The Indianapolis journal., 1885-07-05
LIVING PICTURES OF GREAT MEN.
Unknown Connecticut Yankees Who Resem-
BILE Presidents and Senators.

Yes he would say people tell me that I
look very much like the General
When Garfield was told of il he laughed, and
said. Yes. have heard so. bat, strangely
enough, nobody ever told me that looked like
him, though they say ne looks like me-
There are to be found here and there through
out the country obscure men whose counte-
nances strikinglv suggest that of some of our
noted public men. but it would be hard to find
community where many counterfeits OF all
types of men Of prominence arc to be found as
in Connecticut. This is the more remarkable
when remember that the genuine
Connecticut Yankee is believed to have
MS nativity and his generations of Puritan
blood as emphatcally marked in his features as
the most impulsve Latin or irascible Celt Yet
some of these senblanceS are so striking that
it almost seems though there must be near
ties of blood to account for them. Certainly
they show that in this rural community. where
people have lived with comparatively little inter
course with the great world, there may be
found types of almost all kinds Of faces and
physques
There are men to be found everywhere who
are said to resemble Blaine. The absurd carica
lures that displayed last fall hs likeness
made his features toleraby familiar, that in
almost every town there somebody who
was hattered by tie suspicion that he resembled
Blaine. In general, such fancied resemhlanccs
would not stand the test of the eyes Of one who
had known Blaine: but up on the Litchfied
hills there lives a farmer who would be apt
to be admitted to the Senate Chamber
without hesitation on the part of the door
keeper. aud would be likely to be
pointed out from the galleries the Plumed
knight. He has plowed among the rough fields
of Litchfed, and grazed his cattle on its hills
for fifty years. so that his manner of life has
been as different from that of Blaine possible.
Yet there are the same massive head and white
locks tumbed about with careless care. the oval
cheeks with the close trimmed white beard,
the prominent aggressive nose, and the
dark, restless, heavily-lidded eyes that are
characteristic of the brilliant politician
from Maine. The farmer stoops a lit
tie. Blaine is as erect a soldier; the
farmers hands are large and fbrous, Blaines
are small and soft; the farmer is sluggish in his
movements. Blaine is agile, almost neryously
quick: hut III other respects the resemblance is
striking enough. Yet Blaine is true type Of
western Pennsylvania sons, and this farmers
ancestors have sustained themselves the
Litchteld rocks from the time when Connecticut
was colony. When the farmer speaks the illu
sion is dispelled. The resemblance is only skin
deep.
Two three mon familiar with Washington
life were upon the village street in Greenwich
some time ago. when one of them stopped sud
denly, saying:
There is Judge Thurman, red bandana and
all, for all the world"
1t wonder that he so spoke, for there.
riding by, was the rugged, Grauite-like face the
coarse, tawnyish gray beard, the smoothly
shaven long upper lip, with its peculiar pucker,
the tangled locks, that fell upon the coat collar
the strong Roman nose and the deep-set, small,
piercing blue eyes that Thurmans con-
spcuous features. Yet this man was on his way
to his humble vocation as a house painter.
He a true Connecticut Yankee and
had rarely in his long life gone beyond
the border of the town, while the great
man whom his features suggested was by birth
and long descent a Virginian, though tempered
by long residence in Ohio. The painter. though
uncultured and undisciplined in mental habit,
had been mind, with original and genuine
methods Of thought face of the Thurman
type is not found with weak intellect.
1t IS perhaps noJ so surprising that there
should be found any who resembles President
Cleveland as his family for many years were
Connecticut people Yet the President varies
very far from the traditional Connecticut type,
and would more readily be classed, both men
tally and physically, with that large -limbed.
stolid stubborn, and honest people that are
found in the fertile valley of the Susquehanna.
Nevertheless. young politician of Ridgefeld is
thought strlklngly to resemble Cleveland bar
ring his youth, having in a marked degree that
peculiar expression about the eyes and the up
lifting Of the upper lip which noticeable
in the President and which escape almost all
the HkeneSses of him.
John Sherman comes nearer to the traditional
Yankee type than any prominent man in public
life, much nearer than any prominent Connecti-
cut man. You will find his double in a Hartford
insurance agent There the same tall figure
and comparatively small head, with almost
infantie features, except that the under jaw is
heavy and firmly held in place. the same sandy,
close cut beard, and small eyes that suggest so
strongly that they merely curtains to
conceal the acute and intricate machinery
behind them. The agent however, is
loquaclous, while Sherman is secretive: the
agents temperament is mercerlal, while Sher-
mans never made his pulse beat above the
normal rate. Sherman is a splendid, because
true and perfect type of the ablest men that
Ohio produces, with whom success is the test
Yet the Hartford agent in his sphere would
be Shernans equal, and it would be even
chance whether Honest John would escape him
# he spread his particular net for the great
resumpt0nist
The aggressive, energetic, iconoclastic coun-
tenance of Senator Van Wyck has its perfect
counterfeit in that of a M;anus wagon maker.
There are the same wiry, unconquerable masses
of thick gray hair, the same irregular and angu-
lar features with the square chin, the same dark
and fierce eyes behind steel-bowed spectacles,
and the same rectangular figure and legs that
seem ever to be trying to square a
circle. Van Wyck is New Yorker whose
ancestors were settlers with the Dutch con-
querors along the valley of the Hudson Tho
Mianus wagon maker is a son Of Connecticut.
tracing back his ancestry here to the time when
Cromwell was king In fact, If not in name. l
judge that the two men. are somewhat alike
mentally, for nothing makes the wagon maker
angrer or his shop more lively, than the discov-
cry of a dishonest piece of work in a wagon
brought there for repairs
There is man in Stamford with snowy white
beard, cut short large nose, ruddy complexion,
deepset blue eyes from above which the fore
head slopes away with no boundary line of hair
the massive and irregular bumps upon his
smooth and shiny scalp thereby being easily
revealed. He is tail, but stoop-shouldered, and
he seems reflective and unimpassonable man
Were he to walk into the Senate chamber and
take Edmundss seat a casual glance would not
be apt to betray him. Yet this man keeps a
small confectionery and fruit store, and pods
daily about his business year in and year out
with automatic regularity
There is in Round Hill as jolly man as ever
set shoes on a stubborn OK, who has yet to learn
that if he were to exchange places with Tom
Reed, OF Maine nothing but the inexpertness of
each of them in their new vocation would be
likely to betray them. He is a sharp one, too
like Reed, and mas the Maine lawyers expires.
SiYe and resonant asal utterance-