New-York tribune., 1874-08-12
SIR ORACLE.
business me.

| Everybody knows him. Now that he is out
| for his Summer vacation he finds old acquain-
tances wherever he may chance to go. be it
to Cape May, the White Sulphur. or the coy
little inn of the mountain village where sports
| men make their rendezvous. His baggage
arrives before him-fOr he buys an excursion
ticket and lays of at every station, for no
purpose apparently than TO bedevil the con-
ductors as to MS legal right to do 1t. When
his trunk is thumped down on the hotel pave
ment somebody is sure to read oil the red
lettering on it: "COloners coming, ehf A
"man of facts, Sir Most unlimited general
information"-an the speaker saunters round
to the other hotel and changes his quarters
before the Colonel comes in.
At the club, or on the street at home, the
Colonel serves the purpose OF perlpatetlc
newspaper and popular encyclopaedia. Where
he obtains his facts is the problem of the
town, for he never was known to be silent
long enough to read book or to hear
anybody else speak. He is long and bOny,
and there is something in his length and bOni-
ness, in the severe system with which his
brown coat is buttoned up to the chin and his
spectaces poised on his hooked nose, that
fabbiness of body and soul, and useless
place in the world. You feel that here is
man who has spent his lite in acquiring
knowledge solely in order to give 1t to you
kneaded into pellets, as Ruskin would say.
The pellets are always ready. When the Chief
Justices decision in the Supreme Court concern
ing the great banking case came out in the
evening papers, the Colonel fired off dozen
precedents against it ut the tea-tahe III the
boarding house, any one CT which was a mortal
blow to its spurious idea of law and justice.
When yOur wife mentioned the new range
that was going in, the Colonel was out in the
kitchen in ten minutes, grave, Judicial,
weghty, SO bewildering the wOrkmen, cook,
and sculliOns with theories of fiues, damp
ers. Etna chambers, and Steinmark reg
listers, that their normal stupidity deepened
promptly into idiocy. In Congress, where
he has long held a seat, Speaker and members
alike keep watchful eye, while speaking on
the Colonel, as they would on man with
gun perpetually held loaded and cooked. lie
never descends to argument or oratOry; stands
stiff erect, his finger in half-open book, and
Eliminates facts, formulas, principles Nobody
ever argues with him. You might as well
strive to move the Rock of Gibraltar as the
Colonel from his opinion, whether it be on
Deism or duck-shOoting.
Out now on his August vacation, he re-
CARDS sea-beach or mountain as but new fields
in which to SOW knowledge. You shall hear
him teaching the fishermen how to troll or
throw the squid by entirely new and improved
methods he takes his sponge-cake and nuts
at dessert to instruct the grizzled old General
beside him in the best plan of inland
fertilization he stands between the pretty
girls and their beaus for an hour to
lecture to them on the different kinds
of lace and enamels. The Colonel's clan,
all congeners of himself, are to be found of
every class and age. If they are mechanics
or laborers they are authorities on all CO.
operative plans, inaugurate trades unions
dilate in a vague and figurative way of Com
munism and Phalansteries In the South the
Colonels twin-brOther lives q life of
perpetual warfare, we are bound to
acknowledge, with public opinion. His
Southern kinsmen do not base their con-
| yersation or action on facts, so much as
the more subtle influence of the opinions of
| their grandfathers, and are too courteous to
| become dogmatic. unless, indeed, at one end
of a revolver. "The man." the old Colonels
| and young Captains of the Z. s. A. declare.
sis a coarse, practical fellow, sharp enough
"in making money, but totally insensible to
| " the finer emotions"
He usually becomes o sharp trader. cOnsorts
| with carpet-baggers, takes contract fQr