Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-05-08
SOME PITTsBURG PORRIDGE.

| OAsAshDNCs
Colonel Bob IngersoIPs Eloquent Hands
His Poetic Prose and His Worship OF
woman-A Horse That Knows the Law
! John L. sulIivan's First Fight.
| Have you noticed IngersolPs hands?
| They play q most important part in
his orations In the first place they are
| beautiful in themselves; the fingers are slen-
der and shapely, and the contour OF the
whole hand perfect in proportion. They
are not small, which sometimes constitutes
q charm but which would not in the case OF
| a man of Ingersoll's stature and bulk. Ii
| you were present when he lectured the other
night upon Shakespeare you must have no.
| ticed how much he used his hands. He does
not merely emphasize with them; they eI-
plain, Illustrate, enlarge, and illuminate his
| meaning. When he compared Shakespeare
to the ocean, his works to a range OF noun
tain peaks, the splendor of his language to
the radiant rainbow, a graphic gesture ac-
companied and completed the sim1le. One
would suppose that two hands could hardly
supplement- the eloquence OF such mouth
as IngersoIl's as much as they do. The
stereotyped gestures Of the orator, varia-
tions mostly upon the iron efforts OF the
pumphandle, are never used by 1ngersol!:
studied or not. his gestures are knit in with
the texture of his oratory, and, like the lat
ter, owe much of their force and beauty to
their apparent spontaneity. There are no
rings on his hands.
It is a fact, also, that Colonel Bob's hand
shake is a positive and pleasant character
istic of the man. The hand that can wave
defiance, clamp a theory, punctuate
another's with a warmth and firmness that,
once felt, is never likely to be forgotten. 1
remember meeting the great agnostic few
hours after he had delivered that superb
hr1 INN in. II udrra ho or1il a
behalf at the last Republican Convention in
Chicago, and the cordial kindliness of the
man, and still more his wonderful GOODNESS
i'll the midst of q fray as hot as the atmOS-
phere-and what bake-oven that city was
that June!-both made profound impress
sion upon me. Great hands are Ingersolps
long may they wayel
Colonel IngersoIPs Poetry.
The last five minutes of Ingersoll's talk
about Shakespeare was the best in point of
form; the capitals of his columns are always
the most richly chased, most foridly Orna-
mented. 1t seems to be his invariable habit
to erect pillar of plain but highly polished
marble, which he crowns with his most
magnificent carving; his peroration puts all
that has gone before into the shade. He
summed up Shakespeare's transcerdent
qualities in blank verse that the Blrd him.
self might not have been ashamed to own.
1t was not merely musical prose, but poetry
you will examine 1n2ersoll's printed works
you will find that great deal of his prose is
in reality governed strictly by meter, and a
great deal more poetic than much of that
which turgidly tolls through meadows of
margin with all the pomp and circumstance
of verse.
Woman Is His ONLY God
One of the great causes of Ingersoll's
popularity, though L hardly think it is
realized generally, is the homage he Is al
ways doing to woman. He never loses an
opportunity to praise, nay, worship the sex
His gods had he any, would all be feminine.
Whatever his sincerity in other respects,
his attitude toward women in public is no
more reverential than that which he as
sumes at home. His domestic relations are
of the happiest. So that tho elaborate
panegyrics he formulates about womankind
in his speeches and in his writings have a
positive value, and the most dramatic and
affecting episode in his oration on Shakes
peare the other night occurred in his allu-
sion to the rare spectacle of man standing
by his wife-Captain Osborne's devotion to
his wife on triat for theft and perjury in
London recently-as thousands of wives
have by their husbands There were quite
as many women in the audience as men, by
the way. One little old lady, who seemed to
be deaf and blind, was among the most en-
thusiastic.
Horse Sense and Law.
The foot-path on the lower side of the
Sixth street bridge is closed at present to IA
cilitate the building of the wide arch for the
new structure to proceed without hindrance,
and o notice is posted warning people at the
place where they must cross the
street to look out for the cleo
tric cars The warning is so we'll
needed that watchman Is also stationed
there to prevent accidents. Passing this
point the other day with Judge and a.
learned attorney of this county, the latter
called my attention to man who had
stopped to read the printed notice Of warn
ing.
"That man." said the attorney, "could not
recover damages now II he were run over at
this crossing, for the Supreme Court has de-
cided that man who reads warning be-
fore crossing a railroad is alone respon sible
for any injury he may incur" and this view
the Judge took also. Then the attorney
went on: "a friend of mine has horse
which he says is Thoroughly Informed upon
Supreme Court decisions, and acting upon
this one regarding the responsibility Of
crossing railroad comes to dead stop
always before going over giving the driver
full time and opportunity to read the warn
ing"
The horse in this case would seem to be an
attorney for the railroads.
How Sullivan Became q Fighter.
In Boston among other treasured tradi-
tions of the city's chief hero there is one
which was told to me by Bostonian lately
with more scrupulous exactness than can
promise in the repetition. 1t refers to John
L. Sullivan's first scrap, to the trifling event
which has had such tremendous conse-
quences. 1t was the turning point in his
career; the moment that decided that the
prize ring should gain a monarch from the
Hub. Sullivan was boy still in years,
though his frame had already astonished
his relatives and friends by its imposing
prop ortions. Though in his teens he had
then beer at work some time when he found
employment in the classic occupation OF
sewer building in Boston Highlands. At
that time pugilism had not attracted his |
attention, and Snllivan's soul was wrapped
up in baseball. The diamond was 4 magnet |
that could draw him from school when he
was boy, and as he grew up from more
serious work. And the boss OF the sewer job |
did not relish Sullivan'S off-hand way of |
down his tools and going Off to see |
q ball game or play in one himself. |
He told Sullivan It had to stop. |
Su!lvan's reply was what to-day he would |
probably call "a bitf" under the boss jaw,
1T. Lit a 1-4E Ill