Ypsilanti sentinel. [volume] (Ypsilanti, Washtenaw Co., Mich.) 1843-1900, 1845-12-31
TWO REMARKABLE MEN.


lessons it teaches are valuable:
Among the Wing candidates for Congress are two
very remarkable men, Mr.. Starke of Columbus, and
Pat Tompkins, of Vicksburg. Mr.. Starke is gen.
tleman of 35 3S years of age who has been nearly
his whole life stage driver in Virginia and this State.
Six years since he drove his stage from this place
to Jackson By prudence enterprise and industry he
has obtained plantation, and is at present large
mail contractor; and, it appears while looking out
for the substantial interest of life he was laying up
stores of intellectual wealth, though engaged in a
pursuit unfavorabe to the development of his
tai powers. He was little known in the State till
the great political contest of 1910 brought him for
ward; when he took the stump as the champion of
the Wing cause and astonished all, by the power,
brilliancy and beauty of his speeches.
He was subsequently elected to the Legislature,
and in 1914, was one ofthe Wing candidates for
elector of President. He is now candidate for Con-
gress, and though he may fall in this the pow
er of party combination and allegiance cannot long
keep him from the halls of the National Legislature
He is man whose influence over the popular feeling
is irresistible, and long you will him standing
by the side of your Simmons, his equal in strength
with far higher accomplishments as an orator. There
are marks of his former humble calling in his man.
ner style there is native nobility and conscious
of strength in all he does and says, that gives it
the stamp of genius. He has noble person, voice
of extraordinary power and melody and one of those
countenances beaming with good nature and intelli-
gence that express volume in look, and which cap
tvate audience before he has spoken word
He seldom rises but he is at once greeted, even by
strangers. with burst of applause. His speeches
are strong in argument, well fortified by facts, and
glowing with warm and generous appeals to the no
bier sentiments and elevated convictions of his audit
ors; and with good deal of the passionate and fervd
manner of Prentiss, from whom he has evidently cop
led, his addresses abound with passages which would
do no dscredit to that great orator himself
To the interogatory, 'who is Pat. Tompkins f-the
subject of the query often replies himself on the
stump by telling his auditors that he was born in
log cabin, by feet in (which at the time of his
birth already contained ten or twelve brothers and
sisters and was situated somewhere up in the woods
near the line between Tennessee and Kentucky !:
that in his infancy he was fed on hog and hominy,
bear meat and the flesh of such wild varmint' as
were caught in the woods. At twelve years of age,
he was put out to work with neighbor as a farm
boy, and drove oxen, hoed corn, raised tobacco in
summer cured it and priced it in winter till he was
II years DID, when he took to making brick thence
rose to the trade of brickayer; and by these sue
steps in mechanical arts became able, by his
unassisted skill, to rear house from the claypit
or from the stump, and complete it in all its parts,
and to do it, too, in that of his comp
ettors could surpass. His panel doors to this day
the wonder and admiration of all the countryn which
they continue to swing on their hinges. He never
was 18 years old.
By the assistance of an old man in the neighbor-
hood he learned during the winter evenings, to read
and write, when farm boy. Having achieved these
valuable acquisitions by the aid of another, all his
other education has been the fruit of his appi
cation and perseverance. At the age of %, he con-
ceved the idea of fitting himself for the practice of
law. He at first procured old copy of Blackstone
and having after the close of his daily labors, by
nightly studies over pchknot fire. in his log cabin,
mastered the contents of that compendium of COM
mon law, he pursued his researches into other ele-
mentary works. And having thus, by great dill
gence, acquired the rudiments of his profession, he
met with an old lawyer, who had quit practice, or
whose practice had quit him, with whom he made
bargain for his scanty library for which he was to
pay him $3.50 in carpenters work; and the chief part
ofthe job to be done in payment of these old musty
books, was dressing and laying down an oak floor,
floors, for three dollars per square of ten feet.
The library paid for, Pat Tompkins dropped the
adze, plane and trowel forever Heis one of the
most prominent members of the Mississippi bar, and
is yet not than 40 years old. Ofhs abilities as
statesman and orator, you will before many years
have evidence in the halls of Congress. heard him
one day. make two speeches in succession, of three
hours in length, each to the audience, and not
movement testified any WEAKNESS on the part of a
single auditor, and during their delivery the assem-
bly, seemed swayed by the orator reeds by the wind
Unfortunately the planters of Mississippi, among
whom the intelligence of the State are governed too
much by the petty, aristocratic exclusive feelings
which wealth engenders in rural districts and holding
themselves aloof from the poorer classes, who are
thereby rendered hostile and envous, the latter are
thrown into the of ambitious and reckless dem
agogues who fatter their preudices against the rich
and fill them with the noxious doctrines of Locofo-
coism But such men Starke and Tompkins, for
whom the mass feel strong sympathy, will remove
these antpathies of classes, and nstil sounder and
more exalted views of public faith and national policy
than now prevas in the less fortunate classes of