The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1906-03-13
Tiumania-

we recently ndu occasion 10 speak
of Senator Tillman's change of attitude
and the change of public sentiment to-
ward him within the past few years.
Speaking OF the same line, a Washing
ton correspondent says that when Mr..
Tlllman came to the senate ten years
ago he was fitted to be at the head of
the commiTte on The Five Savage
Tribes" but that he has now become
more amiable, better tanned, more
amenahle. and that this accounts for
his promotion
1t vii! be recalled that during the
last democratic convention in st.
Louis there was much friction in the
committee Oh resolutions between Mr..
Bryan and the safe and sane mem
berS- 1t was Senator Tillman who
came to the rescue and made peace
and succeeded in getting Il unanimous
report. The funny part OF the situa-
ton finally dawned upon the pitchfork
senator from South Carolina, and in
talking with some of his friends he
enthusiastically congratulated himself,
finally remarking with his usual en-
phasis hat he really believed he was
becoming safe and sane himself.
Senator Tillman. has had a remark
able career, an outline of which is
given in the Sunday issue of the New
York Sun. His father died when he
was but two years old, but he had an
uncle who took an interest in him as
he grew up, and b~equeathed to him his
large and we'll chosen library. From
the time that he received it Mr.. Till
man became a student, and it is said
that he asnDw one of the best read
men in congress. Not long ago he was
compelled to take morphine to ease
the pain IN his throat, upon which
several operations We're performed,
and while under the influence of the
drug he lay back in his bed and re-
peated line after line and stanza after
stanza from Byron, Keats, Shelley,
Tennyson, Shakespeare and other
English pOets-stanZas which he had
not read for perhaps twenty years.
Mr.. Tnlman never had the advant-
age of a college education. he was
fourteen years of age when the war
between the states broke out, n was
sent to all academy to prepare for col
lege, but an abscess formed in b back
of his mothers large estate, a farm or
it. AT the age of seventeen he enlist
ed in the artillery corps at Atlanta,
but was never able to go to the front
on account Of his illness. As soon rs
he recovered his health he took charge
o fhis mothers large estate, Il farm Of
coo acres, and this he managed until
he was elected governor in 1890. He
married at twenty. and his fellow STU
lent of his farm and all his affairs
was his young wife. There are sever
al children, the Oldest Q being his
private secretary. Mr.. Tillman did not
hold any Office until he was elected
governor of South Carolina. Five
years prior to hat he was scarcely
known outside Of his immediate sec
ton. The first public speech he ever
made was at a gathering Of farmers
at Bennettsville, in 1885, when he was
thirty-eight years old. But the speech
attracted the attention Of the whole
state, brough him into immediate
prominence, and since then he has been
a conspicuous figure in South Carolina
affairs and the leading politician Of
the state.
He is a curious compound. We had
not supposed that Mr.. Tiilman was a
literary man. We had not thought OF
him as a lover Of poetry. It had never
dawned upon US hat he was a man Of
sentiment, yet we are told that he is
not only a lover of poetry, but a lover
of flowers. But we like him one the
less for il.
TiIlman and Rooseyelt-what an id
teresting pair. And 10 think that they
should be pulling together in political
harness. Is it omnibus? We wot not,
brethren. But it's interesting-deuced
- Richmond Times-Dis-