Evening Tribune. (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 12, No. 191, Ed. 1 Saturday, June 25, 1892 Page: 2 of 8
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GALVESTON, TEXAS—SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1892.
EVENING TRIBUNE,
2
WINNERS OF THE PULLMAN.
GYMNAST JULES KELLER.
SOME ODD STORIES.
THE FIRST IRON RAM.
tion.
that he was
ft
J
■ ?
7^
SPORTING NOTES.
I
o
“The
CHECKERS AND CHESS.
I
IT
h
INTERESTING INCIDENTS RELATED BY
MAJOR ALFRED R. CALHOUN.
THE MERRIMAC’S DARING RAID ON
A UNION WAR FLEET.
Checker Problem No. 171—By Grosvenor.
Black—1*, 3, 11.
White.
1.. 8 to 12
2.. 22 to 18
3. .21 to 14
I
At the recent games of the New York
Athletic club Harry Jewett,, the famous
Detroit Athletic club sprinter' was defeat-
ed by Wager Swayne, Jr., of Yale, in the
220 yards dash. The time was 22 3-5 sec-
onds. __
E. L. Hall, champion tennis player of
the south for 1891, successfully defended
his title at Washington recently, and will
retain the challenge cup for another year. 1
White—Nine pieces.
'White to play and Sui mate in three
moves.
Black.
1.. K takes B
2.. Q interposes
“free at last!”
The count now renewed his addresses
with more ardor, but one night he was
wounded in a meeting with Louis Ber-
nard, a fine young man, of her own class,
to whom Marie Guion was engaged.
To avoid the consequences of his temer-
SOLUTIONS.
Checker problem No. 170:
Black.
1.. 31 to 27
2.. 15toll
3.. 13 to 17
4. .27 to 23, and wins
Chess problem No. 170:
White.
1.. RtoQB7ch I
2.. Q—KKt 3 ch
3. .Q takes Q mate^ _
KELLER’S ARM.
“I am fearless,” Keller says, because I
am safer on my hands than other men are
on their feet. If my mother were not living
I would put 150 pounds weight on nj
neck and walk across Niagara on my hands,
but I have promised my mother not to be
reckless.”
The athlete’s hands, on which he walks,
jumps, slides and does all sorts of difficult
things, are smooth and firm, but not cal-
loused. When he strikes a table or the
floor with his open palm the resultant
sound resembles that caused by wood
striking wood. Best of all, this man who
has proved superior to fate is the happiest,
the cheeriest of human beings.
Willis Steell.
I
listll
La Fleche, the Charity Horse.
Baron ITirsch’s handsome filly La Flecbe
was a very promising candidate for honors
in the recent English Derby after the Duke
of Westminster’s Orme was poisoned, b it
Sir Hugo, a 40 to 1 shot, captured Epsom’s
world famous race, and the philanthropic
baron’s great runner got second place.
A very interesting fact about La Flecbe
is that all her earnings are given to vari-
ous charitable institutions. She captured
up ior cue weaK
little end of the di-
vided Union. The
,. north could put
more armed men
afield, and more
<■* and larger ships
afloat with more and larger guns bulging
out at their portholes than the south could
scrape together for years. Hence neces-
sity’s traditional role was repeated and the
first iron floating ram, the dreaded and
destructive Merrimac, slid down from her
stays one fine spring morning, took a sous-
ing if rather ungraceful plunge in the Vir-
ginia waters, then righted herself with an
air that seemed to convey to the trim and
model men-of-war of the world, and of the
United States in particular, the saucy,
challenging salute: “I am here! Haul
down your colors!”
The monster, for such she proved to be,
luad nothing to brag of as a sailing beauty. |
She looked like the roof of a house afloat.
Her construction was of the most primi-
tive kind, such as a people in desperate
straits could bring about. But the idea
was everything, sloping ironclad sides,
ironclad shields for pilot house, gun cham-
bers, machinery and crew’s quarters and a
submerged hull and ramming beak. That
was the new thing under the sun in actual
practice—iron, iron everywhere.
In order to economize in time and money
the projector of the Merrimac ram fished
the hull of the former United States screw
war frigate Merrimac from the bottom of
the Elizabeth river at Norfolk, where she
had been sunk, after firing and scuttling,
by a Union expedition early in the war.
