Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1891-09-11
PRENTICE AND TRAIN.
INTERVIEW BETWEEN THE AGTTA-
TOR AND THE FAMOUS EDITOR.


Pen Portraits of Two Noted Men-Pren-
tice in Everyday Working Dress and
Train in a Dandy Suit-Dictating to an
Amanuensis.
One afternoon about twenty-five or three
years ago, debonaire young gentleman
walked into the editorial rooms of the old
Louisville Journal and asked to see Mr. Prem
tice. He was clad in handsome blue broad
cloth coat of the swallow tail style, with
smooth and glittering brass buttons His
trousers were of black doeskin, his shoes
shiny, patent leather, his vest of some heavy
buff material over which his coat was but
toned so that it doubled in front, showing an
inch or two below the front of the coat; and in
his hand he carried a rich looking soft hat
His hair was black, wavY and plentiful, and
his upper lip was covered with a luxuriant and
well kept mustache. Altogether there was
an air of elegant negligence about him. The
man was over the medium height and build,
and presented card which bore the words
George Francis Train. Civis Americans
Sum"
Being then Mr. Prentice's amanuensis and
private secretary, presented Mr.. Train to
the immortal George D., wit, poet and ed
itor. Train seemed to be little staggered
presume he expected to see large, impos
ing and severe man, and he behed "a lean
and slippered pantaloon." Mr.. Prentice was
peculiarly slouchy man then in his dress,
and altogether careless of his personal ap-
pearance. Indeed, | believe he never had
been "dressy." His hair, which had once
been jet black, fell on his shoulders and even
about his cheeks, we'll mixed with gray, and
his whitening beard, which was also very
long, and which covered nearly all of his
face except the nose, eyes and forehead, was
tied as close up as possible with cotton
Irvine, and his ears were stuffed with cotton
Tobacco juice stained his vest, and he had
habit of using his fingers for paste brush
and of wiping them on his panta-
looms He had taken off his long,
black frock coat and replaced it with
brown, somewhat ragged and alto
gether disreputable looking old yarn
pea jacket, or what was commonly called in
Kentucky ''warmus." On the table near
him stood his hat This was SLOUGH with
tall crown, and it answered the place of
pockets in his clothes, which sort Of recepta-
cles he never used He carried in his hat
everything that other men carry in their
pockets, and more too. Being unable to
write more than a word or two at a time
with his own hand he would, with both of
his trembling, writer's palsy stricken hands,
make out to scratch memoranda of such
things as he desired to consider upon the
margins of newspapers, and these little bits
he would throw into his hat for future refer
ence. He usually had the old felt about half
full of them He also carried his pocket
knife, pencils, scissors, keys ETC., in the hat,
and have often seen him, absent mindedly,
drop well masticated quid of tobacco into
it instead Of throwing the "old soldier"
away
This was the famous editor, the author of
''The Life of Henry Clay" the champion
and bosom friend of prince Harry of the
West" during the latter's glorious and bril-
liant career as a statesman, the writer of
1.-The Closing Year" and other grand poems;
the man whose keen w.t. caustic sarcasm,
eloquence and terse dramatic force drove
giants before him with his pen Yet his
culver was filled with arrows of all sizes,
from the quill of the eagle to that of the
humming bird, and he could indite fierce
philippe in prose, or tune his sentences to a
sweet and tender song Of sympathy or love
in poetry
Train exhibited his establishment for an in
slant, unobserved by Mr. Prentice, however,
and at once the two fell into earnest CONVEX
sation. Train was in Louisville with Anna
Dickinson, Susan B. Anthony and a number
of other leading womans rights women, and
was assisting in their suffrage crusade After
a pleasant stay of a half hour or so, Train
withdrew and Prentice proceeded to dictate
a pen picture of his late visitor
For many years Mr.. Prentice had been
forced to write by an amanuensis, being, as
before intimated, a sufferer from scriveners
cramp, or writer's palsy, known in surgery
as chorea scriptorum He would walk the
floor in slip shod way, with his hands
clasped behind him, and in a somewhat pip
ing voice, with nasal twang being also
afflicted with catarrh, he would dictate to his
amanuensis, punctuating the matter as he
went. He always began his articles with
what is known in typography as "fist"-a
little cut of the hand with the index finger
pointing, and thus his pen picture of George
Francis Train was like this:
'Fisb ERy- A locomotive that has run off
the track (commal turned upside down
(comma) with the cowcatcher buried in a
stump and the wheels making a thousand
revolutions minute full stop A kite in
the air that has lost it's tail dash a
human novel without a hero DASH a
man who climbs a tree for a birds
nest (comma) out on a limb comma
and in order to get it saws the limb
off between himself and the tree full
stop A ship without a rudder DASH
q clock without hands dash an arrow
shot into the air dash a sermon that is all
text dash pantomime of words dash the
apotheosis of talk tcommaI the incarnation
of CAB full stop Handsome tcomma) viva
cious (comma) muscular tcomma) as neat as
cat (commal judge of the effect of clothes
(comma) frugal in food and regular only in
habits full stop A monday mystery dash
a solved conundrum DASH cipher hunting
for figure to pass for something semi
COLON with the brains of twenty men in his
head (commal all pulling in different direc-
tions (semi-colon) not bad as to heart comma)
but man who has shaken hands with rever-
ence full stop This is George Francis Train
full stop"
Thus did Mr.. Prentice draw picture of
the restless agitator which photographs him
inside and out, even to-day.-WiD Visscher.
What The United States?