon the Father of his Country. Of this, however, we may be assured, that the Golden Age of our history is but a dream; "the era of absolute good feeling,' the era that has not been. "Past and to come seem best; Before condemning Mr. Giles too severely the words of Edmund Burke may well be recalled: "Party divisions, whether upon the whole operating for the best, are things inseparable from free Government." Party divisions came |