Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1897 — Rebuked Harrison. [ARTICLE]

Rebuked Harrison.

We were waiting for the beds to be made up in the Santa Fe sleeper and passed the time swapping yarns. “I met recently,” said the Secretary of a Columbus (Ohio) corporation, “an old professor of Miami University, where ex-President Harrison graduated. He said that when Harrison was a senior In college an elderly man, whose name I have forgotten, came there to make a speech in favor of the abolition of slavery. It was, of course, the average abolition speecli of those days about slavery—its wrongs, its injustice and the final results of its continuance. In those days of course very few of the colleges or college communities shared the sentiments of the alxditionlsts. The most progressive of them seldom went beyond the Henry Clay or Daniel Webster ground of compromise. Harrison had already a reputation as a college orator and was called on to reply. He was unprepared at a moment’s notice to present a very formal argument, and in order to gain time to collect bls thoughts he began with glittering generalities. ‘The gentleman,’ he said, ‘is conversant with his subject. He is an older man than 1 am. He is a more experienced man. He is taller. He has more whiskers. He has longer hair ’ “ ‘And better manners,’ interrupted the stranger in a mild remonstrant voice from the front seat he had taken to hear the young orator. The youth stopped, blushed, could not recover bls speech, and sat down without finishing.”—Chicago Times-Herald.