The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-02-14


at Gettysburg: OF bis services at Lookout
Mountain under Hooker; his campaign
with Sherman to the sea and how he saved |
-Sl5, OUO,O worth of cotton which the Con-
leuerateS were burning at Savannah. He
told me OF his three wounds, and the one
which had never ceased troubling him
since the day he fell at Malvern Hill,
and | asked him how much of pen
sion this generous government was
bestowing upon him. He informed me
that he was receiving the munificent sum
OF $50 month. l remember that my as
constituent was so great that l almost fell
Off the chair. Here was a man still under
sixty years of age who for nearly thirty
years had gone about with q gunshot
wound, which would ordinarily have killed
any man, and who, during all these years,
had never had one moments surcease from
pain ana apprehension; who had fought
and marched and rlsked his life when any
other man would have remained at home
under the theory that he had received his
share of glory. And for this the govern
ment was paying him scarcely enough to
keep him in cigars Modest, sweet ma
tured, kind and generous, it had never even
entered his mind, think, that the govern
rnent was miserly, con tenptible hog. ]
told him that knew of transfers who had
been Kicked by mules and who were draw
ing bigger pensions than he and | at once
wrote letter TO my brother-in-
law, who was g medical referee in
the pension department at Wash
ington, calling attention to this case.
Upon my urging him General Barnum
made an application for an increase of PEN
sion, which, thanks to Commissioner Black,
was allowed. and this carried with it an
arrearage of something like IS, 600 which
the general thankfully received. One of
his friends told me subsequently, that
every dollar of that money was immedi-
ately paid to creditors, some of whom he
had been emitting for fifteen or twenty
years. Poor, good soul, it never occurred
to him, IS it might have occurred to some
less honorable man, that the money given
him by the grudging government might
have been used to provide nome and food
for himself He met these money oblfga-
tions as he did every other obligation in
life. But he left no estate for any ad-
administrator to bother mself about
One morning he called at my house some
months after having his pension increased
and told me that he had just, learned
from some friends in the war de-
partment at Washington that there was
lying in the department bronze modal
bearing his name one of the few awarded
by Congress to men who especially distin-
guished themselves during the war for
! bravery and faithful service. His name
had been especially mentioned in joint
resolution in Congress. but If he had ever
heard Of the fact he had forgotten 1t, and
he went all the way to Washington to get
that medal. He wore number of honor
able medals, but this one he was exceed
ingly proud of. / never saw him look SO
happy as when he brought that stained
and oxidized medal, which had been lying
for twenty five years or more in the War
department, around to exhibit to me. We
gave him dinner on the strength of 1t and
handsome watch to commemorate the
event. and General Sherman paid him the
highest tribute that he ever paid to any
man who wore the Federal uni
form. They gave him a great funeral
last Monday with military honors.
Old General Slocum, General Sickles. Gen
eral FitZ-Johu Porter, General Daniel But
tertield, General Jardiue on his crutches,
were ali proud to march behind his casket,
and the Rev. DR.. John r. Paxton, who was
a soldier OF the Second corps and who
fought in the peach orchard at Gettysburg,
and who now breaches to Jay Gould and
Russell Sage in West Forty-second street,
delivered the most magnificent eulogium
ever heard in any church, and he was in
TERED at Syracuse, where, thirty-one
years ago, his funeral sermon was prema-
turely preached. And these splendid OBJ
seouies last week, the tributes and tears of
admiring friends, the love Of his intimates,
and the record of duty nobly and honor
ably ACKNOWLEDGMENT memories of a
kind and genial good fellow-were all that
this brave, suffering and noble soldier left.
THAT FAMOUS AsToR BABY
TIE failure of Dr. William T. Lusk to
send a certificate to the board of health of
the birth of baby within ten days from
the arrival, as the law requires, has given
the esteemed and distinguished doctor q
quite unueeded amount of gratuitous adver-
Using. In the whole course Of his large
and very lucrative practice his name never
appeared in the papers SO profusely as it
did in only two days. time. But the I'M
registered baby was young John Jacob
Astor's first born boy. William Vincent,
and the reason why the doctor failed to
make the proper return was that ne has so
much else to attend to that he actually for
got it, till reminded of it more than two
months after the birth. This lapse of
memory not only extensively and need
lessly advertised the doctor, but it
gave all the newspapers the oppor-
tunity to repeat the highly forid
fiction that tie forgotten babe was
the whole fortune of Grandpapa William
amounts to about one-tenth Of that sum-
1t is not generally believed by real estate
men, who are the best judges. that the en-
tire Astor prorerty in this city amounts to
more than 000O0,0 900 and the great bulk
of it is IN the hands of William Waldorf
Astor in trust, as it were, for transmission
to his eldest son. AS nearly all this great
property is in real estate. it is easily dis
coverable If Grandpapa William pays taxes
on more than SIS, 0G0 of property, and
possibly it will be found that his own re-
turn is somewhat less. But about DR..
Lusk-he is still in his prime; in feet, as
we reckon men here, he is still young
man, with practice probably OF $50, OO0 a
year, and principally among people who
can afford to pay big fees, even when they
only pretend to be sick. DR.. Lusk, like
Polk, Jsneway, Stephen Smith, LOOMS and
half dozen more who might be mentioned,
was originally an inferno on the Bellevue
hospital staff, beginning there as o
poor young doctor, happy to serve as a
junior and senior year for nothing, and
then six months more as "HCuse' for
board, lodging and washing. That hospl-
tai has been the practice eRinning of
many of the most eminent physicians and
surgeons in this city-men who now derive
| immense incomes from their own private
practice And what is creditable to these
| distinguished DOCTORS among whom Lusk
is an eminent example, is that they never
'break away" from Bellevue where they
began as internes. For years they serve
on the medical board of that public insti-
| tuition, are in their turn visiting physicians
and surgeons, daily for a month at time,
and are on call at any hour doy or night for
any complicated or critical case. All this,
of course, gratuitously: they leave the bed
side of perhaps their best paying patient
and gladly go down to the hospitals to treat
the poorest man or woman for nothing.
Noble profession
THE wRANGLE OVER OPERA.