The age-herald., 1902-02-07
Washington Day By Day

The most talked of man in America is one of the most courteous and agreeable of all takers and one of the most en- gazing of all distinguished personages. ists or the clownish paragraphers could have so blundered as to select for their coarsest carricature and their bitterest gibes the least physically vulnerable and most good-natured man of the first polit- ical rank in this country is a question en- tireiy incomprehensible. It is nameless sort of something which one is wholly at loss to understand when face to face with Senator Hanna and the recipient of his unsurpassable kindness. whichy Is but another name for courtesy.
 Clearly courtesy is inborn of this man; civility came into the world with him. and goodheartedness laughed in the birth of that smile which never leaves the strong and masterful, even heroic, face. For Senator Hanna is of the stuff that makes the heroic captains of indutry' and the heroic captains of war. lion might be abashed before that sunshiny, resolute imperturbable face.
 Along the long reaches of varied and abundant experience of the world In It's more generic sense there has been seen no face quite like this one-quite it's equal in that consummate blending Of strength and gentleness. power and docility' sraVl- ty and laughter and intellectual acumen' in mastery and merriment.
 One is first impressed by Senator Han mas impulsive and dominant civility, then the great round heard, and then the study massiveness of his form that is not massive at all except in its bulldog strength and assertiveness.
 These extraordinary characteristics or this most extraordinary man hold you silent until you have looked at his eye brows and the corners of his mouth where there is more than smiles, there is laughter and at his jaws and brow, where there is more than mere strength there is all-conquering courage. One can imagine a burglar flying before one glance of that face.
 All these things you perceive In a Gance, instantaneously, and then you never felt so free in your life to speak your short speech to a stranger as to this man. His own strength makes you strong, his own ease makes you easy, and you have mysterious impulse to tell him of your dearest concerns, your wife, your sweetheart your personal and private fortunes. The man masters you, and you know if and are glad of 1t.
 You feel that if you had man like this one attached to you and your interests all the world you wish would come unto you and be your own. You feel that here is Titan of strength, conqueror or himself and more than eight hundred cities besides. You feel that here Is real greatness making for the meridian of a vaster power yet to be.
 And having obligingly consented to give of his priceless time in talking to you for the world, how he does talk-how his words flow in faultless harmony and re- sistlessness, like the flow of resistless river. with never a break, never a pause, never faltering over a lost word or a blundering over false syntax; but the calm, steady utterance or a man who knows what he Is speaking of and knows how to say what he knows. Possessed Of his facts, logic is his handmaiden and language the golden coach in which ne drives to your conviction.
 Such is Marcus Alonzo Hanna at i've and sixty, for years the most masterful man upon this continent.
 Yet the uninformed have joined the pro- fessionally interruptions in misrepresent- ing Senator Hanna to the public as type of the political ringmaster utterly differ ent from this-as one directly opposite to the man as he actually exists; and so greatly have multitude of Americans been deceived and misled respecting MT. Hanna as man and leader that the slow coming truth Is to them something sur prising.
 Instead of rudeness of speech, he is as choice of his conversational words as MT. Cleveland; instead of roughness of demeanor, he is as gentle and polite as was MT. Mckinley and with this po- liteness he has the advantage of over whelmingly greater intellectual force and vigor Seeing him and speaking with him, one can easily comprehend that he wept by the bedside of the dying Presi- dent; and more: one can more easily understand that this strong, self-reliant man was devotedly attached to the am fable but less powerful character whose greatness of position he so largely aided in creating. History furnishes us with innumerable instances wherein the more powerful not only formed tender attach ment for the less powerful but actually leant upon the inferior as prop and stay of greatness
 Senator Hanna is well-born, well-bred well-educated and he never knew priv alton, the lot of the early lives of so many great Americans, including at least three of our Presidents. His school ing in text books was completed in what was then perhaps the best college in the West, and is still far better than some schools which milionaires have in vainglory created. He quit college to ,enter his fathers wholesale grocery, and at five and twenty he succeeded on the death of his father to the control of the business. At thirty his interest in the grocery house was disposed of and he engaged in the iron and coal busi- ness, being the silent and working part ner in a firm which. ten years later was merged into the still existing and pros- porous firm of M. A. Hanna & Co. He