The transformation into a ram began by
cutting the hull down to within three feet
of her old light water line. Both ends for
seventy feet were decked over level so that
the weight of superstructure and arma-
ment would keep them below water. In
the middle section—about one-half the
ship—a sloping roof was laid of pitch pine
and oak twenty-four inches thick. This
extended from the water line at an angle
of 35 degs. to a point seven feet above the
gun deck. At the vessel’s ends this shield
was rounded so as to give the bow and
stern gups wide sweep.
The upper ends of the shield planking
did not come together by about twenty
feet, and the opening between them was
covered with a grating that served as a
ventilator to the chambers below and also
as a promenade deck. Over the shield
planking was bolted four inches of rolled
iron in two layers, the under layer running
horizontally, the outer one up and down
the slope. The bolts extended through the
twenty-four inches of wood and were clinch-
ed on the inside.
The propelling power of the old hull was
the weakest part of her, The engines had
been condemned before the war, and the
fire and a long soaking in the salt water as
she lay submerged, hadn’t improved them.
In fact the Confederates had condemned
the old thing for all practical purposes in
the navy, but considered her a cheap plant
to let the “cranks” tinker with. The Con-
federacy had no foundries, no patterns, no
workmen and no tools nor machinery for
ironclad building, and everything had to
be improvised; workmen had to be trained,
and the projectors and backers of the new-
fangled notion were obliged to be patient
and cautious so as not to weary practical
people by demands for this and that un-
heard of thing.
The designer and constructor of the ram
was John L. Porter, an old United States,
naval officer, who had carried the plan of
an ironclad shield for war vessels in his
head for years before the Confederacy was
thought of. Another factor was Lieut.
John B. Brooke, who laid the plating and
also prepared the armament for the mon-
ster battery. The guns numbered ten,
a 7-inch rifle apiece for the bow and stern,
a 6-inch rifle and three 9-inch smooth-
bores for each broadside. The monster was
not to be unique in capacity for standing
hard knocks alone. She was to give hard
knocks. By a device of Lieut. Brooke’s
steel bands three inches in thickness were
shrunk on around the breech of each can-
non to prevent bursting under heavy
charges. Last, but not least, for that was
the main purpose of this new creation,
came the ram, a cast iron prow projecting
four feet, and to be completely submerged
during action. Relatively this was a trifling
appurtenance, like the nose on a face, but
it weighed 1,500 pounds. All the heavy
armor was simply to shield men, engines,
Mascagni’s New Opera.
“L’Amico Fritz,” under the title oi
“Friend Fritz,” was recently produced io
Philadelphia for the first time in America.
The opera is die work of Pietro Mascagni,
the composer of “Cavalleria Rusticana,”
which brought the talented young Italian
fame and fortune. “Friend Fritz” made a
decided hit, and sends Mascagni several
rounds higher up on the ladder of fame.
It also tends to disprove the claims of his
critics that his wonderful work in “Caval-
leria Rusticana” was due to “accidental
inspiration” and was not the result oi
“stable genius.”
mo
jU 05
I
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1
JULES KELLER.
But when Keller was twelve years old he
was performing in St. Petersburg with his
master, who used to catch him as he swung
off a trapeze. One night he dropped Jules.
who fell fifty feet, striking on his legs and
back, and was taken home to die in the
“old mother’s” arms. Instead of dying
Keller recovered a little of the sense oi
feeling in his legs, while the strength
which bad been crushed out of them found
its way into his hands and arms.
For three years, however, the poor little
gymnast lay on his back, and as it was
necessary that he should work at some-
thing he began to study tailoring. “Bui
oh, I hated it, he says; “I used to lie awake
nights and think how I might return tc
my beloved profession.” He practiced un-
til he felt sure that his body would follov
unerringly the orders of his fingers. Ther
he sought a public engagement and ob
tained it on the strength of his banistei
feat. This consists in his running uj
stairs on his hands and sliding down ?
banister, also on his hands, with his para
lyzed legs balanced in the air. Of all the
feats which Keller has since added to his
repertory, this first one remains the mosi
popular.
