The age-herald., 1898-01-21
DBENTn AND DBoBu AS FOEmEN.
H. s. canaeld in the Chicago Tlmes-Her-

| Il. ;. Cannelu Tn the Cnlcago IlmeS-f1er- | aid.
 The dispatches say that Benton McMil-
 | lin for many years a representative in con- | gress of his part of Tennessee, is likely to
 be elected United States senator for six | years, to succeed the dead Isham G. Harris. | The contest is now on at Nashville, and will | be settled this week. McMillin has earned | promotion by faithful service. That much
 can be said for him. His chief opponent is | former Gov. "Bob'' Taylor. and it is not
 impossible that Taylor will defeat him. | This man Is loved by Tennesseans, while | McMillin is respected and admired. They | are not alike in manners, in person, in in-
 tellect, or in any way, save that both are
 honest and both are democrats. It is sell
 dom that the American public is amused
 and interested by a conflict between poli-
 ticlans of such radically differing types. 1
 | McMillin is pre-eminently respectable. He | Is not a man of great brain. In person he is large feshy and comedy, with dropping
 brown mustache and tall tower of bald | forehead. He is a ladies man of the kind | that is eternally dangling after females | without making any impression on them. | His manners are bland. His utterances are | always pacific. He is, I think, a church member, belonging to some one of the nu- | merous Protestant sects. He is the kind | of man you would expect to find in church | twice on Sundays and not infrequently on | week days, always clad in funeral black, | with rather lengthy coat, turn-down col | lar, wsp of a dark tie, eyes modestly | dropped, and hymn book from which he l sings earnestly, but somewhat out of tune. | We all know the type.
 | He is soft No man means better. No | man has better impulses. No man is more | industrious or has the interests of his con- stituents more at heart. No man more | earnestly believes in himself. No man | more strongly desires political preferment, | or is more ready to advance himself by any 1 legitimate method But he lacks force. It | is not his fault. He was born without it. | It is the chief thing missing from his men | tai makeup I used to think that McMil- | lin reminded me of some character by l Dickens, but, after puzzling the mat | ter for long time, found that he was re- mindful rather of a composite D;ckensonian l character. In a vague way he recalls some | thing of Heep, also of Podsnap, also of | MT. Dick, with his kites and his execution | of Charles l.; also of the Veneerings; also | of Wegg because now and then he betrays | disposition to drop into poetry, and he | knows nothing about poetry; also of MT. | Rumble; also of Stryver and Jack Bunsby | and Tupman-he is much like Tupman-and | others of the immortals who are more real l to us than Dickens himself
 MT. McMillin is known as the "father of l the income tax law that idiotic proposi- l tion to fine every man who could earn $4,- | GOO year and exempt the man who earned | $3,999 During the last incumbency of l Charles F. Crisp as speaker of the house, l McMillin was the leader of the democracy | on the floor. He was opposed by Thomas | B. Reed who headed handful of repub- | licans, and when the spectacle was not painful it was amusing. He is a fairly | good parliamentaran, and by no means a | bad debater in a prosy way, but he had | for his opponent a postmaster in the art
 of attack and reprisal.
 Tom Murry, who was the house ca | terer for many ysars, and fed politicians and statesmen a1 a matter of business, | had a theory that one can always tell what man in congress amounts to by | inspecting his daily bill of fare. In eluci- dation of this theory, one day when the | income tax nonsense was at its height and | MT. McMillin was perspiring profusely in | defending the bill from the onsaughts of l its enemies, the gifted Murry showed me | the Tennesseean's luncheon orders for the | past week. They ran in this way: Mon day. ham sandwich and small bottle of apollinaris; Tuesday, peach pie and butter milk; Wednesday, watercress salad and | plain water; Thursday, baked beans and water; Friday, ham sandwich and glass 1 of milk; Saturday, apple pie and butter milk "On pay days,' said Murry, "Mc- Millin gets reckless, and comes in here l and orders ham sandwich and beans and watercress salad and buttermilk and apol- | linaris all at once It costs him as much as 65 cents."
 | All of this is not saying that, If elected, l Mr. McMillin will not make creditable I senator I am inclined to think that he will do better in the upper chamber than | m the lower. The senate is a quiet and | orderly body of millionaires and others, who proudly liken themselves to club. l Nobody is expected to be oratorical or | active man who breatheS hard and walks heavily and says nothing will obtain
 
 | a reputation for much wisdom. McMillin I can do these things without effort He would be always on the side of what he | believed to be right. He might get tan | gled up with Wolcott and one or two other | irrepressibles who do much to Tighten the l general gloom, but no serious results would follow. senator holds his seat for six years, and even if he does nothing and thinks nothing, will come in time to possess certain influence.
 "Bob' Taylor belongs to different or der of humanity. He is an orator, poet, a humorist, good fellow, warrior, and a musician. He is in no sense a violinist, but, in the humor for it, will take his dark green and battered fiddle from it's case and make it talk or laugh or weep or sing. It is worth mans while to sit in the gray .I,a Of a nd bpar