The Ouachita telegraph. [volume] (Monroe, La.) 1865-1889, 1879-04-18
SPEAKING HARDLY EVER.
The Queer kentuc kian who has Talked
only Twice i'm Fourteen ears.
Cincinnati Enauirer.l


NELSON FURNACE, KY, April IL
In 1866, an old gentleman living
about three miles east of this place,
named Lloyd Wimsatt, was taken
violently i'll with disease that kept
him in confinement for many weeks,
and at one time his family and friends
as we'll as his attending physicians
gave him up. Being under the impress
sion that the next hour would be his
last, yet ut the same time possessing his
faculties and with full power of speech,
Mr.. Wimsatt requested that the clergy
man then officiating at the church at
New Haven, KY, be sent for and the
minister was early at the bedside; the
room was at once vacated by the family
and for some time the patient and the
representative of the church were alone.
What happened then and there re-
mains a mystery, as the patient recov-
cred, and in short time was up and
about but ever since then, save upon
two occasions, he has not uttered a
| word. Yesterday an Equirer reporter
| heard that Mr.. Wimsatt had spoken
! to his son, and in order to be satisfied
that he had, interrogated Stephen
| Wimsatt, aged about nineteen, upon
the subject, the result of which was as
follows:
"They tell me that your father spoke
| to you last night. Is it so?''
eyes, sir; he raised up in his bed and
said: ooh, Stephen My mother heard
it, and we all got up and tried to get
him to talk more; but he seemed to be
! entirely spcechless, rs heretofore.''
edo you know what caused him to
lose his spccch?''
! tsSickness, think. He can hear, and
answers by sign. He will not notice a
stranger, however"
"When did he speak last before
this?''
"About three years ago, I cut down
a tree and it commenced falling before
L noticed il, and he hallooed to me,
saying, 9Look out, Stephen so did
look out, otherwise 1 would have been
killed."
"What did he do after that exclama-
tion?"
Gle then began making signs again,
and his utterance last night was the
first that any of the family or any
body that knows him has heard SINCE"
edo you think there is any truth in
| the neighbOrhood report that the clergy
man commanded him to stop speak
ing in case he recovered from his sick
ness in 1S6G?''
| "No, sir, I am satisfied that part of
his history is without foundation, for
nobody knows what passed between
the priest and my father at that time"
''Then you think he lost his speech
in consequence of that sickness?''
eyes, l think it was the work of
God but that is about as far as I can
go.'
"Then your father has only made the
two exclamation you speak of within
the past fourteen years, so far rs your
self or any of your family knows?'
eyes, SIR"
The subject of this sketch is farmer
in moderate circumstances, and is one
of those quiet easy-going stay-at-home
kind OF men, who seem to aspire to
nothing of a higher sphere in life. He
has an interesting family, and attends
to his daily labors with n sound body,
mind, and hearing, but either cannot
or will not talk. There are people liv-
ing in the neighborhood who believe
that he could talk, if he would; and
there are others who say positively
that he cannot talk now, or he would
do SO, because previous to his sickness
i'll 1865 he was an almost incessant
talkcr. The fact, however, of his max
ing two distinct utterances, understood
fully by those who heard them, rem
ders the case 4 very remarkable one, at
any rate.
Hon. John G. Burch, of Nashville,
is the first Southern man who was ever
given the position of Secretary of the
Senate. That Office has been in but
few hands since the organization of the
Government, and ii happened that all
the incumbcnts hailed from some one
of the Northern States. The selection
of Col. Burch has thrown his Southern
friends into 4 condition Of pleasurable
excitement, and they are raining con-