Keller is twenty-six years old, 5 feet i
inches in height, and weighs 120 pounds,
His chest measures thirty-nine inches
with five inches expansion. In a composec
state his forearm measures twelve inches
and his biceps fourteen. These expand
inches. The muscles of his arm are undei
the most beautiful control, and the strength
of his grasp is inconceivable.
"Woolas the Handicap Man and Winship
the Time Prize Victor.
The winners of the Pullman road race of
1892, the most ambitious event of the kind
run in America today, were J. B. Woolas,
a handicap man,
who was first" to
finish, and H. R.
Winship, who se-
cured the time
prize. The race, ,
which is run year-
ly between Chi-
cago and Pull-
man, had 387 en-
tries and 250 start-
ers this year, the-^^j
largest number onS
record since the ‘r/A
race was inaugu- |
rated in 1887.
Woolas, the win-
ner, had the bene-
* iii
The lieutenant in charge made a formal
surrender and went on board a Confederate
gunboat, but the Union troops on shore
continued to fire upon the Confederates,
the Congress’ colors were not struck, and
Commodore Buchanan directed that hot
shot be poured into her. While she was
burning her crew jumped into the water,
and two southern officers lost their lives in
IN COLLISION WITH THE CUMBERLAND,
machinery and cannon, while the vessel
should be fighting her way up to an enemy
to give a finishing thrust with that terri-
ble beak.
The news of the building of the Merri-
mac was sounded abroad in the fall of 1861,
but she was not ready for launching until
March, 1862, and people up north, who de-
pended upon long range gossip to enlighten
them, Concluded that she was a myth, and
southern folks, who saw good iron, rare
gold and many solid days’ work going into
her and no output, set her down as a fizzle.
So when she steamed from Norfolk into
Hampton Roads on March 8 she had a fair
show to give the public on both sides of the
line a sensation.
Hampton Roads is a waterway between
He went to Turkey and took service under
the sultan, preferring to fight under a
Mohammedan than under any of the
“Christian” kings who then cursed Eu-
rope.
Count de Rochau, believing that he had
won an undisputed field to himself, re-
newed his attentions to Marie Guion,
who had left school and now, with her
heartbroken mother, was trying to carry
on the business of the unfortunate father
and husband in the damp, dark cells of the
Bastile.
One day Mme. Guion said to her daugh-
ter:
“We must fly from Paris, my child. It
may be flying to death, but better that
than the dishonor that threatens from this
monster, the Count de Rochau.”
Marie kissed her mother and replied:
“With you and >God. But do not lose
heart, dear mother; justice cannot sleep
forever in France. Let us pray that when
sheawakes vengeance may not be made
her ally.”
And so the two women closed up their
home, abandoned the business that had
guaranteed them above want, and with
their little portable belongings fled to Bor-
deaux. Here, under an assumed name,
they again renewed the strenuous battle
of life.
Never a word did they hear from the
father in the cells of the Bastile, for to the
people of the outer world the wretched
prisoners were as the dead.
Now and then a line came to France
from the gallant youth fighting under the
star and crescent of the Moslem. “Wait
with patience, heart of mine,” Louis Ber-
nard would write. “The storm clouds
darken over France. Even here, by the
Golden Horn, I hear the hoarse muttering
of the red tornado that is about to break
upon Paris. The wrongs of three centu-
ries are about to be avenged, and the
reign of the nobles will end in their own
life blood.
“But here by the Bosphorus I pray for
the day and dream of the hour when the
sound of the first blow will go ringing
around the world. I imagine myself lead-
ing my old friends against the Bastile and
freeing him. I have learned to be a sol-
dier, and I shall use my knowledge to a
purpose. The Count de Rochau and I
shall meet once more, and but one of us
will remain to tell of that meeting. That
one will be your husband—Louis Bernard.”
Four years passed since Jean Guion had
heard the doors of the Bastile closing be-
hind him and shutting out the loved ones
and the world. The seasons came and
went, and hope sickened and died out in
his heart.
One day when the sky was clear the
prisoners looking out through the bars saw
piHars of dust and smoke arising, and they
. heard the increasing and ever nearing roar,
like the rush of maddened waters when
the hills pour down their floods.
“What is it?” the prisoners whispered
one to the other.
