Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1883 — STEPHENS' SINGULARITIES. [ARTICLE]

STEPHENS' SINGULARITIES.

A Few Illustratioe* of Some of the Dead Statesman’s Peculiarities. Collected from Various Sources. The great Mirabeau wished to die to the sounds of delirious music, and have the odor of sweet flowers wafted over his death bed, and Chopin, when gasping for breath, begged that they send for a tortain gifted pianist, and playfOr him one of his. favorite airs. Alexander H. Stephens, who after a life cradled in suffering and hounded through its course of seventy one 1 -years by horrible physical tortures, passed away midnight Saturday, wished “to die in harpeea.” He did. Elected last year to the position of Goverhor, he literally died in the tratos. His career has been one of the most remarkable of any man of the* Century, and will ever be a living monument of the triumph of mind over matter, of brain over physical force. His career has been an interesting and distinguished one. Perhaps no public man in the country ever surmounted greater difficulties, and in the end was crowned with such ultimate success. His family were of English origin, respectable, but not of high social position. He worked as a boy on the plantation and had meager schooling. His parents left him a penniless lad, and charity opened the way..for him into the university, but when he graduated he taught school until he earned enough to repay the money he had borrowed. Many great men have arrived at eminence from poverty," but few have had disease added. He was a sickly boy, morbidly sensitive, and of melancholy disposition, and has all through life been racked with most painful diseases. He was admitted to the bar when only twenty-two, and weighing eighty-five pounds, and offered a partnership of 81,500 a year, but his love for home* anchored him to the spot of his boyhood. He lived on 86 a month made his own fires, blacked his own boots, and made 8400 the first year. He joined the Presbyterian church m those days, as he had found a friend, who loaned him the money by which he went through college, in Charles C. Mills, his Sabbath-school teacher. The second year of his practice he owned a horse, which he groomed himself. When he first started in the practice of law at Crawfordsville he passed every morning a shoe factory, and as he was hurriedly walking by, one of three negroes, who were drinking from a tin pail heir morning coffee, suddenly suspended operations and one asked: “Who is that little fellow that walks by here so fast of mornings?” “Why, man, that’s a The third negro shouted aloud with a genuine negro guffaw. “A lawyer, a lawyer you say. Yah, yah; that’s too good.” In less than six months Stephens saved that negro, who had mirrored popular opinion of the struggling boy, from the penitentary by picking a flaw in the indictment But these were the early wrestles with poverty, for he was very poor. There were no railroads in those days, in Georgia, and on one occasion, when the court was held in Washington, Ga., he wanted to attend there in a style befitting his profession. Too proud to borrow a horse from a friend he walked ten miles to his uncle’s, carrying his saddlebags containing a change of clothing upon his shoulder, and asked the loan of a horse. His change of clothing consisted of a pair of thin white cotton pants of cheap material, and just before he entered the town he halted his horse under a big oak tree, and changing his unmentionables, he entered town in style. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who used to lay in bed until his washwoman washed and ironed his only shirt, was not put to much greater shifts. He was barely started in life before he was prostrated by sickness. In 1837 he was confined to his room for months, and when moved was carried from room to room like a child. When convalescent he took a horseback trip through the mountains of Georgia. ' In the following year he was again laid low by illness, and advised to take a sea voyage. He went by water to Boston, and entered Boston harbor, passed by Fort Warren May 25, 1838. Exactly twenty-seven years after to a day he stopped at Fort Warren as a prisoner of war, May 25, 1865. Such is one of the remarkable coincidbnees of his lifetime. For several years he was a member of the lower, and afterward upper House of the Georgia Legislature. Here he won a fame that extended all over the State as a logical and shrewd debater and orator of great power. ANECDOTES.’ Many anecdotes are extant of the mistakes made in regard to him, His head was so small, his body so emaciated, that few, at first sight, could believe him to be the great Stephens. Once, while vicepresident of the Confederacy, on his way to Richmond, he was taken at Danville by a presumptuous official for some country boy. He produced his certificate of identity, signed by his county clerk, but the pompous official declared th it “it was two thin,” and would un-

