The Ouachita telegraph. [volume] (Monroe, La.) 1865-1889, 1870-03-26
"MAoK" ON GRANT.

in his letter of the 8th instant to
the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Then came the gifted Grant.
You can find feady-made descrip-
tions of all sorts and dimensions
of men in the sayings of that
most remarkable of all men
Doctor Johnson. And so a mo
ment's reflection calls to mind
what the gruf old Samuel said of
George III, in one of his many
! fits of ill-humor: .tsTell your Maj
esty," said he, "that his soul lives
in an alley.'' That's Grant to a
dot. You may put his body in a
palace, but the soul of a man
roams at his own sweet will, and
is found to fake up lodgings
where it can find congenial com
pany. The largest trait Of Grants
character is the littleness of his
soul. His mind is small, too; but
it is an Olympus compared to the
mole hill of his soul. His first
official act showed this: it was
the removal Of Frank Blair from
a petty railroad commissionership.
While the nation paused for a
hint of how the new atlministra-
| ton was going to treat the Ala
! bama claims, the President was
searching the archives to find the
official form for depriving Frank
of So per diem, and he has fol-
! lowed this up steadily and perse-
veringly ever since He tore his
hair 4 few months ago on learn
ing that a distant relative Of An
dy Johnson's still held a $4,000
consulship in some obscure town
in Europe. The development Of
this extraordinary trait did not
astonish me-for / had seen it.
and known it in the army. From
the Lunblest private to the nigh
est Of his subordinate Generals
there were victims of it during
the war. The price of his favor
was always the lowest todyism,
and he who failed to Join the
chorus of "placcbo'' was soon de-
prived of all chance of promotion.
Sherman deserves credit for hav-
ing discovered this at an early
day, and acting with apparent
zeal upon it. Otherwise the. stars
of General-in-Chief would not
:,dorn his shoulders to-day.
There have been men with lit
tie souls and great ,ninds-which
looks like paradox, but is. not.
But. Grant is not one of them,
His soul lives in an alley; his
! mind was raised in a lanyard,
and the scent of the bark has not
yet been deodorized. What he is
intellectually capable of is seen
in those stupid strings of words
he puts to paper in the form of
messages. II there is here and
there a clear sentence in them, it
is SO evidently the work of other
hands that it only destroys the
symmetry ofdull mediocrity which
else would be a sort of recon-
mendation- You can see where
Fish comes in with his verbal
gymnastics, and like the feeble,
imitator of Seward that he is,
writes a polished parag graph in
India rubber English, capable of
being construed into anything or
nothing, at the readers discre-
ton. Alexander II. Stephens once
told me that he considered Jeffer-
sons first inaugural and Lincoln's
first inaugural the two finest
pieces of composition Of the kind
in the country. He meant of
course, as to their literary merit
Grants first inaugural has the
merit Of uniqueness Of an entirely
opposite character. 1t will puz-
zle any backwoods President of
the future to beat it in it's way.
Grants model of wisdom is my
Lord Burleigh in Sheridan's "Crit-
ic''--a person solemnly impressed
with the grandeur of silence, and
whose friends plead for him that
one SO overpowered with the
cares of State cannot be expected
to speak. Hence his conversa-
ton is yea, yea, and nay, maya
nod Of the head and q puff of the
cigar. Congressman are begin
ming to take this for arrant stu
pidity, and I fear they will yet
apply to him Rochester's quatrain
on Charles the Second: E