Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1881 — Stories of Tom Corwin. [ARTICLE]

Stories of Tom Corwin.

A correspondent of the Chicago Tribune telling some stories of Tom Corwin, relates the following to illustrate his manner of handling a troublesome customer: He had only got well started in his speech at a certain place, when some one began to ply questions. For a time they were answered with care, notwithstanding the cries that were made of “Put him out!” etc. “No, don’t put him out!” said the orator, “I am glad to answei questions.” But they came thicket and faster, and there seemed to be no likelihood of cessation. Finally Corwin said, in his confldental tone: “Now, my dear old friend, I wish you wouldn’t ask any more questions present—for you see lamin a great urry. I have a good many people to talk to, and they want to hear what I have to say. But I know where you live; and, if you will keep still now, when the campaign is over I will remember you, and come up and stay all night with you, and we will sleep together and talk it all over.” „ The love which he cherished for his three daughters was so intense that it partook of the form of Jealousy when they began to be courted. At the marriage of his oldest daughter, Eva, Corwin manifested so much feeling that the occasion partook more of the aspect of a funeral than of a wedding. During the ceremony he shed tears, and if the supper, after a prolonged silence, he suddenly broke out: .'Now I want it distinctly understood this thing is never going to happen again In this house. There will never he another wedding here. I will get a nigger six feet tali, and give

him a «ok ten feet long, and poet him at the mint door, and Instruct him to knock any young man In the head who comes to see my daughters.” General Garfield relates that a little before Corwin's death, when he returned to Washington from a flying visit to Lebanon to attend the marriage of his youngest daughter, he referred to the marriage of Eva,and said that he shut himself up in his room for tnree or four days before it occurred, and could not be persuaded to take any part in the preparations, and only at the most earnest solicitation did he come down to witness the ceremony. He said: ”1 could not endure the thought of my daughter loving another man better than myself; and yet she married a noble fellow. And now the old feeling has returned. I tell you, I had a horrible time of It until the ceremony was over,” When Corwin’s only son, Dr. William H. Corwin, was attending college, his teachers complained that he sat up too late nights, and they were afraid he would injure himself with over-mental exertion. The statesman wrote on this occasion as follows: “My son: I am informed that you are injuring your health by study. Very few young men nowadays arc likely to be injured in this way, and all I have to say to you is that, should you kill yourself by study, It would give me great pleasure to attend your nineral. ,