The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-08


 the late Reese c. Degraffenreid. says the Washington Post, when one of their number gave the following, reminis- cences of the dead congressman and his predecessor, the late "Buck" Kill gore:
 About twenty years ago I found my self in Texas and travelled from Shreve- port to Laredo, from Houston to Fort Worth. In the month of July I pitched my tent in the town of Gilmer, Upshur county, in the piney woods, where sand and fleas and snakes abound. An old fellow of the name of Ragland kept the tavern. He was a Tennessean, but be- came a Texan before the revolution and had lived under four flags the Star Spangled Banner of the American Union, the Mexican republic, and the bonnie blue flag of the Confederate states of America.
 "Boniface Ragland provided fried chicken and corpulent biscuit for his guests, and they got awful tired of it. Breakfast, dinner and supper brought chicken and biscuit, biscuit and chicken, and nothing else. There was no change to broiled or smothered, and a pie was not thought of. Neither was there a stewed bird on the place. We would have fought over bacon and corn bread had there been any.
 District court was in session and brought quite a number of strangers, or, rather, neighbors, to Gilmer. The wealth CT was hot, extremely hot the whisky was villainous, extremely villanious. The court house was a little bit of a thing, but when court convened there was pres ent two men who subsequently, became governor of Texas, two who became senators in congress, and two who be- came members of the national house of representatives. There was James Hogg, then prosecuting attorney. There was Horace Chiffon. There was Charles Gull person. And to these were added Buck" Kilgore and R. c. Degraffenreid.
 'Well. one night, most, if not all of these people, and several others, myself among the number, were sitting out on the porch about g o'clock talking poli- tics and cussing old Raglands chick ems. During the evening I had occasion to repeat Sidney Smiths eloquent trib- ute to justice. I was in an argument with Jim Hogg at the time. and was criticising the vigor and zeal with which he had prosecuted a poor devil in the court that day, and that occa- stoned the casting of this pearl before him. He made the all-sufficient answer that an accuser. as does the advocate. has an eye to the verdict and nothing fled in Warren's Ten Thousand Year
 "A while later Degraffenreid took me aside and asked me to repeat the pas- sage. I did so.
 "'who did you say wrote itg he asked
 Sidney Smith,
 "I wish you would repeat 1t again. Story he requested.
 ''I did so, and then he repeated 1t and slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. exclaiming: It is there, and I shall fire it at jury over at Marshall next week!'
 "I left Texas soon after and forgot all about Degraffenreid-even his name escaped me. When the Fifty-fifth con- gress convened in extraordinary session a great big, dashing fellow, swart as a Speniard and muscular as a gladiator cane up to me on the floor of the house half an hour before the sitting began, and greeted me most cordially, caHing my name, and asking If I did not re- member him. I did not. Then he began: Truth is its handmaid; Freedom is it's walks in it's steps; Victory follows in it's train-it is the brightest emanation of the Gospel; it is the greatest attribute of God. etc., etc.
 He got that far when I called out: 'Ain't you that fellow I taught that down in Texas a dozen years ago?
 " The. same he answered, and it got me the verdict at Marshall, too..
 "Then he was as slender as Romeo, now he was as muscular as Porthos. He had much of that mysterious and sometimes dangerous quality, indi >ldu- ality. Like nine public men of ten, it would have been better for him had he never ntered the fascinating and treach- erous field of politics.
 ''De Graffenreid had a hand in retir- ing Buck Kilgore. A man must spring like a tiger and hold on like a bulldog if he would remain in congress nilgore was something after that order Above six feet tall and above 200 pounds in weight, he was as straight as a grena,-