Evening journal., 1911-01-13
NEW NEWS OF YESTERDAY
Why Greeley'S Running
Mate Failed to Speak
By Holland"

A brigadier general of volunteers in
the Union Army. a United States SEN
ator at 81, and eight years later elect
ed Governor o Missouri Benjamin
Gratz Brown reached the height of his
public fame when. in 1879. he became
the tail of the Greeley presidential
ticket, nominated by the Liberal Re
publican party.
When the presidential campaign of
that year was in full swing Governor
Brown was brought on from the West
by his party managers for a campaign
tour through New England He was a
gifted speaker, and it was thought that
his eloquence would have a great ef-
feet on the younger element among the
voters. One of the places at which he
was scheduled to speak was New
Haven. Governor Brown was a gradu-
ate Of Yale, class of AZ, and when he
arrived in New Haven he was greatly
delighted TO be again amid the scenes
of his college days, which he had Wis
tied but once since his graduation, and
at the reception that was given him he
expressed his pleasure at the fact that
he had been asked to deliver a speech
in the town of his alma mater.
But that speech was never delivered.
In the early evening there spread
report from the hotel where Governor
Brown was stopping that he was I'll,
and soon IL was being limited that his
Illness was due to the effects of too
much cordiality. 1t was a rumor that
was not confined to New Haven. II
spread gradually all over the country,
and during the campaign IL was bark
ed about, in certain quarters that the
Liberal Republican candidate for Vice
President had been indiscreet on his
visit 10 New Haven-so indiscreet, in
fact, that he was able neither to de-
liver the speech he had been scheduled
to make there. though a crowded hall
had assembled to hear him. nor to con-
tinue elsewhere his New England
tour
That story. and the wide circulation
that it ultimately gained. was not dis
pleasing to the Republican politicians
yet, on the world Of the physician who
was called in to attend Gov Brown
there was not one word of truth In it,
AS soon as the rumor that Governor
Brown was i'll had reached a newspa-
per man OF New Haven, he sought out
this physician, and to the young man
the doctor said
The Liberal Republican ticket came
very near losing its candidate for Vice
President today. When i called upon
him professionally at his hotel, ! found
him suffering acutely, and / diagnosed
the case as one of poison. Governor
Browns friends told me that he had
been anxious to taste of soft shell
crabs, a delicacy that was not known
I'm his college days and that the dish
had so appealed to him that he had
imprudently eaten three. Very likely
one of them was not as fresh as IL
might have been; at all events, he was
poisoned by the delicacy. and so much
so that only after an hour or two Of
the hardest work succeeded in reliev-
ing him and bringing him out of dan
ger. But | would not be surprised If
he felt the effects of the acute Illness
for some time to come"
The young correspondent hurried
away, and was about to send the true
story Of the cause of Governor Browns
illness to the New York newspapers of
which he was the local representative,
when several the New Haven Repub-
lican campaign managers urged him
as a fellow Republican. 10 say nothing,
giving It as their opinion that the first
story of the cause of Governor Brown S
illness had better run its course. Their
counsel prevailed, and so it never be-
came known that not too much cor
diality, but what probably we should
now call ptomaine poisoning was the
primary cause of the abrupt termina-
ton of the New England campaign OF
the Liberal Republican candidate for
Vice-President.
Copyright, Ill, by +. J Edwards All
Rights Reserved)
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