The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1896-07-11

classmate. sI don't think that fellow
knows much law" said veteran practi-
toner concerning Bryan soon after the
latter began to practice, "but he can talk
like the devil"
Bryan supported J. Sterling Morton for
Congress in 1883. The latter was defeated
by $500 votes. In 1890 Bryan himself ran
in the same district against the same
opponent. He challenged his adversary
to a series OF joint debates, and made so
brilliant a showing that he carried the
district, which had gone $500 Republican
at the former election, by majority OF
600 votes.
The fame he gained in these joint de-
bates, of which the tariff was the theme,
induced Speaker Crisp to appoint Bryan
on the Ways and Means Committee, an
honor which many Congressman have
schemed years to secure. On March IL,
1892, he scored his first great oratorical
success in Congress in a speech on the
tariff. The reapportionment in 1891 di-
vided Bryan's Congressional district in
such way that it made his canvass en-
tireIy new, but Bryan was elected, turning
q Republican majority into a Democratic
plurality of lao.
That the Democratic Presidential candi-
date possesses the gift of eloquence in a
rare degree nobody VINO has heard him
will deny. When he toured the Leading
States of the South and the West last year
in behalf of free silver he received gener-
Gus notices from the press for his silvery-
tongued oratory. His visit to San Fran
cisco last September was made prominent
occasion by local adherents of the white
metal, and he did not fail to enthuse the
large audience which gathered to hear him
at Metropolitan Temple. During that
visit Mr.. Bryan delivered addresses on the
silver question at Berkeley and Stanford
universities, and the students of those
universities gave him, warm receptions
and applauded his outbursts OF eloquence.
The silver question is Mr.. Bryan's
favorite theme. but he can stir a congre-
cation of church people with sermon as
easily as he can move a convention with
sounding platitudes. He frequently
breaches lay sermons in one church or an
other in his Nebraska home, and the re-
ligious folk thereabout have often ex-
pressed the belief that the pulpit lost a
most effective exborter when Bryan took
to law and politics.
In the last State campaign in Nebraska,
in 1894, Bryan posed as a candidate for
the United States Senate. and stumped
the State in behalf of the Democratic leg
islatiYe ticket. The avowed candidate on
the part of the Republicans of that State
was Hon. John NJ. Thurston. Bryan
challenged Thurston to joint debate on
the issues of the day, and the speeches OF
these men created much interest at the
time. The joint debates occurred at Omaha
and Lincoln.
Bryan was eloquent, as usual, but Thur
ston was more than his match in sound
logic, and at all events Republican Legis-
lature was chosen, and to-day Mr.. Thur
ston wears the Senatorial toga for which
William Jennings Bryan strove in vain.
The subject of this sketch is sometimes
alluded to as journalist. The reason for
this is that his name has appeared as
editor-ln-chief of the Omaha World Her
aid. His duties have not been wearing or
exacting in that position. In fact, he has
never performed any newspaper work of
any description worth mentioning, but he
was an excellent advertisement for the
World-Herald, the management of which
pay him salary for the use of his name,
and he has been used to boom the weekly
edition of that publication.
In religion Mr., Bryan is Presbyterian,
but he remarked once that he had never
read the confession of faith, and although
he did not know much about the religion
he was born in that faith, and would stay
in it.
Mr.. Bryan belongs to the nti-Cleveland
faction of the Nebraska Democracy, and
his elections to Congress have been Sc
cured through combinations with Popu-
lists. It was the Cleveland wing of the
Nebraska Democracy that was responsible
for Mr.. Bryan's lack of desire for q third
term in Congress, and even before the
committee on credentials of the present
Democratic National Convention the rega-
lar Nebraska delegation was anti Bryan,
but it was in favor of gold, and the free
silver committee turned it down and gave
the Nebraska seats to the contesting dele
cation led by the man whose flow of Ian
guage subsequently created a tidal wave
which engulfed his opponents In the con-
vention. and on the top of which he rode
into a candidacy that will make his name
known in history as the young man who
represented the dying Democracy when it
received its deathblow IN November, 1896,
at the hands of the trium plant champion
of protection-W William Mckinley of Ohio.
Mr.. Bryan married. in 1884, Miss Mary
E. Baird, the daughter of a merchant OF
Perry. Ill. She was student in the an
mex of Illinois College while Bryan studied
in the college. They graduated stimuli
taneously, being valedictorians of their re-
spective classes. She studied law and was
admitted TO the bar in Nebraska. She is a
writer OF much ability and president of the
Lincoln Sorosis. They have three chIl-
dren-Ruth II, William 6. and Grace 5.
In recent interesting sketch of w. j.
Bryan, Champ Clark, the Missouri orator
and statesman, after drawing q compar-
ison between Samuel j. Randall and Mr..
Bryan, thus describes the latter:
I'm four years service Bryan estab-
lished far greater reputation than did
Randall in the same length of time In
deed. it may be said without any extrav-
agance that when Bryan quit Congress he
had as widespread fame as Randall had
when hedied after twenty years of Con-
gress. Whether the Nebraska1 plowed
his ideas as deep into the minds of men as
did the Pennsylvania is an entirely diff
ferent question:; for as late as 1894 the
line of cleavage made by Randall in the
80 ~ an ha orff II.