Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1881 — TOM CORWIN. [ARTICLE]

TOM CORWIN.

A Few Anecdote* of the Man Hi* Western Reserve Experience. [From the Cleveland Herald.] Memories of 1840 are to-day like the history of an almost unknown or forgotten time. That was practically before the day of the newspaper squib and paragraph, and before the day of rapid transit; and Tom Corwin, the king of stumpers, was the first man to introduce ridicule and sarcasm on the stump and make them a success. Pretty soon thereafter George D. Prentice, the great founder of the Louisville Courier- Journal, began the work of political paragraph writing and transferred the Corwinian style of discussion to his paper. Many were the fights that came from Prentice’s jokes. He kept a revolver constantly loaded and cocked in the right-hand drawer of his desk, and whenever a stranger darkened his editorial sanctum he instinctively grasped the handle of the weapon, and ten times in a dozen his precaution was entirely pertinent. The people had to be educated up to this new idea of freedom of the press, and the border mind was the first to be worked upon, and by the florid genius of a Prentice. The fund of stories which the older class of politicians continue to tell of Corwin will never be exhausted. I struck one of these men of 1840 recently, and the relations which he gave me are well worth repeating. A mass-meeting in the central portion of the State was addressed by Corwin and the elder Tom Ewing. Ewing spoke in the forenoon and Corwin was to follow in the afternoon. Ewing delivered a carefully-prepared speech on the issues of the campaign. There was not a single stroke of fancy or wit in the whole talk from beginning to end. The people seemed to be restive under it, and desirous for Corwin to appear. At dinner Mr. Corwin said : “You made a great mistake, Ewing, in your speech this morning. ” Mr. Ewing looked exceedingly surprised and annoyed, and sagely asked : “What could it have been, Mr. Corwin ?” “ Why, you talked to those people’s brains. They hain’t got any brains. Lord, wait till I get up this afternoon and talk at the pit of their stomachs ; then you’ll see them give attention. They’ll appreciate that. ” When Mr. Corwin’s son, the late Dr. W. H. Corwin, was attending Dennison University, his teachers became alarmed at his sitting up too late nights, and thought he was overstudying. They wrote to his father in regal’d to the matter. Mr. Corwin addressed his son as follows on the subject : My Son : I understand that there is danger of your injuring yourself by over-mental exertion. There are so few young men these days that go that. way that I desire to say that, should you kill yourself from too much study, it would give me great pleasure to attend your funeral. Corwin spoke less on the Reserve, perhaps, than in any other portion of the State. He was fond of relating anecdotes in regard to the peculiarities of the people in this portion of the State. One of these ran something as follows : “ I was unfortunate enough on a certain occasion to speak in the little town of D., on the Western Reserve. You have all heard of the Western Reserve, I presume, and so I need not particularly describe it. Weil, the meeting was to be'held in the Presbyterian church. I was escorted to the house by one of the very respectable citizens, and took my seat in front of the big, high pulpit, which was boxed up on the side of the wall half way up to the ceiling. Finally, after a prolonged, deathlike stillness, a man arose back in the center of the room and said: ‘ I nominate Mr. Jonathan Edwards for Chairman of thismeeting.’ Another man got up in another part of the room and said : ‘ I second the motion.’ After a while another man got up and said: ‘ You hev all heered the motion and the second. You that favor it say aye, contrary no. Mr. Jonathan Edwards is elected President of this meeting.’ Mr. Edwards came solemnly forward, and, after being seated a few minutes, arose and said: ‘ Ladies and gentlemen, you hev come together tonight to listen to Hon. Mr. Thomas Corwine on the political issues of the day. If M Cor wine will come forward I will introduce him to the audience.* I went forward. The Chairman said further: ‘ This is Hon. Mr. Thomas Cor wine, who will address you.’ “ I thought I would break that dronishness or kill myself. I told my funniest stories. I cracked my best jokes in profusion. I lavished remarks that would lay a Southern Ohio audience up with the pleurisy. But all were as solemn as though I was pronouncing the funeral oration over Cock Robin. Occasionally I would see a fellow put his hands to his face and bend down as though in devotion, but when his face came up it was again solemn. “At length I gave up in despair. After we were all out of the church one of them came up to me, and, doubling himself up with laughter, he said: “ ‘ Mr. Corwine, you said some of the (te-he-he) funniest (te-he-he) things I ever heered (te-he-he). I du declare yon come pretty near making me laugh right out in meeting. ’ ‘ ‘ What a terrible calamity that would have been. But to the Western Reserve Yankee a laugh in the house of worship or ‘ meetiu’-house,’ as he calls it, would be an unpardonable sin.”