The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-12-07
KNIGHT OF LAUGHTER
o Rare Tom OchiItree, Sunny
and Beloved.
A Picturesque Figure Reminiscent of the Days
of the Cavaliers Passes From the Stage
of Life,
louisville Courier Jourial)

AlDelI not an easy, IL Is dC Jne same
time a melancholy undertaking for one,
familiar with the facts, to write of Tom
Ochiltree--it sounds like a pseudonym
does it ot?-with his dead body lying,
as it were, in the house. to separate
the sentimental and the spectacular: to
distinguish between the man who made
a joke of life, and his other and more
serious self; to identify the exuberant
and sometimes noisy, humorist with the
man of affairs, the too aggressive poll
tician with the man OF wit and tact. AS
Il rule such contradictions of character
are discOverable by women. The circum-
stances may explain another idiosyncrasy
Of the famous Texan. With women he
was a prodigious favorite. Nor less in
Nacogdoches, where he was born, and
Galveston, which he represented in Con-
gress, were it possible for any good wo-
man to know him without loving him,
than in London and Paris, where, among
the highest some eyes will glisten that
are not wont to betray emotion, whilst
among the struggling and aspiring ones
of the working guild of art and letters
/
he is dead; for, whatever he was to men,
ne was an angel to woman, was Tom
Ochiltree; a Knight-errant if ever
Knight Grant lived in this prosaic mod
ern world of ours.
No other region in ChriStendom could
have evolved just such product save
the Southern States of North America.
In him the blood of Virginia and South
Carolina and Georgia, stirred and min
gled by a century of consanguineous in
terchanges, found it's fruition in Texas.
His enemies describe that fruition as
rank; it was simply gorgeous. The son
of Titan who had helped to make the
Republic of the Lonely Star he grew
to manhood amid the social crudities, the
eXtrayagances and excuses of the from
tiers of civilization, motherless boy with
no restraining influence 10 check and
guide his hayward footsteps, and he dies,
the very last of the romanticiStS of the
Middle Ages of our American Renaissance,
having penetrated the Businesses OF the
Beau Quarter the wide world over, with
out losing his faith either in his God,
or his kind, emerging thence with vast
store Of worldly wisdom yet no tinge of
acerbity and very little cynicsm. In his
youth bumptious, overgrown lad, am
bilious and ilamboyant, he had not pos
sessed the knowledge or training to dis
eliminate. Harlequin was good enough
for him, and all seasons, summer in
quest Of an audience. 1.-THE worlds mine
cyster--which / with tongue will ope."
Recognition at any price. Thus the sign
of the new law firm, "Ochiltree and Fa-
thcr." He was himself the originator of
the epigram of the three liars,-'Tom
Ochiltree is one," and naming a cele-
brated journalist whom for the moment
he did not like, sis the other two" He
told the most whimsical stories at his
own expense. He became a celebrity
without giving a thought to the means,
or any care to the making of a career.
Grant appointed him Marshal of Texas
1t was a joke. His district elected him
to Congress. 1t was joke. 'I know very
WE'LL" he exclaimed going out of the
House without an effort to stay there
and still testing at his own expense. ST
know very well how to live on nothing
year, but I'm dashed if l know how to
live on rive thousand a year.
Whilst a member of Congress he
brought in some resolutions on the death
of Herr Lasker, leader of the Socialists
in the Rechstag The incident became
the cause celabre of the moment both in
the United States and in Europe. mot
that l care about it," said Tom, Eek
cept the unfortunate prominence it gives
to Bismarck"
Countless such illustrations of his pc
cuiar wit might be related. His con-
versation abounded with them. He was
not like Travers in his scintillations, nor
like Jerome in his grotesquerie; yet he
had a touch of both of them, crossed on
Texas. Behind this frivolity, the jocund
love of giving and of receiving pleas
ure, there was a brain throbbing with
ideas and a heart as loyal, ardent and
fearless as ever beat in the bosom OF
an untaught, uncalculating barbarsm;
for in the highest, noblest sense a bar
barian he was born and a barbarian he
remained to the end; unspoiled by the
solid prosperity that came to him as a
result Of his genius in real affairs, or
by the Establishments of the great and
titled ones who welcomed him in the
great capitals; unseduced in his fine in
tellectual and moral structure by the dis
spations of the Smart Set, which he
affected rather in London and Paris
than in New York untainted in the
rare old china of his Southern chivalry
which, with all his heedlessnesses he had
amid the surrounding viciousness, Rugged
as an heirloom to his bosom; too buoyant
too aggressive, externally, to his life
long disadvantage, putting weapons into
!, the hands of his enemies, of whom he had
his share; but, within, a man of serious
conviction and genius moral courage, and,
at the close, despite vast accumulation
of worldly knowledge and some money,
his heart where it was in the begin
ming; with the weak against the strong
with the innocent against the corrupt
a man every inch of him!
Let no man regret Tom Ochiltree He
lived his life. He lived his life not per-
haps as he would have lived 1t had he
: known its mysteries a little earlier His
might have been very great career, for
he had the talents. the personality and
the tremendous driving power He de-
voted these to pleasure-or what he
thought was pleasure. His name will go
down among the social chronicles of the
time; but he was no more like the wits
and heaux of the Regency and the Resto-
ration than Selwyn is like Marlborough.