The Lexington intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1901-1949, 1904-07-02
PICTURESQUE PERsONALTTIES.

PICTURESQUE PERSONALITIES.
Last week kentucky lost two Of the
most picturesque and interesting pub
lie men ia that state-HOn. ] SOUle
Smith, FALCON, and Hon. James
M;Kenzle, ''Quiuine Jim. Soule
smith was one OF the most versatile
and brilliant men in Kentucky, a
lawyer, poet, newspaper aud magazine
writer, orator. He could easily have
ranked with the foremos. few in half
a dozen fields oil greatness, il be had
cared for greatness. But he did not.
He cared as little for the things that
men strive for and die for as any man
the writer ever knew. His wants and
his ambitions we're the simplest. He
was, so to speak IN exiled patriot Of a
land Of his imagination. AS a poet,
he was an Ernest Dowson without his
moral infrmities; as az orator be was
a Tom Marshall without his pride OF
speech; as a mar Of learning, he was a
Caleb Gushing without his submer-
gence of personality; as a man, he was
about all that is at once wholesOmely
aud winsomely human According to
accepted standards his career was a
failure, but his friends, who loved
him with an affection which would
not fit other men, will never admit it.
Mckenzie was a very different man
of a species destined sooner to be-
come extinct, He was a compound
of Ben Hardin and Artemus Ward.
He was a "butcher knife whetted on
a brlckbat, " and a most amiable wag
To the world at large he is known
by his successful single-handed
effort to have quinine put on the free
list In the late 7Os or the early SOS.
Part 81 this speech was so whitening
and terrific that 1t seemed likely to
the cause he soughttO advance,
3 I'd parts Of 1t we're so amusing as to
bring the house TO its feet in screams
OF laughter and applause. Many
readers Of the INTELLIeENCER re-
member his speech at the democratic
national convention in Chicago in '92
when twenty thousand people confined
night by a torrent Of rain amused
themselves by calling up and bowling
down everybody Of national promi-
hence in the hall. 1t was three
o'clock In the morning when the mob
to call for "Quinine Jim T"
Mckenzie climbed to a platform,
stretched up to his full six feet six,
threw into his face an expression that
Garrick would have studied, and
drawled out: "If l speak as long or
bore you as much as my predecessor,
you may string my cadaver to a rafter
Of this cammOdious but somewhat
leaky auditorium They kept him
on his feet forty five minutes while
he told them that everybody "from
the Androscoggin to Yuba Dam" was
In favor OF Cleveland, "even the people
Of the 'Pennyrlle' district of Ken
he said, turning to the
abstemious and digniRed William @
Of the old Ashland district and
assuming a tone of reverential fervor,
''where the whiskey is so pure that
drunkenness is accounted a virtue. "
But humOr was McKenzie's ruin as
1t was Proctor Knott's. His sanity
was greater than his wagCery but he
never got credit for it. Lincoln was
prudent enough never to be humorous
10 public speech and If Mckenzie, who
was reared and lived in the same
in which Lincoln was born,
had been as wise he would have been
as great a terror in debate; for like
McGinty, he was "a fellow that you
cheat a bit F" Soule Smith and
Mckenzie were friends Of the David
and Jonathan degree by a mysterious
law which binds geniuses of the most
diverse types, They died on the same
day.
NEVER!