No one could answer. It might mean
death to them, but was not that better
than life? So why should they fear?
Nearer and nearer came the rush and
the roar. And now the prisoners could
I hear above the ceaseless din the booming
' of artillery, like the beating of funeral
guns, and to their eager ears came the
> hoarse shouting of men and the eaglelike
cries of despoiled women.
1 Nearer and nearer, higher and higher,
clearer and clearer came the rush and the
roar, the crash of cannon and the rattle of
i muskets, and higji above all the victors’
i shouts and the exultant cries of the women.
The Bastile trembled and rocked. Guards
and keepers seized arms, and, palefaced,
rushed out to defend their gates.
; But what availed such resistance to stem
i the wild torrent of the people’s wrath?
i The day of the aristocrat was over. The
reign of the people had come, and the
■ black wrongs of three centuries of merci-
J less oppression were being wiped out in
* blood.
There were shouts and shrieks in the
Bastile court. The governor was dead,
9
-I
LA FLECHE.
the One Thousand Guineas stake and has
won every race she entered except the
Derby. v
She is by St. Simon-Quiver, and bears
the distinction of having been bred foi
Queen Victoria. About a year ago Baron
Hirsch secured her at a sale of royal year-
lings for the sum of $27,500, the largest
price but one ever paid for so young a
horse. Baron Hirsch’s entire stable runs
for charity, but La Fleche is the bright
star of the great philanthropist’s string.
tn
J. B. WOOLAS.
fit of a handicap of 6 minutes, but passed
187 riders and reached Pullman in 53m. 40s.
W. C. Anderson, the second man to finish,
was handicapped 30 seconds more. His
time was 54m. 50s.
Winship, the time prize winner, finished
in 51m. 28s. He was handicapped lm. 15s.
H. A. Githens (scratch) was second with
51m. 54s. Winship is a well known Chi-
cago wheelman. He won the race in 1887
and secured the time prize in the same
year and in 1888.
Woolas is thirty-two years old and weighs
145 pounds. He was a dark horse in the
contest, and his friends alone looked upon
I
1
I
9
f
H. R. WINSHIP.
stolen by some miscreant.
igg|||g
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I
The bicyclists of Buffalo are planning to
have a great century ran soon.
J. S. Mitchell, the hammer thrower, re-
cently lowered the world** record for
throwing the 56-pound weight. He flung
the missile 35 ft. 6 in. The old record was
34 ft. 11 in.
The annual championships of the. Ama-
teur Athletic union of the United States
will be held Oct. 1.
M. L. Kittredge, the famous young Chi-
cago catcher, was recently married to Miss
Annie M. Ball, of Bucksport, Me.
President Nick Young says that from a
business standpoint the twelve club league
is working very satisfactorily, and that
there is no sign of weakening anywhere
along the line.
William Banker and F. M. Brinker, of
Buffalo, who did such great tandem bicy-
cle riding last season, have dissolved part-
nership, and Banker and his brother
George will ride together.
Henry Chadwick, the “ father of base-
ball,” will soon publish his reminiscences
of baseball for the past thirty years.
It is said that Willie Windle will do no
more track racing this year.
J. Malcolm Forbes is very ambitious tc
crown his wonderful Nancy Hanks queen
of the turf. She has a record of 2:09, three-
quarters of a second behind Sunol’s great
mile.
The Poorman road race, seventeen miles,
will be run at Cincinnati, July 4, for the
third time.
The world’s greatest standing high
jumper is now A. P. Schwaner, of the
New York Athletic club, who recently
made a new record of 5 ft. 3X in. The
previous record was 5 ft. IX in., made by
S. S. Crooks.
John M. Ward has released pitchers
Terry and Inks from his Brooklyn team.
Noah H. Swayne has been elected presi-
dent and manager of the Yale Baseball
association for 1893.
ifl
him as a possible
winner. He be-
longs to the Lake
View Cycling club
and never before
rode in a race. He
is a cracker baker
by vocation and
has owned a wheel
for only three
years. After the
race his friends
lifted him on their
Y !/ shoulders, com-
ypelling him to
\ leave his trusty
bicycle, which was
The start of
the Pullman road race is at the Leland
hotel, Chicago, and the finish is about fif-
teen miles away in front of the Florence
hotel, Pullman. There were 130 starters
in the race last year, and N. H. Van Sick-
len won the time prize with a run of 50m.
