Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1898 — THE “SILENT SECRETARY." [ARTICLE]

THE “SILENT SECRETARY."

leaont Absorbs Everything aM Never Telle Anything. Secretary of War Lamont knows mere of the inside history of the present administration and say less about R than probably any member of the President’s official family. He absorbs everything and never tells anything. This trait has caused him to be variously known as the “Silent Bed* rotary” and the “Political Sphinx.’* All of bls visitors contribute to his knowledge, but none of them learns from hinaanything but what he thinks It impart. He has a great knack ofQpleasing his visitors. They usually leave him under the Impression that he wished them to linger, but that they could not do so without Infringing upon his multifarious duties. He is never idle. When not occupied tn consultation, he is either reading or writing. Magazines and newspapers are his favorite literature. He writes a great deal and seldom resorts to dictation, although he has several expert stenographers available. He composes easily and writes rapidly, and finds that he can do more work and with greater personal satisfaction in that way than by trusting to the mechanical assistance of others. He is remarkably abstemious in hlfi habits. He does not smoke, drink or chew tobacco, and he has no time for card playing or any games of skill or chance. His only pastime is fishing, end he indulges it to the full on hit summer vacations. His unbroken good nature and his quiet wit and philosophy have made him a great favorite lu society, and the entertainments at his house are among the most attractive at the national capital. Naturally modest, he avoids everything approaching notoriety, and at every nubile function where his i sary he endeavors to i— . ...i. • . j inconspicuous as possible. One strange fact about his career as a public official is that he has never been known to mal< a set speech either at a banquet, a pc Utlcal gathering or at any sort q£ public ceremony. His peculiarity In this respect is attributed mainly to diffidence and to a chronic distaste to everything approaching display or ostentation. He is as gentle as a child, and one of the most even-tempered men in the world. No one ever saw him show the least signs of temper, and it is said of him that he never used a harsh or unkind word to any human being, no matter how great the provocation to do so may have been.