St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-03-09

it. He eats. sleeps and drinks his edu-
cational bill, and he talks it upon every
possible occasion. He has wonderful
perseverance, and you might as well
try to chop down tree with an ak ham
die as to change him,
Joe Blackburn is a great speaker.
Beautiful flowers sprout spontaneously
from the end of his tongue, and he is
one of the most popular men with the
galleries. He is ore of the readiest men
in the senate, and although his speeches
are sometimes light, he is always listened
to. One Of his strongest points is the
state of Kentucky, which he says has
the 1prettieSt girls, the braveSt men, the
best whisky and the fastest horses
under heaven. and about which he can
reel off poetic etfuSions of soulful elO-
quence by the yard. Blackburn can
make a speech with as little preparation
perhaps as any other man in the senate,
and there are a number of senators
who have the reputation of making
great impromptu speeches who never
rise to their feet without days
of preparation. One of these is Senator
HOar. of Massachusetts. To see his
childlike, bland, blue eyes shining out
through q pair OF gold specs, while,
with one hand in his pantaloons pocket
and bunch of keys in the other, he
easily talks out his ideas in the best of
AngI0-SaXon, you would suppose that
speeches flowed from him with the
greatest of ease, and that the wise
words he utters were the sparks struck
by the occasion from the New England
flint rock of his brain. You would not
l,D hnd
weeks, and had one by one hatched
them into words. You would not
imagine that he had trained the chick
ems of his intellect into perfect shape
by continuous rehcarsing and the brush
ing of the feathers this way and that, nor
would you imagine that man
of his years would rise before
day TO go over his 0rati0ns to the SEN
ate. Not long ago MIR. Hoar delivered
great speech which was reported as
wonderful eXtemporaneOus effort. He
was living at the time in rooms on New
York avenue, and Mrs. Hoar had,
think, gone home to Massachusetts. A
couple OF Washington clerks, in chang
ing their residence, came to the house
at which the senator was rOoning. They
told the lady that they wanted quiet
place, and asked her whether she had
any objectionable or noisy DOarders.
She replied that she had not, and that
she would give them q nice back room
on the second floor, adjoining that of
one Of the most scholarly, pious and
prim of the United States senator's. One
of the clerks was not very we'll, and he
was making tie change in order that he
might rest better than at his last noisy
boarding place. They liked the outlook,
took the room and moved in their be-
longings. The next day just as the
sun had begun to paint the bronze
cheeks of the Goddess of Liberty on the
dome of the capitol, they heard a stamp
ing and roaring in the next room. The
half-sick clerk turned over and asked:
What is it?' His companion woke up
and said it sounded like q cross between
saving wood ami stump-speaking, and
the two lay and listened. At the end of
an hour they got desperate, for the hub
bub still went on and then the half-sick
clerk craWled from his bed, got on a
chair and looked over the transom.
There before long pier glass, in the
light attire of SpectICles, nightgOwn
and slippers, the great Massachusetts
senator pIanced up and down and
pounded the air as he talked to himself
of the beauties of education. His
nightie tapped about his fat round
calves as he numbered out "Mr. Presi-
dent" and his blue eyes beamed mag
unanimously into his own as he looked
into the glass and stretched out his
hand saying, MY colleagues will agree,
ETC., etc."
IL was Senator Hoar in the throes of
his great imprOmptu speech. Such
preparation, however, is not un-
common among our statesmen. and
Ben: Periey Po0re once told
me that when Martin Van Buren's
effects were sold at auction the carpet
in front of the glass in his bed room was
found worn threadbare by his walking
up and down in front of the mirror in
rehearsing his speeches.