Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-06-14
SOME NOTEBOOK WAITS
Antiquities Seen at NewpOrt-HOw
"Gen. Forrest Got His Education.
Conjsctural Presidential Tickets for 1892
stanIey's Early Love Affair While on
the New York Herald.
copyrighted, 1901
nn.nA4

Correspondence of the Gazette.
NEWPORT, r. l.. May 30.-Ir is pleas
ant to occasionally come to Newport.
The vulgar display on the part of the
imp and hating aristooracy is hateful to
see; but there is good and olden face
shining bsnignantly out of unpretentious
,lenty and mellow prospective of his
torio age. Go where you will the eye
ranges along messy walls, by lane and
by street; catches shimmerlngs of light
beyond vistas of oyerarching elms; rests
genlally upon stone cappings TO which
the architecture of our time is
stranger; sees amplitude and hospitality
behind great colonnaded pore hes; lights
upon dormer windows and "hiDped -
roofs of such ponderous measureme mt as
could alone have been the outgr owth of
sea-captains' "square-rigged" dreams;
and rests here, there and everywhere 4,
upon time-softened base, capital and
arch as were only wrought in this country
in such a place when our young, but
buxom and aggressive, commerce by sea
ing, and in its soberer days still laid its
hands upon the riches of the Indies West
and East.
Then, again, what real age, for our
land is here. Professor Rain of CO.
penhagen, believes the old stone mill of
Touro Park to be 500 or 900 years old
and a genuine relic of ante Columbian
Morse colonists. The city hall dates
70 I-eQ C1ory 10 IA old
Baptist church erected in9735. The an
cient Honeymsn mansion, at the corner
of Church and Thames streets, was built
in 1904. Trinity church, where wor-
SHIPPED the c0lonists, the British army of
occupation, and finally the successful
revolutionists, has stood IA years. The
Charming house, on Thames street, was
bgilteyu l720. Scores of mansions are
stsss built in the earlier part of the last
century; while the famous CoddingtOn
on Spring street, has stood 249 years just
as you Will see it to-day.
One can almost close his eyes and see
the ancient folk as they were once here;
SO much that was theirs remains. No
o'er-quick fancy is required to revive the
very scenes in which they moved. The
flavor, the incident, the sight and sound
of it all come easily enough as one wan
ders here. The stately ways of the col
onists; the rugged eaTnestness and often
the arrogance of the British occupants;
the daring and sacrifice of the revolution
lists; the lordly swagger of the rich old sea
captains; the pleasance and grace of the
French, when De Segur, De Lazun. Des-
touches, De 'Estrapade, the Counts De
Barras and Noailles, the Marquis de st.
Simon, the unfortunate Chevalier De
Ternay and Rochambeau with his dainty,
muff-coddled wrists, and with half
caught silhouettes of Washington aud
Howe and pretty Polly LeitoG, and the
sound of dancing at Mrs. Cowley's
famous assembly rooms;-all irresistibly
live with the old, old trees, thorough
fares and mansions, as If waiting here by
the sea in this olden sun and air for the
coming of one whose genius through
glowing fiction shall rehabIlitate them
aIH move them, with all their customs
ala ways, before an Unlocking later age,
although in stately minuet and song.
4-Because l believe there is as great a
of rich men as of poor men
who are endlessIy doing good for goods
sake, and absolutely without other mo-
tive, it was genuine enjoy
ment the other day to sit along
side "Gen. Forrest, - the colored
smoking-car porter on the "congres-
sioual limited train between New York
aud Washington, and hear his radiant
story how the richest man in Chicago,
P. D. Armour, had taken him out of the
bondage of inexpressibIe ignorance and
made an educated, hopeful, happy man
of him. "Gen. Forrest is probably
the best known and best liked railway
car porter in the world; aud his life has
been almost romantic one. He was
picaninny slave, bought in New Orleans
with his mother, Ann Burr, (and if
black old Ann Burr is living, this little
story may give her yet bit of earthly
heaven few years before
the war by the afterwards
famous Confederate cavalry leader,
Gen. n. B. Forrest, for his Coahoma
county, Miss, plantation. Though but
a mite of q lad, Forrest wss fond of him,
ana kept him at his side as q sort of
diminutive valet until the generals sur
render at Gainesville in 1865. For q
good many years General Forrest, -
who thus honestly came by his sobriquet,
knocked about like all the rest of the
freedmen iotssm and jetsam OF the war,
finally securing in 1872 a position as
smokiug-csr porter on the through New
York and Chicago trains of the Pennsyl-
vania railroad, In eighteen years he
never was discharged, and never left the
company's service but once. Z. D. Ar
mour was responsible for that.
He had been to Washington and was
on his way West. He had been enjoying
q cigar in the smoker, and on nearing
Altoona wrote telegram, which ne di-
rected the s'General'' to be very par
ticular about with the operator at Al
toona, as one word was not very clear.
The General flied the message, re-
turned to the car, and began his usual
avocstion, when not waiting on passen-
gers, of studying his primer. Armour
saw this with some alarm for the fate of
his message, questioned him sharply,
found that he could not read, but that
his wits and memory erved him in such
exigencies, and on leaving the car turned
SO the porter with:
General, have you got SAND enough
to go TO school and be . man IL somebody
would send your
''Gonyi'' responded the General, "
"jess let somebody try! -
IAN right. Go 10 school.
With this Armour left che car. Some
two months later, on his way to New
York he found the smiling General
Attending TO his duties as usual. Regard
"a. vim with severity Armour orusquely
asked.