The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-11-12
ADDITIONAL CITY NEWS
PEN PICTURE OF DOLLIVER
He is Witty, Eloquent and a Great
Thinker.

The following pen picture Of Congress-
man J. P. Dolliver, who spoke at the
Funston banquet in Kansas City Friday
night and who speaks in the Auditorium
here next Tuesday night, Is from Sam
Clark Of the Gate City, Keokuk, Iowa.
after Mr.. Clark had visited the congress-
man at his home:
1.-TWO days passed with Mr.. Dolliver at
his home, made US know this great young
orator in a way we have desired. When
we last met Congressman Dolliver he was
tall and straight; now he is filed out al
most massively, and he moves and looks
every inch a king Of the platfrom When
he was young his head was smaller, after
the fashion of Shelley, Byron and Keats,
but now it is large and proportionate to
his body. He was born February 6, 1853,
on a West Virginia farm. Ten years la
ter his father moved to Morgantown to
educate his children. J. P. entered the
public schools at once; at thirteen he
passed into the freshman class of the State
University there, and four years later he
graduated. He read law and taught
school, was admitted to the bar in 1873,
came to Iowa in 1881 and settled at Fort
Dodge. Since then his, growing fame as
an orator, and now as a congressman, is
part of the pride and present history of
the state. AS We expected, you cannot
put out your hand at his home without
putting it on a book. He is surrounded
by them.
I'VE walked out to the grove. overlook
ing the river and denseIy wooded. heavy
with foliage and filled with the songs Of
birds, where he goes loafng with his soul
and reads and thinks. And he talked OF
Lucian's Dialogues with the Gods" We
knew he was that sort of a man when we
read and heard the pictured sentences Of |
his first speeches; beam on beam, stone
on stone, drawn from the mines of litera- |
ture and fashioned in his own way into
the structure Of eloquent speech; as that |
first CT emperors, who found a city of !
clay and left in its stead a city of marble. |
Even when you walk together, giving and /
taking comrade thoughts and notions in /
the fellowship of only you two, Mr. Dol !
liver is a mannerist as COnkiing or IN !
sails. There is a little vein in the ma
jestic Siddons in the amiahle and kindly |
way he tells the coachman to please lie |
II such place at such an hour. It isn't /
affectation or weakness; it IS the mental I
integrity of a man who cannot afford TO
weaken the strength and beauty of
thought and speech by letting him run off
in the sewer with Stops and dish water.
We saw how it was and were pleased.
The failures OF individuals to keep Up
with the promise Of their graduation
day came from Tennyson's law Of associa-
ton in Locksley Hair: Thou shalt low
ct 10 his level day by day, what is fine
within thee growing coarse to sympa-
thize with clay We all have our times
when our thoughts go as high as any
body's; we don't keep them there, but let
them come down and go commonplace
ways. But the choice souls, great men
and women, refuse to be commonplace.
They say with Emerson: Z am a free
man of the whole realm Of mind; what
Plato has thought ] may think And
these fashion themselves into the rare and
thoughtful souls that are monuments and /
leaders to idle folks. We We're glad of
the thoughtfulness and dignity with which
Mr.. DoIliver said everything. 1t shows
that he does not have one parade day OF
brilliant display and then throw the
blade of his wit and speech on the ground
or in the gutter to rust there; but that we
have in him a man that win not deterior-
ate, but starting high, viii grow upward
and not downward"