The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1890-10-16

sENAIoh r b. FLUMA like than the
horniest handed granger in the State of
Kansas, and if the Farmers Alliance
ever gets bill through Congress appro-
priating 500, 900 for the statue of the
typical farmer to be erected in the CEN
ter of the Capitol lawns, Preston B. Plumb
will be selected as the model. Hayseed
in the hair would not give the average
citifed Senator one-half the rusticity
which marks the junior Senator from
Kansas.
His very walk, to say nothing of his
conversation, must be worth thousands
of votes to him, revealing as it does
seeming acquaintance with plowed fields
of many years standing. He wears
very good clothes-expensive clothes
made up by skilled tailors. fine linen
shirts, and pretty flowing scarfs of deli
cate tints, and dainty shoes. Yet there
is something in the way he wears them
which makes them as rural as his col
leagues clothes are urban. You would
say, to look at Ingalls,, that he had spent
the whole morning getting up the par
ticular sympathy in gray, which he is
now wearing; and you would say, to
look at Plumb. that he had slept in his
clothes the night before, and made his
toilet in the shake of lambs tail. In
gals parts his hair with the minute pre-
cision of his own epithets. Plumb parts
his hair-well, if he parts it at all, no
one is the wiser half an hour afterward.
He has the granger habit of running his
fingers through it, and one of his fa-
vorite gestures is to tumble it all up
roughly. George, of Mississippi, is the
only other Senator whose hair waves so
picturesquely. He seems to have bor-
rowed Plumb's comb and lost it. But it
is another of Plumb's unique gestures
which gives him such grip upon the
farmers of Kansas. 1t is one of which
he is, l am convinced, entirely uncon-
scious, and therefore can not be accused
of using for effect. -- --- .--
Throwing down the big linen handker-
chief with which he has been mopping
the sweat of toll off his brows-for lie
works his whole body when he talks
he runs the thumb of his left hand in at
the left arlnhole of his vest and under
his ssuspenders-no" "galluses and, jerk
ing it up an inch or two, lets it suddenly
drop. The effect on the granger in the
gallery is electrical in its power and sud-
denness. 1t absolutely forces out the re-
luctant admiration of that conservative
hearer.
Fortunately for him, Plumb has been
able to edge along from one seat to an
other since he came here in 1877, until
now he has the best seat in the chamber
for muscular oratory. 1t is on the mid
die aisle in the rear row, and gives its
occupant the full length and breadth of
the middle aisle (Which divides the Re
publican sheep from the Democratic
goats) to exercise in. Roscoe Conkling,
the greatest poseur in our history, who
sat just in front of Plumb, in the seat
now held by the progressive Dawes, used
that middle aisle as no other man could
or would. Great actor as he was, he
made that narrow stage the Senate while
he was "on, and he strode its length
and breadth like colussus beneath tie
admiring eyes in the gallery. Plumb is
Conkling in the rough-Conkling in the
role of Cincinnatus. He has none of
the airs and graces of the Apollo of the
Senate. He scorns airs and graces, like
true man of the people. But he goes
at his work so vigorously and enthusias-
tically, that after pounding his desk for
a while he finds that too confining for
him, and moves out into the broader
field of that middle aisle, where he can
o,,I fhaY, ~, fY,1l rsc~1>A
of both sides and Blair. the wanderer,
who sits just across the aisle, in the
Democratic corner, he pounds the life
out of the offending proposition.
He is very fluent speaker-one of the
most fluent in the Senate-but his
thoughts come out in such a hurry that
he can not find words to express himself,
even in his ready vocabulary. So he is
becoming one of the "ur-ring brethren,
as Blair says, pour out a stream of
thought, stop for word-"ur-ur-ur"
until they find it-and then pour on
again. His words are always modern
words, for all his education until he be-
gan to read law was in the common
school and at the case in the country
printing office, and his reading since he
came to the bar has been of current
kind. But he uses good terse English,
mixed with alittle good expressive slang,
and he never leaves you in much doubt
as to what he means to say. OF course.
he has all the frankness of the Western
talker-brutal frankness sometimes-for
he speaks with the utmost directness,
ond ba hnlinvas In calling a snada snada
He hates hypocrites and delights in un-
masking them, and he is just as merci-
less to hypocritical propositions as to
hypocritical persons.
This plain speaking is what makes him
such terror to thehypocrites on his side
of the Senate His independent and
courageous plain speaking on the tariff,
which has so added to his reputation, rs
only new phase of his method. He has
ever since he came to the Senate and
been the thorn in the Republican side
astonished the old fogies by speaking and
voting just as though he had been there
for 25 years. His forcible frankness has
been like the Kansas breezes in the con-
ventional reproducing a little cool
ness now and then, of course, but doing
good on the whole.
need not tell you that Plumb is q
very bright man, with unusual business
ability and great aptness for debate.
"Coming into this world without dol
lar in his pocket, as Elijah Adams
Morse is SO fond Of saying, he has made
snug little fortune. Coming into the