Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — DOCTOR DEPEW's STORY. [ARTICLE]

DOCTOR DEPEW's STORY.

How the World Moved In Peeksklll When He Wm Young. Dr. Depew told a railroad story the other evening. It was at a meeting of the railroad branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association in their building on Madison avenue. Cornelius Vanderbilt ,was present. The Doctor had been, speaking of the change produced in men’s manners and their different ways of doing business since the invention of modern transportation. “You can have no notion, you young men in the audience,” continued the Doctor, “how slow people used to be. There was an old man up in Peekskill, where I used to live, who used to be known as the ‘Village Oracle.’ Of all the places in the village where the Oracle loved to spout, the corner grocery was the dearest to him. There he would sit on a cracker barrel and solve, off hand, the knottiest political problems of the day. One day I entered the grocery and found the Oracle tearing to pieces the Constitution of New York State. It ought to be amended so that a certain power might be delegated to the Federal Government. I was fresh from my law studies, and was able to tell him that the State Constitution did convey that identical function to the Federal Government. He doubted it, and said that he would consult the learned authorities on the point when he got time. He had the books at home. “I came to New York,” continued the Doctor, “and spent a pretty busy ten years, and never happened to meet the Oracle again in the grocery, but one day I found him declaiming, as he had been declaiming ten years previously from the head of a cracker barrel, to a crowd of villagers. And he was at the same idea, that the Constitution ought to be amended. “‘But, Uncle,’l said, ‘don’t you remember I told you ten years ago that the Constitution already contained that provision?’ “ ‘ Did ye?’ said the old man. “ ‘ Yes,’ I replied, ‘and you said you would look it up in the Constitution for yourself. ’ “ ‘Mebby I did, mebby I did,’ he replied, ‘but I hain’t had time yet to hunt it up.’”—New York Sun.