The Dillon herald. [volume] (Dillon, S.C.) 1894-????, 1911-06-29
PROCTOR KNOTT, OF KENTUCKY
appreciation of Noted Statesman,
Jurist, Wit, Humorist.

Knott, n former Governor of Ken
lucky, but in many ways the most
famous among Kentuckians OF
seml-modern timeS-a statesman, g
5urist and a wit-recalls at ones
the stirring days of reconstruction
and the orgies of corruption which
followed the close of the sectiona,
war.
Proctor Knott entered the nation.
al legislative aerena at an oppor.
tune moment for the exercise and
display of his exceptional talents
Like his colleague Beck, a sturdy
lawyer. and his colleague Winches.
ter, an unflinching follower of the
Jeftersonian philosophy, he poss-
sessed a faculty shared by neither
OF them; that of an incisive, death
ueanng irony. He delivered more
than one killing blow at subsidy
the word then used for what we
now know as graft reaching high
OF the judiciary committee, to
which he brought conspicuous pro-
tessfon and intellectual equipment.
He died at his home in Lebanon,
marion county, Sunday evening. If
he had lived to the 29th of Aug
ust, he would have been eighty-one
years of age. He had been in fail
ing health and his death was not
unexpected by his neighbors.
To the present generation of
readers the name of Proctor Knott
conveys tradition rather than a
memory. 1t seems indeed as far
away as the names of Randolph, of
Roanoke, and Thomas Corwin, with
whom in Congressional annals, he
will always be associated. Each of
them had the misfortune to unite
TO serious aptitudes and rare gifts
too obstrusive fancy. Each had
TO wrestle with an unruly tempera-
ment, which, by turns melancholic
and tlamboyant, resented alike the
familiarity and the fame invited by
their powers of eloquence and sa-
ure. None OF them could resist
ms pent. To eat his cake and
nave it is vouchsafed no man and
this trio of American celebrities
earnest men and scholars, learned in
legal and worldly lore, of mental
and personal dignity much in excess
OF their tendency to enliven and il
lustrate the occasion and the subject
matter by n resort to the devices of
the farceur-found, when it was
too late, that humor is a danger
Gus mistress.
Those who knew them made the
requisite distinction. Their public
never did. The multitude was daz-
Zied by the shining qualities and
did not clearly see and fairly esti-
mate the jurist and the statesman
In the orator and wit.
In most men of real parts +wo na.
lures are embodied. Proctor Knott
the official, was ore of the sever
est OF men; Proctor Knott, the
panioh' was one of the merri
est: ways subdued in manner
temperate in habit-he could set tn,
table in roar by word, by &
glance; but, next day, it would moi
be safe to confuse the man of af
iairs with the comedian of the
night before. Oddly enough for {
long time he winched under the
memory of the Duluth speech.
He had not in his early life the
discipline of college training, mol
the easy companionship of a house
full of books. But he was a schol.
arly, as well as a diligent student
"a voracious reader = and he re-
paired the deficiency, attaining both
as a writer and speaker, a style far
and away above the average of the
most accomplished favorites of for
tune and the schools.
If Proctor Knott had first seen
the light in London, or Paris, he
would probably have taken to the
world OF art-altogether an artist
in his essentials being-even his
political vaticanations and perspec-
tiVes taking their character from a
oogmatIc sense of form and tone
and color. He was, for all his
many-sided talents, the least adapt
able, or adjustable of men. He
nursed the idealisms of the poet
and the painter. He was fastedi-
Gus to a degree in his opinions, re-
slsting the inevitable even whilst
he admitted it. He took little in
politics, or law for granted. He
valued his friends; was indifferent
to money; loved human compan-
ionship and rose to it's require
ments; but his convictions, adman-
tine, immovable.
Yet was there nothing downright
or aggressive in his personal inter
course. On the contrary, he was
the gentlest and most sympathetic
OF men. AS consequence he
soon abandoned ambition and drop
ped out of political activity. He
was unequal to the increasing hur.
y-burly, the lowering demands, oi
public life. They offended his sen
s1bil1ties. He preferred the quie
ways of the college professor anC
the country gentlemen, and was al
happy in his retirement as he hat
been when star of the first mag
n1tude in the halls of Congress ant
the society Of the national Capitol
He had a certain love of solitude
and was never accessible to strang
ers. AS humorist he shone onl,
amidst the unconscious gayety O
his familiar friends. He W; cleve
equally as recOnteur and a com
edian. His dialect talents were ex
traordinary. He krew the peopl,
among whom he had lived, the cour
try-side in Kentucky and Missouri
and L..-