Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-05-01

! always hlled the galleries ana ne was
perfectly at home upon the floor. He
had wonderful power of absorbing
| information from others and he had a
way of getting ideas from his friends to
add to his own thoughts in his great
speeches. He would sometimes call his
| friends into his room the night before he
was about to make a great speech and dis
cuss his points with them.
| l remember the speech he made against
! Hill, which was, you know, one OF the
most eloquent ever made in the House. The
| night before that speech he called half
dozen of his intimate friends into his room
and l was among them. He went over the
| synopsis or outline of his speech and asked
tor suggestions. He got many new ideas, L
know, and while we were talking from time
to time books with marked passages were
sent into him by his friends and he read
these. The next day the cream of all this
matter appeared in his speech but so trans,
! formed and revivifed by his master mind
! that it made one strong symetrlcal ana
beautiful whole. Garfield seldom wrote
out his speeches and his best thoughts and
expressions often came to him on the noor'
CART lids Good Faith at Chicago.
"How about his speech at the Chicago
| Convention which nominated him."
''The greater part of the speech, SAID
Governor Foster twas written beforehand,
| and it was shown bv him to Senator Sher-
man before he came to Chicago, and Sher-
man approved of it. But the beautiful in
PRODUCTION to it Garfield composed as he
stood there before that great convention,
! and this was from the inspiration OF the oc-
casion. 1 was with Garfield during the
whole convention. We had rooms adjoining
each other, and We were together nearly all
the time
s'You went there to nominate Sherman.
Did you notice anything that led youto De,
heve that Garfield was false to Sherman"
| 'tNo, did not replied Secretary Foster,
"and until Garfeld's death had no faith
whatever in any of the statements made
that he was not true in every respect, and
do not know now that he was not true. 1t
has shaken nv faith, however. to find that
he knew that Rusk and those 16 Wisconsin
! votes were ready to come to him at any
! time, and 1 understand that he had some
/ talk with the Wisconsin men while he was
at Chicago He certainly seemed to be do
ing all he could for John Sherman.
''Those 16 votes started the boom, did
they not?''
-"Yes, thev did; but Garfield is dead, and
! think in this he should have the beneht
of the doubt"
Story of a Game of Cards.
"Garfeld was q very timid man in some
| things and very bold one in others. He
always stood up for the principles he be-
lieved in and his timidity was rather in
regard TO matters relating to himself than
! to public questions He feared newspaper
| comment and though he had some of my
| democratic tastes be was rather ashamed to
let them be known. 1 remember an in
stance which NAV give little light on this
phase OF Garfeld's character which occurred
when we were in Congress together. He
! was fond of playing cards and his favorite
game was casino and he liked to play for 10
cent stakes
81 remember one summer night at Will
lard's Hotel we got party together and
were seated around the table in a room on
the second floor on the T street side in the
house facing Newspaper row. 1t was very
hot and we had our coats and vests off and
orr sleeves were rolled up to the elbows.
The windows were wide open and bv the
gaslight in the room you could see our cards
from across the street. After we had
PLAYED about an hour a telegraph blank was
handed me. 1t was from a newspaper cor
respondent and it read something like this:
Immense excitement on Newspaper row.
big crowd is watching your little game.
Pools are being sold on the result and the
boys are sending dispatches out over the
country concerning it.
Wanted to Pull Down the Blinds
tT read this dispatch out loud at the table,
and Garfield was very much frightened by
it. He wanted to close the blinds, but we
would not let him, and he evidently feared
that the story of his. card playing would be
sent home. OF course, the crowd was alto
gether fictitious, and l knew the newspaper
men well enough to know that they had
other things more important than little
aor1 md hat thaxy
were too good natured to say anything about
the matter ANYHOW No word of it ever ap-
peared in the papers, but Garield's annoy
ance about the matter amused the rest of us
yerv much -
You had fuss yourself with Butler
which attracted national notice, Mr.. Foster,
did YOU not?"
Eyes" was the reply, ''it gave me ma
tional reputation for the time, and it came
about in rather a curious way. During the
Rebellion everything, you know, was taxed,
and it was to get some of these uncollected
taxes that Ben Butler got up in the House
one day and proposed that the Secretary of
the Treasury be authorized to appoint col
lector. His resolution carried, and a COL
lector named Sanborn was appointed, and
the arrangement was that he was to have
half Of ali the taxes he collected.
On the Track of ~ Big Steal
"Now the Treasury officials were such
that the four or five men through whose
hands those accounts had to pass were Mas
Sachusetts men, and in the work which
came before me on the Ways and Means
. my attention was called to these collections,
and l tound that Sanborn had made about
S4O1, 600 out of his work. and the wav this
was done looked very fshy. got the pa
pers in the case after a while, and found
hot he hol al
Walter Phelps, who is now Minister to
Germany and was then a member of Con-
gress, and he had also collected S400, 900 of
Mr. Phelps as unpaid taxes on the Della
ware and Lackawanna Railroad.
81 called upon Mr.. Phelps and I found
that he supposed that he had paid these
taxes to an internal revenue collector and
that the only reason that they had not been
paid before was that his fathers estate and
the road were in litigation, and they could
not adjust them. / found, in TACT, that all
the taxes collected in this way were such
that would have come into the Teasury any,
how, and the Treasury was being corruptly
used to put money into Sanborn's poeket
Well, Butler got wind of what was going
on, and be denounced me on the floor of the
House. He had gotten half an hour of
Garheld's time one day, and Garfield gave
me five minutes of his time to answer him.
How He Excoriated Zen Butler.
ct had all these facts at nv fingers end,
and as l brought the story OF the fraud out
piece by piece and called upon members
who we're personally acquainted with the
circumstances to substantiate what said,
Buffers face grew as white as a sheet, and
at last he said that he admired the bravery
of a man who would attack absent parties
referring to the contractors and the others.
replied that the parties whom L accused