Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1892 — BREWSTER’S SCARRED FACE. [ARTICLE]

BREWSTER’S SCARRED FACE.

An Incident of Intense Dramatic Interest in a Court.lioom. St. Louis Globe Democrat. K “Ten or twelve years ago I witnessed the most dramatic situation of my life in a Philadelphia courtroom,”‘Said Henry J. Erski'ue, of tile Quaker City, at the Southern. “It occurred during the trial of an Important suit involving certain franchise rights of the Pennsylvania railroad in Philadelphia. Benjamin Brewster, afterward Attorney General of the United States, was then the chief counsel of the Pennsylvania Company. Brewster, as you know, was a frightfully ugly man om. account of a terrible disfiguration of his faceT?Oip intellectually he -was a giant and in deportment a Chesterfield. So great was the admiration for the man’s powerful mental parts that one soon forgot Tils ugliness. He was extremely sensitive pf his facial misfortune, but never referred to rt himself nor did any of his thousands of friends ever asic him the cause. The tfial which I refer to was a bitterly contested affair, and Brewster at every point got so much the best of the opposing counsel that by the time arguments commenced his leading adversary' was in a white heat. In denouncing the railroad company this lawyer, with his voice tremulous with anger, exclaimed :_“This grasping corporation is as dark, devious and scarified in its methods as is the face of its chief attorney and henchman, Benjamin Brewster.’ ' “This violent outburst of rage and cruel invective Was followed by" a breathless stillness in the crowded court room that was .painful. Hundreds of pitying eyes wehe rivited on the poor, scarred face of Brewster, expecting to see him spring from his chair and catch his heartless adversary bv the throat. Never beforc-ha'd any one refefred to Mr. Brews ter s misfortune in such a way. or even in any terms, in his presence. Instead 3f springing at the man and killing im like a dog, as the audience considered was his desert, Mr. Brewster slowly arose and spoke something like this to the coi rt: ‘Your Honor, in all my experience as a lawyer I have never dealt in personalities; nor did I ever before feel called upon to explain the cause of my physical misfortune, but I will do so now. When a boy —and my mother, God bless her, said I was a pretty boy —when a i little boy " while playing around an open fire one day with a little sister just beginning to toddle, she fell into the roaring flames, I rushed to her rescue, pulled her out before she was seriously hurt, and fell into the fire | myself. When they took me out of : the coals, my face was as black as ; tljot man’s heart.’ The last sentence was spoken in a voice whose rage &as that of a lion. It had an elecrical effect and the applause, that greeted it was superb, but in an instant turned to the most contemptuous hisses directed at the lawyer who had so cruelly wronged the great and lovable Brewster. That lawyer’s | practice in Philadelphia afterwards dwindled to such insignificance that he had to leave the city for a new field. Queen Elizabeth,despite her bloody, nature, trembled at the sound of the word “death;” and Talleyrand shiv-, ered and changed color at the same word- —: : "r: —: *—