South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1915-01-15
Statesmen Real
and Near.
By Fred c. Kelly

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15.-A call
came into the congressional library
for a pair of books. The attendant
who was sent TO the shelves after the
books, remarked:
ITS the first time either of those
have been out for a year I'll bet L
can guess who they're for Only one
man would be wanting such little
known books. They must be for
Sen. Sherman of Illinois,"
And they were, too. Sherman Is
always associating himself with some
book that scarcely anybody else ever
heard Of. we ourself cannot now re-
call the tides of the two books just
referred 10. Yet we heard them only
YESTERDAY. We could not remember
them long enough to put them down
on a piece of paper.
Now every time Sherman has an
obsolete volume yanked from the IL
brary shelf he does not necessarily
read it-that is, not all of ii. He may
not read more than one page OF II.
But from that page he will flush
phrase or a fact that he can use in a
speech. Little known phrases and
facts are things that Sherman dotes
on. He cares for them not for them
selves alone so much as because or
their use in a speech he hopes TO
make. Always Lawrence y. sherman
is at work on a speech. Sometimes he
will not deliver the speech for year,
but if ever occasion arises he has 1t
ready. If it were not for the hours
each day he devotes to working on
| speeches he would derive an extreme
~ scant amount Of fun from life, for
preparing speeches is his chief If not
his sole amusement.
Whenever Sherman reads anything
Of interest he stops and wonders If
it has any application to any bill
pending i'm the senate. If not, he
then considers the possibility that
there might be a bill in the course
of a year or two which could be
affected by a speech from him in
which might be incorporated his
newly discovered fact. In case there
/ is any chance at all of the fact being
useful at some future date, Sherman
carefully stores it away in his mental
wareroOms, with a memory tag on
it, so that he can fetch it out in
front on short notice. He rarely
takes notes, except in the case of
exact figures and he does not need to-.
When he has tucked a fact away
/ in the back of his head against a
rainy day in the future, il is just
as available for his purposes as if
he had il jOtted down in little book.
Somet he viii rummage through
/ a dozen big dusty tones in the course
of a day, reading and absorbing a
page here and a page there. but never
putting anything down except men
tally-and when he is ready to write
his speech all this material drops
right out of the chute into his lap
as fast as he wants it.
Practically every big secondhand
book dealer in the United States and
England has Lawrence Y. Sherman on
his mailing list. And yet Sherman is
not a collector in the ordinary sense.
He"never buys an old book unless he
thinks he can get something out of
it that he can utilize in a speech-a
speech prepared for the purpose of
annoying the democratic side Of the
senate chamber. He does not care
continental how far back be has to
go for a fact. Indeed. if he could
employ line from the tomb of Ram
eses il in support of a tariff conten-
| ton, he would gladly quote that in
preference TO a nice fresh copy of the
morning paper.
A member of congress was making
a speech the other day on a COMPARE
lively unimpOrtant bill and was ac-
companying his remarks with much
gesticulatory emphasis. Speaker
I Clark's official timekeeper whispered
that the members time was up
Jaw, let him talk" grunted Champ,
THE fellows having the time Of his
life
Copyright, 1915, by Fred C. Kelly