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However, there were other interests and other delights with which to occupy one’s self meanwhile, not the least of which was Mr. Butterworth himself. He was then out of Congress and in Chicago as Solicitor General of the World’s Columbian Exposition, for which Chicago was preparing. For a while I was relieved from writing about politics, and assigned to the World’s Fair, and there were so many distinguished men from all over the nation associated in that enterprise that it was very much like politics in its superficial aspects. There was, for instance, the World’s Columbian Commission, a body created under the authority of Congress, composed of two commissioners from each state, appointed by its governor, and that body exactly the size of the senate was like it in personnel and character. The witty Thomas E. Palmer of Michigan was its president, and there were among its membership such men as Judge Lindsay, later senator from Kentucky, Judge Harris of Virginia, who looked like George Washington, and many other delightful and pungent characters. But no personality among them all was more interesting than Colonel James A. McKenzie, Judge Lindsay’s colleague from Kentucky. He was tall and spare of frame, and his long moustache and goatee, and the great black slouch hat he woremade him in appearance the typical southerner of the popular imagination. He was indeed the typical southerner by every right and tradition, by birth, by his services in the Confederate army, by his stately courtesy, by his love of sentiment and the picturesque, by his wit and humor and eloquence, and his fondness for phrases. His humor sparkled in his kind blue eyes, and it overflowed in that brilliant conversation with which he delighted everyone about him; he could entertain you by the hour with his comments on all phases of that life in which he found such zest. He had been known as “Quinine Jim,” because as congressman he had secured the reduction or the abolition of the duty on that drug, so indispensable in malarial lands. He was fond of striking phrases; he it was who had referred to Blaine as a Florentine mosaic; and his reference to Mrs. Cleveland as “the uncrowned queen of America” had delighted the Democratic convention at St. Louis which renominated her husband for the presidency. And again at Chicago, on that memorable night of oratory in 1892 in seconding the nomination of Cleveland on behalf of Kentucky he stood on a chair and referred to his state as the commonwealth “in which, thank God, the damned lie is the first lick, where the women are so beautiful that the aurora borealis blushes with shame, where the whiskey is so good as to make intoxication a virtue, and the horses so fleet that lightning in comparison is but a puling paralytic.”
During one of many pleasant afternoons in the old Grand Pacific Hotel he began to tell us somethingabout the chronic office holders to be found in the capital of his state, as in most states, and said: “If God in a moment of enthusiasm should see fit to snatch them to His bosom I should regard it as a dispensation of divine providence in which I could acquiesce with a fervor that would be turbulent and even riotous.” It was in this stream of exaggeration and hyperbole that he talked all the time, but with the coming of the winter of that year my opportunities of listening to him were cut off. I was sent to Springfield to report the sessions of the legislature. In the spring a bill was under discussion for the appropriation of a large sum in aid of the World’s Fair, and when the usual opposition developed among those country members who have so long governed our cities in dislike and distrust of the people in them, a delegation came down from Chicago to lobby for the measure. It was not long until it was evident that they were not making much headway; the difference, the distinction in their dress and manner, their somewhat too lofty style were only making matters worse. I took it upon myself to telegraph to James W. Scott, the publisher ofThe Herald, apprising him of the situation, and suggesting that Colonel McKenzie be sent down to reënforce them. I felt that he would perhaps understand the country members better because he understood humanity better, and besides, I wished to see him again and hear his stories and funny sayings. He came, and after he had associated with the members a day or so, and they had seen him draw Kentucky “twist” from the deeppocket of the long tails of his coat, and on one or two occasions had watched him gently pinch into a julep the tender sprigs of mint the spring had brought to Springfield, the appropriation for some reason was made. While he was there he said he wished to visit the tomb of Lincoln, and it was with pride that I got an open carriage and drove him, on an incomparable morning in June, out to Oak Ridge cemetery. He was in a solemn mood that morning; the visit had a meaning for him; he had fought on the other side in the great war, but he had a better conception of the character of the noble martyr than many a northerner, especially of the day when that tomb was built, certainly a nobler conception of that lofty character than is expressed in Mead’s cruel war groups—as though Lincoln had been merely some shoulder-strapped murderer of his fellow men! The Colonel had never been there before, and it was an occasion for him, and for me, too, though every time I went there it was for me an occasion, as my sojourn in Springfield was an opportunity, to induce those who had known Lincoln to talk about him.
The tomb has a chamber in its base where there were stored a number of things; the place, indeed, was a sort of cheap museum, and you paid to enter there and listen to an aged custodian lecture on the “relics,” and thrill the gaping onlooker with the details of the attempt to steal the body, and buy a book about it, if you were morbid and silly enough. The custodian began his lecture in that chamber, and then led you out into the sunlight again, andup on the base of the monument, and showed you the bronze fighters, and at last, took you down into the crypt, on the brow of the little down that overlooks the cemetery.
There at last Colonel McKenzie stood beside the sarcophagus and after a while the custodian came to the end of his rigmarole, and, by some mercy, was still. And I stood aside and looked at the old Confederate officer, standing there in that cool entrance, beside the very tomb of Lincoln. He stood with his arms folded on his breast, his tall form slightly bent, his big hat in his hand, and his white head bowed; he stood there a long time, in the perfect silence of that June morning, with thoughts, I suppose, that might have made an epic.
When at last he turned away and went around to the front of the monument, and we were about to enter our carriage, he turned, and still uncovered, over the little gate in the low fence that enclosed the spot, he paused and gave his hand to the old custodian, and said:
“Colonel, I wish to express to you my appreciation of the privilege I have had this morning of paying my respects at the shrine of the greatest American that ever lived.”
He said it solemnly and sincerely, and then, still holding the delighted old fellow’s hand, he went on in profound gravity:
“And I cannot go away without expressing my sense of satisfaction in the eloquent oration you have delivered on this occasion. I was particularly impressed,sir, by its evident lack of previous thought and preparation.”