The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-01-21

Greek fire; Vests were a mixture of
vitriol. sweet Oil, rosewater. naphtha,
n gun cotton.
"Danton's motto was: L'audace!
Laudaceit TOujours faudacet"- ingalls,
weapon was SaEcasml Sarcasm Al
ways sarcasml' In that regard he
ank with Tristan Burgess. John Ran
dolph, of Roanoke, Thaddeus Stevens,
n Thomas Bracket Reed Vest
tempered his sarcasm with genial
hunor which cured the wound which
he had inflicted.
"Ingalls possessed the most copious
and most gorgeous vocabulary Of his
day, more copious and more gorgeous.
indeed, than that of any other Amer1-
can orator except Henry A. Wise; and
was most painstaking precisian IN
the use of our v~ernacuIar who has p
peared in our congressional life. He
polished his sentences until they gilt
tered as a en-. He was well qualtheda
to write an unabridged dictionary or q
book on synonyms. Clearly he thought
with Holland that:
1.-The temple of art is built of words
Painting and sculpture and music are
but the b1azon of its windows. borrow
ing all their significance from the light
and suggestive only of the temples
uses
Vests diction was rich. but the con-
structfon of his sentences lacked evil
ishings to which the austic Kansan
subjected his. If he used as much art,
he used the rarer art Of ~concealing its
use.
zach welded the scimitar of sa-
ladin rather than the two-handed
broad sword of Richard Occur de Lion.
ingalls, was tall, slender, and erect
as a ~grenadier; Vest was short, rotund,
and walked with the proverbia1 stu
dents stoop.
"IngaIls neglected none of the access
SORES of public speech. He looked well
to the stage settings. He was a con-
1nSc-2-, ~ Zn1-&1r1-fno Rni&hnr DnCnna
Conkling nor Solomon in all his glory
was more s~plendidly arrayed. He fol-
lowed in letter and in spirit the advice
of Polonius to Laertes:
"'Costly thy habit as Thy purse can
buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich,
not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the
man.
"Vest enjoyed the comforts of good
raiment, but cared nothing for the
adornments.
I'm the strictest acceptation of the
term, Vest was never popular in Mis-
souri,, and ingalls, was never popular
in Kansas. They had a wondrous hold
on the admiration but not on the affec-
tions of their constituents. Thinking
of Vest, a man was proud to call him
self a Missourian. Thinking of ingalls,,
another was proud to call himself a
Kansan.
Each through sheer brilliancy of in
tellect and ~eloquence of tongue
aroused intense enthusiasm among his
/ constituents, but Vest was not loved
in Missouri as is Francis Marion
Cockrell, and ingalls, was not loved IN
Kansas as was Preston B. Plumb.
Men stood off and gaZed with ad-
miration and with awe upon Vest and
ingalls, just as they stand off n gaze
with admiration and with awe upon
Mont Blanc or Pixies Peak: but they
never slapped them Familiarity and
/ fnndIU on tho hack as they Dir Cnnk-
rell and Plumb.
"Kansans are paying their highest
need of praise to ingalls, by placing
his ef1gy, carved by a cunning hand
from Parian marble. in Statuary hall,
the great American Valhalla, where
our choicest worthless do congregate
for posterity. Missouri would do the
same for Vest but for the fact that
Missouri's quota in that illustrious
company was filed he still
tabernacIed in the flesh.
sIt is a queer fact-perhaps a re-
erettable one-that these two cele-
brated intellectual gladiators never
engaged in an oratorical pitched bat
tie in the senate. Such a performance
would have been worth j~ourneying
across the continent to witness Each
being in perfect fettle, with a subject
of sufficient historic Importance, a
contest betwixt them ought to have
rivaled the Webster-Hayne debate in
enduring interest.
AlLS0419 R1SC0S00 N02L ~ NAAC q -
and in the Saturday Evening Post
Vest said, inter ALA, touching the
great Kansan:
"'Of all the public men with whom
I have served. John James ingalls,. of
Kansas, was the most original and &C.
centric. He was a living enigma, and
I could fully understand his mo-
tives m the many-sided phases of
his character He had a strong,
daring intellect, which defed all limi-
tations, and was an eloquent. attrac-
tive speaker, with a wealth of i'm
~agination and diction which was mex
and morose. but W a a great wore
painter and could express the most
elevated thoughts in language so
beautiful as to fascinate his hearers.
Above all, he vas an i~conoclast. and
nothing delighted him so much as to
startle and even shock the staid and
digniied senate by the utterance of
opinion utterly at variance with the
settled belief of many centuries:
"T do not believe hat ingalls, was
malicious or bad hearted. He was an
expert in denunciation and could not
wonderful capab3lity in that regard to
the world. He loved poetry, music,
painting, sculpture, and the beautiful
in nature. His prose poem on Blue
Grass, published in a Kansas maya
zine before ne came to the United
States senate, is a marvel in literature,
and I am glad to know that a sentence
from h a essay is to be inscribed on
the granite bowlder which marks his
grave. The sentence is the one in
which he eulQgizes the blue grass
sward, beneath which he sleeps. as a
carpet for the infant and a blanket
for the dead
Mr.. Speaker, Kansas acts wisely in
honoring John James ingalls,. for in
honoring him she also honors her
self"
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