The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1889-06-04
BEN BUTLER.
An Interesting Pen-Picture of the
Great BulldOzer i'm his
Old Age.

ington letter to the Philadelphia Rec
ord, Butler is stout, puffy person,
whose unsymmetrical figure, especial.
" when he is standing, strangely re-
minds you of the late Henry Ward
Beecher's. Somehow his way of
standing up is aim ost exactly like
Beechefs. His head is like Benjamin
Eranklin's, for whom he was named,
as Franklin's head looks in the con.
ventional portrait. II is large. long,
and broad, and bald from front of
back on top while a thick curtain to
gray hair falls all around it mingling
at the sides with thin, gray
whiskers, which do not appear in any
picture of Butler / have ever seen.
HIS face looks elephsntine. 1t is in
the wrinkles and the pulled flesh
around his eyes for all the world like
an elephants. When he laughs this
flesh closes in all over both his eyes
and all his wrinkles come together in
most extraordinary fashion. He
docs not seem cross-eye1 until you
look directly at him, but his eyes are
set obliquely in his head, although
they are just the opposite angle to a
Chinaman's-higher at the nose than
ON the outer sides. He has two plates
of false teeth and they do not stick
very well, 80 that when he talks they
are very apt to fall together suddenly
and cut every other word in two.
Most of the time he is chewing a bit OF
white spruce-gum, which he carries in
an Old-fashioned jeweled snuf-bOx
when il is not ia his mouth.
His face is one of the most mobile
and under his direction one of the
most interesting that ever saw. His
skin, wrinkled more from quantity
than from quality, is easily worked
into the most varying expressions,
and he uses it constantly. Now he
opens his great eyelids wide apart,
brings his head up suddenly, pufs out
his lips, and therefore his thin little
gray mustache, which plays 30 small 9
part amid the wrinkles, and looks out
AZ you from frowning beetling for.
tress. Again he wrinkles all his face
into smile, makes bis eyes small,
tucks in his lips, and looks very mild
| and agreeable, or ne takes up book.
holds it lovingly to his breast, bends
his eyes closely to it Che wears nc
glasses or spectacles of any kind) and
drinks it in.
But his laugh, a deep. dangerous
chuckle, followed by an internal con.
vulsion, is most startling of all. But
Ter is great many men in one, and
| one of them Is an actor. He. would
have made q great comedian. AS il
is be finds his histrionic talent very
useful and exercises it all times. But
Ter is always the lawyer when he is in
his Office, however sociable and com
panionable he is elsewhere. At biz
desk he is always alert, on guard,
wstchful of chances. He looks much
younger than he is for this reason.
But 1t his vigorous thinking and his
still more vigorous talking which
make him seem comparatively young
man. He has marvellous memory. He
can remember apparently almost any
thing which he has seen or heard OF
read, and is seldom at loss for date
or name. His perceptions are very
quick and comprehensive, and he has
one of the quickest tongues, in spite
of his false teeth and the chewing
gm, that / ever heard-a rough
tongue too. The half that he says
about his enemies for publication j.
nothing to the half he says abou
them privately. He enjoys a fight
and every damaging fact and every
eliminating admission is rolled like
his chewing-gum under his tongue.