donbtedly have conscripted him, but for the fact that he looked too weak to pack a musket On another occasion he saved a drunken soldier from being put off the cars for disorderly conduct, and when the fellow had sobered up enough to regain some of his senses, he asked the name of his benefactor, and on being told that it was Vice-president Stephens, simply sighed and said, “such is feme.” On another occasion he was invited to a commercial convention at Charleston 8. C., where he was expected to make a the great speech of the occasion. Arriving quietly at a hotel kept by a lady, he threw himself oh a lounge to obtain rest The bustling housewife Was keeping everything in apple-pie order, for the benefit of her distinguished guest, and wishing to start up the country youth as she supposedhe was, in as mild a manner as possible, when two portly country merchants arrived she 'said: “Wake up, my son, and let these gentlemen have this seat.” Despite hi? withered, pinched-up form, puny body, holding a big soul, he wasone of the greatest anecdotists and one of the most interesting con veraati on al i sta of the age. Not old Barton with his mimicry» or Sam Ward with his elegance, brought out a point so clearly and inimitably as the great Georgian. One of his best stories, and which many have heard him relate in that irrisistable manner, was about the Peter Bennett speech. A certain Dr. Roysten sued Bennett, who was a farmer, for his bill for medical services. Mr. Stephens told the farmer that he could make no defense. “Never mind,” said Bennett. “I want you to speak the case.” Stephens replied: “You had better speak yourself,” and was much surprised when the farmer said: “I will if Bobby Toombs won’t be too hard on me.’ Toombs promised, and Peter began: 'Gentleman of|the jury, I ain’t no lawyer and no doctor, and you ain’t nuther, and if we farmers don’t stick to-gether these here lawyers and doctors will get the advantage of us. I ain’t no objections to lawyers and doctors in their place, and some are clever men, but they ain't farmers, gentlemen of the jury. Now this Dr. Royston was a new doctor, and I sent for him to come and doctor my wife sore leg. And he did, and put some salve truck on it, and some rags, but it never done a bit of good, gentlemen of the jury. I don’t believe he’s no doctor no way. There’s doctors as I know is doctors sure enough, bat this ain’t no doctor at all.” The farmer was making headway with the jury, when Dr. Royston said: “Here is my diploma.” “His diploma,” said Bennett, with great con fem pt; “that ain’t nothin’, for no piece of paper ever made a doctor yet.” “Ask my patients,” yelled the now thoroughly enraged physician. “Ask your patients,” slowly repeated Bennett; and then deliberating; “ask your patients? Why, they are all dead.” Then he rapidly enumerated case after case, most of them among the negro servants and in the immediate neighborhood, of such of the doctor’s patients as had succumbed to his pills and powders, and continued: “Ask your patients! Why, I should have to hunt them in the lonely graveyards and rap on the silent tomb to get answers from the dead. You know they can’t say nothing to this case, for you’ve killed ’em all.” Loud was the applause, and farmer Bennett won his case. AS AN ORATOR. Before the war Stephens ranked as one of the most powerful orators in Congress. His' hair fell in long black masses over his fine forehead, his cravat was tied m a sailor’s knot, and an immense gold chain ending in a heavy seal gave him an outre appearance. His arms and legs were long, complexion sallow, while his voice was high-pitched, inclining to the falsetto, yet he al way i commanded the closest attention. His points were made rapidly and apparently without effort. The midnight oil never flashed forth its sickly glare in his eloquent passages. He gradually unfolded his subject like the leaves of a book. His memory was remarkable and served him to good purpose, while his powers of sarcasm and invective were second to none. He was feared as an antagonist and sought for as an ally in debate. He has been compared to Randolph, of Roanoke. Both were sensitive, morbidly sensitive plants. Both were fearless in debate and action. Randolph f. fought duels; Stephens challenged Herschel V. Johnson and Gen. B. H. Hill,yet both refused to fight him. Both were powerful in Congress; both disease j; yet Randolph was cynical and misanthropic, all gall and wormwood, embittered, perhaps, by suffering and disease; yet Stephens conquered his pains, and was as modest as a schoolgirl, and as amiable and genial as possible. Both were fond of their homes and birthplace and both were ardent devotees to doctrine of State rights. •A.’ Murders in 1883. During 1882 the murders committed in the United States averaged two a day, while the executions only averaged two a week.