Los Angeles daily herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1884-1890, 1889-10-26
He viii write a Book,


one Of the most extraordinary old gentle
men that ever lived. 1t was away back
in 1868 or 1859 that Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher announced that the great Stra-
bismus was his Henry Wsrd's) candi-
date for President, and at that date the
later disclosures in the Tilton case had
not made the Pastor of Plymouth Church
an uncertain moral quantity. Beecher
later joined the conference at Cleveland
which was to do so many things but did
Notwithstanding off few of its MEM
bers into the supposed Democratic fold
in the Greeley campaign of 1872-but
Benjamin of happy memory pursued the
even tenor of his way until the force of
circumstances made him the Democratic
candidate for Governor of Massachusetts.
He had been that Democratic candidate
in 1860, bnt in 1882 he made the
rifle. This was the same Benjamin
who, in the Charleston Convention
of 1860 voted forty-seven times for jeff
Davis for the Democratic nominee for
President. He was also the same Butler
who ran as forlorn hope in aid of the
Blaine campaign of 1884, with the result
of getting an infinitesimal vote, which
scarcely aided Blaine at all.
We are now told that Butler, whose
politics are probably as uncertain as ever,
intends to write his memoirs, with a
special view to occasionally remem boring
his friends and giving special and perse-
veri1g attention to his enemies. The old
gentleman still retains his astonishing
physical and intellectual vigor. As he,
for many decades, retained the idea that
he might be elected President, he dis
counted at least a round lustrum from
his years when his birth statistics were
in demand. In all probability he is as
old as the late Simon Cameron. He
paid Los Angeles a visit some years
ago, and was a guest at the St.
Elmo. As he was at that time
affiliated with the Democratic party, the
Los Angeles Democrats gave him sere-
made. In personal appearance, he was
very much living reproduction of Mr..
Pickwick, from Cruikshank's popular
Representations of that worthy. The
thing to wonder at was the ease with
which the old gentleman, at his then adj
vanced age, approved himself to be a
three bottle man. The way quart bottles
of champagne disappeared before his
well regulated thirst was sight to see.
Wonderful old mani Greatest illus
tration in the United States of how man
may, politically, be everything by turns
and nothing long! His memoirs can't
fail to have an absorbing interest to those
who sre intelligently curious in the his
tory of their country. He will be
obliged to labor a great deal, how
ever, to get rid OF Grants cele-
brated sarcasm of his (Butler's) hav-
ing bottled himself up in the Dutch Gap
Canal. However, if any body can
emerge from a bottle Benjamin is that
man, and we await his book with great
interest. It is certain to be clever un-
less, which is hardly credible consider.
ing his present vivacity, he shall be
overcome by the syncope of old age
while engaged in it's preparation.
Twenty years from now the twentieth
century American is liable to run across
a very fat and very vivacious old gentle
man, and to be informed that he is the
venerable and famous Benjamin F.
Butler, a gentleman who adorned all
parties and was faithful to none.