Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1912-03-28
From the Kansas CITY Star.

0fySN OH q AtN
thln Old mar alone. He has few callers
All day long the silence is broken only
bN the loud ticking of an alarm clock
or the raucus scratching of the old
mans pen as he sits and writes, slowly.
laboriously. Sometimes he reads the
newspapers, before the adven Of the
early winter evening. for his sight is
failing and these newspapers comprise
almost his sole communication with the
outer world. And such is fame. Twen-
ty years ago this gray thin old man
who sits alone was the most talked
abou person in America. About him
millions of words were written and
printed and he was the subject of hun
dreds of cartoons. The newspaper
which went to press without a story
about him didn't feel that it was Civ
ing its readers a sQuare lei But for
Is years he has been walking in the
bypaths of oblivion.
The man who sits alone is William
A. PETER, who, in 1891, captured the
spotlight. boots, brooches and baggage,
and held it for six wears, when it flick
cred out as suddenly as it came. PETER
o into the Senate of the United
States on the crest of the populist ave
that swept Yer the Kansas prairies In
the late sos N early '90s. Che phe-
nomenon of the uprising i'm itself was
so new r. strange that it would have
attracted widespread attention to its
beneficiary. But the newly elected SEN
ator had other claims to distinction.
When he walked Town the aisles OF
the Senate to take. the oath of office
he YVES accompanied by the most
luXuriant growth of whiskers in cap
tivity. and from that m the beard
OF the populiSt senator from Kansas
became the standard national joke and
the emblem of the populist party. True,
there mad been other whiskers in the
Senate. The whiskers of Senator Stew
art, of Nevada, at that time in their
heNday. lad been the subject of quips,
not to mention bon mots. But when
The whiSkers of the Kansan . loOmed
large OIL the Senate horizon, COMPETE
ton was stifled, rivalry smothered and
monopoly was born. In Senator PEI
fer's room today 30 s~crapbooks, con-
tanning $1,000 clippings, are piled high,
their contents testifying to the efficacy
OF WhiSkerS as a press agent without
spot or blemish.
Today ex-senator PETER at so. looks
across the wide street into the park of
the College of the Sisters of Bethany
and smiles the slow, tedious smile that
used to infuriate them in the Senate.
He is less robust these day. n his
voice quaverS sometimes. n he is
even thinner and seems taller than in
the days when his inneS and his
tallness We're subjects of ribald jest.
But his mind is clear. He wears IL
ance, which used to be the target for
many filings and arrows, is accumulated.
He smiles his slow. tedious smile and
says:
II am writing my memoirs, and l
have just finished a chapter relating
to my term in the Senate. / have here
a list of the bills and resolutions that
] introduced and advocated. There is
the bill providing for postal savings
banks; the bill to inquire as to whether
the government may take possession
of coal beds; a resolution to investi-
gate bond issues ut sales; a bill to
provide for the election of a president
by direct vote; an amendment provid-
ing for woman's suffrage: d resolution
to provide for a postal telegraph sys
tenn; Il bill to prevent unjust discrim-
inatio1l in freight rates: a bill to elect
United States senators by a direct Vote
of the people; a bill for the initiative
and referendum; a bill for the CONSOLE
dalton of the railroads.; a bill to limit
the office OF president to one term
There is nothing eXultant in his tone
as he reads the list-he is as tedious
and im~perturbable as of old, and he
leaves you to infer that he is recalling
the fact that most of these are progress
sive measures now. and that many OF
them have been enacted into law, and
that only the other day Postmaster
General Hitchcock himself advocated
postal telegraph lines. Perhaps, too.
there is a note of the eXultant in his
tone. when he says:
When l saw Br1stow's statement
about the election of presidents by Il
direct vote of the people the other day,
l dug up my bill introduced nearly 20
years ago, and n it to a Kansas re-
publican daily newspaper, and asked
them to print 1T. But it a never APP
peared.'
Perhaps it was we'll tina Mr.. PETER
was i~mperturbable and sting-proof in
for no man was W. more mercilessly
caricatured. more bitterly assailed,
more unsparingly ridiculed. The ex-
senator told a story which illustrates
the position which he held for nearly
six years as the lonely man of the
Senate:
There was a doorkeeper OF the Sen
ate who somewhat resembled me, be-
cause he had a long beard, and one day
when i came over from the lou to
the Senate. l saw him standing just
outside the Senate chamber. Two men
were passing and / overheard one OF
them say, as he passed the doorkeeper
pointing his finger at him the while:
There's that damn rascal hat beat
Ingalls, The %doorkeeper overheard it
too. and he was overcome with chagrin
and humiliation to be taken for Peffer
The ley morning he appeared at his
post without his beard: he had beer
shaved clean; the obliquy of being mis-
taken for PETER was more than he
could bear"
Whatever the estimate Of Senator
PETERS capacity may have been-and
there were many even in his own party
who believed that he was a weak lead
er-it is doubtful if a man ever sat In
the Senat of the United States whose
1nofiNoc u,oro laSS nnen To nllaSfinn