People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1896 — STORIES OF THE DAY. [ARTICLE]

STORIES OF THE DAY.

Anecdotes of Voorhees, Who Has Been Reported as Dying. Voorhees in the senate has ever been a joy to the newspaper folk. Affable, frank and vigorous, it was always a pleasure to turn from a conversation with such stately in and outers as Senator Vest and talk with Voorhees. What little Vest told you might all be wrong and the merest seeds of grief. He was perfectly capable, too, of denying every word of it the moment it was printed and would, if he found his utterances inconvenient Voorhees never denied, never weakened. Voorhees stood by his guns. Once Voorhees gave me an interview on the subject of the New York banks. It was unique in its fashion of coining, but he stood by it—every word. It was during the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman law, during the extra session in f 893, and Voorhees was leading the fight for repeal in the senate. The filibuster was stubborn, and Teller and Dubois, in the rocky passes of the senate rules, were disputing Voorhees’ advance and holding the repeal at bay. The struggle waxed long and tedious, and the banks, in sore straits—some of them below their reserve—began to grow hysterical. In a gust of excitement born of their peril they one day arose—the bank presidents held a meeting, I believe—and indulged in speeches and resolutions to the effect that Voorhees was not doing his best to pass the repeal. The bankers were inclined to regard Voorhees as mixing a dish of treason for them, and said so. That afternoon I met Voorhees in the senate restaurant, where he was solemnly devastating half shell oysters in company with the mayor of Terro Haute. “What can I say for you touching these banks, senator?” I asked. “What reply do you want to make to their strictures?” “I’ll toll yqn what to say,” replied Voorhees, and he fixed a grave, though flaming, eye upon me. “You may quote me as saying about those banks anything to their disaster that a wire will carry or a paper print. You can’t overdo my opinion of those banks.” I took the senator at his word and prepared and wired an interview for him that read like a railway collision. Voorhees looked it over in the paper when it came and gave it hia full approval. “It’s a trifle weird, ” he said, “but it's right. It’s exactly what I meant. ” Voorhees is a man of more than six feet in height and of magnificent presence. Big in person, rich in words, vivid in his thinking, Voorhees was one of the most eloquent talkers who ever stood in the senate. Years ago he was more or less given to forensic combat and went gayly to war with any who cared to face him.

It was Ingalls who broke Voorhees of this hasty habit of battle and caused the Tall Sycamore to resign his commission as one of the senate minutemen of the Democracy. Voorhees was in the house when the civil war broke out and continued to fill a seat in the lower body during part if not all of Lincoln’s administration. And he 1 got more or less tangled up with the Confederacy. Ingalls was aware of these low, swampy places in Voorhees’ early reoord. He carefully collected proofs and organized for an onslaught on Voorhees. The Sunflower senator’s desk was loaded to the guardß with all sorts of printed an'd written grape and canister for the Hoosier. Voorhees never dreamed of the deadfall Ingalls had rigged for him. It’s to be donbted if any other senator had the least inkling of what was impending. One afternoon Ingalls, who* performed as a fashion of senate hen hawk, swooped suddenly, with a shrill and unexpected screech, at Voorhees and gave him beak and talon both. Voorhees was much aroused at this unexpected visitation, and promptly hurled divers epithets of ungrace at Ingalls, of which perhaps the softest phrase was “liar and poltroon.” Ingalls smiled. Without a word further of preliminary skirmishing he fell upon Voorhees hip and thigh. He opened his desk and began to read letters, papers, documents. For two hours he hammered Voorhees as man never was mauled in the senate before, and he clinched every rivet with a document. When he ended, there was hardly enough of Voorhees left over which to hold funeral services. Voorhees could not reply and never did. He “talked” the next day, but it was no answer to Ingalls. From that hour there was a senate change in Voorhees. He showed nothing of that former hopeful recklessness that sought encounter ior the mere fun of a fight. And there was not a desk in the chamber at which he would not shy like a horse. It mi£bt conceal the basis of another Ingalls ovation.—A. H. Lewis in New York Journal.