The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-01-24
LAUGHS FAR TOO FEW
DEPEW AS SENATOR A SAD D1S-
 APPOINTMENT.
Instead of Frightening Deba e in the Upper Chamber, the New Yorker Has Added HeaVi-
 ness to Discussions.
Advertiser Bureau. Colorado Building,

Washington, Jan. 23.
 There Is one Republican senator serV- ing his first term who, judged by popu- lar expectation at the time of his ad- vent ought now to be the most luminous and lofty statesman of the times.
 Indeed to whom, this last quarter or a century, have the American people leit they were deeper bound by expectahcy than to Chancey Mitchell Depew? Look at his self-indlted biography in the Con- gressional Directory. Contemplate the numerous large events which he has H. luminated as with a spotlight. Mir De- new has beeua in the Senate not yet six years, but his story of his life is seven times as long as that by Senator Will liam B. Allison, who entered the Senate over thirty years ago.
 The American people had every right of reason to look for great revelations of wisdom and brightness from Chaun- cey Depew. He had displayed himself to admiring dinner parties as the peerless modern DemOcritus. He laughed at the follies of men about him and held them up to a delightful ridicule, SO that when it was assured that he was coming to the United States Senate the whole land seemed to smile at the prospect of Jo- cund innovation in the staid and solemn
 
 Chauncey was coming provided with an eXhaustless lubricant of humor for the machinery of the National State and it would henceforth move on and on to peAce and prosperity buoyed ever by jest and laughter Nobody dreamed that
 loft expectation fails, and most oft
 there
 Where most 1t promises"
 Looking for Laughter.
 Rather was he the more popularly es- teemed when he had surely come to the Senate and the people were still looking up to him and hoping of him for the fat ness and increase in all things good which laughter prophecies. For he ap- peared as one who,
 Prom the crown of his head to the
 sole of his foot, was all mirth."
 Coming into the Senate with his res plendent fame as an after-dinner ora tor, with a reputation that had traversed all lands as terrible titilltor remarked throughout christendom as a merciess provoker of inextinguishable laughter and set down in all minds that thought in the English language as one like Falstaff, not only d wit himself but the occasion of wit in others, there were in very truth great expectations of Chauncey Depew when he came to Congress as senator from New York.
 He came to Congress, and he spoke, did Chauncey Depew. It had been ex- pected that with the loosened fountains of his humor wisdom likewise freely would exude from the huge intellectual oil tank, Illuminating all things and causing lesser stars to shine anew with reflected light; that q new and brilliant type of statesmanship would be seen which would make all those solemn, high collared, pallid old stiffs on the Clay, Calhoun and Webster class look like waXen dummies in the gallery of Ameri- can statesmen.
 MT. Depew spoke with everybody who went to hear him-as people first did in great throngs-prepared to laugh. His hrSt appearance was a disappointment, and the experience has been repeated every time he has addressed the Senate at length. Only few people among his auditors at rare times who were blessed with superior histrioHic ability, could play the part of being tickled by any thing MT. Depew said, It is needless to dwell upon the extreme disappointment that has therefore cast gloom in the gal leries and corridors of the capital. to say nothing of the painful melancholy in the Senate chamber. For there is no more relentless. unforgiving critic than the man who has been made to feel that he has good old laugh coming and then realizes after all that the source in which he confided in incapable of the desired production.
 Alas the Disappointment,
 Wherefore, there has been much poo- poohing and Judging upon tho part of innumerable persons who had anticipat- ed the liveliest kind of risori2l revelry as Intellectual guests of Chauncey Depew.
 Senator Depew's most refinedly pathetic effort to be funny of late has been as a defender of the Roosevelt administration Just before the holidays he made a speech on Cuban reciprocity. car loads of which speech he sent out broadcast among the people of the land In all that speech there was only one line which carried the proud Depew trophy of laughter in paren- thesis. The trouble with MT. Depew's au- dltors who were willing to be accommo- dating on this. as on other occasions, was that they didn't know tust where in his