17s. R. M. Barwise was the first man to
reach Pullman.
low
Clever Birds.
A gentleman tells the following in regard
to the cleverness of two goldfinches upon
which he kept a close watch while they
were building a nest on a small branch of
a tree. When the nest was finished he
noticed that the weight of the birds and
the eggs was too great for the strength of
the supporting branch. The goldfinches
also perceived that the nest would fall
unless something was done and, after a
great deal of bird talk, they flew away and
came back with a stout string. Then they
cleverly fastened the bending twig to a
stronger and higher branch of the tree,
and thus preserved their nest and its con-
tents from destruction.
BA \
ten
White—10*, 16, 20.
Black to play and draw.
Chess Problem No. 171—By Charles A«
Gilberg.
Black—Nine pieces.
and in the dismal angles the trembling
guards were being shot down.
Looking out through the bars, Jean
Guion saw that the leader of the grena-
diers, who had carried the prison, was a
bronzed face young man in the uniform of
a captain.
While he wondered the door of his cell
was broken open. The young captain :
caught the old man in his arms and
shouted:
“Free at last! Free at last! Oh, my
father!”
That night Jean Guion was back in his
old home. That night the arms of wife
and daughter were about him, and he
learned that the daughter was the wife of
Captain Bernard.
That night the mob in the Place Ven-
dome marched by the light of torches,
marched holding aloft the tricolor of the
revolutionists and the heads of the first
aristocrats who had fallen, and the head
in the advance was that of the Count de
Rochau.
Subsequently Louis became General j
Bernard, and he lives in history as the
bravest of Napoleon’s commanders, the
one soldier who was ever true to the peo-.
pie. ___________
She Was an Experiment, the Offspring
of a Dreamer’s Brain and of Poverty
Stricken Workshops, but She Revolu-
tionized the Methods of Fighting at Sea.
ICopyright, 1892, by American Press Associa-
tion. Book rights reserved.]
EFFERSON DA-
VIS and his col-
leagues were not
slow to see that
they had a first
class war on hand,
and that the Con-
federacy would
the lower end of Chesapeake bay and the
mouth of James river. The Confederacy
occupied the southern shore with batteries,
the North the northern shores with forts
and batteries and war vessels at anchor.
When the Merrimac steamed into the
Roads five Union vessels lay just across
the main channel, the 30-gun sloop Cum-
berland and the 50-gun frigate Congress at
Newport News, and six miles east, off
Fortress Monroe, the 40-gun frigates Min-
nesota and Roanoke and the 50-gun frigate
St. Lawrence. They were wooden ships,
like all navies in those days, and on March
7, in anticipation of the Merrimac’s raid,
an order had been dispatched from Wash-
ington for these vessels to make all haste
into the Potomac river for safety.
This order hadn’t reached its destination
at noon of the 8th, and on board the Cum-
berland and Congress the sailors’ washed
clothes were drying in the rigging and
their boats were swinging from the booms
when the ram hove in sight. Things
changed in a twinkling, however, when a
pillar of black smoke was seen rising out
of Elizabeth river and a strange craft
steamed from under the Confederate bat-
teries and headed for Newport News. A
swift sailing Union picket boat ran out to
reconnoiter, and fired a few shots to warn
friends inshore that the stranger came not
in peace but for war. The Congress and
Cumberland and the shore batteries, ag-
gregating 100 guns, opened on the ram at
three-fourths of a mile distance. Commo-
dore Buchanan, an old navy officer, was
aboard the Merrimac and decided to make
shoi-t work of it and strike the Cumberland
at once. While moving up to her prey the
Merrimac passed the Congress and received
from her a full broadside. At the same
time the pivot gun of the ram was fired at
her intended victim, and one gun’s crew <<’
the Cumberland was swept away. Then
the ram struck with her powerful beak
almost at right angles, close to the Cum-
berland’s forerigging, making a hole that
a “horse and cart” might pass through.
The forward rifle gun of the ram at the
instant of collision delivered a shot that
killed ten men at one gun on the Cumber-
land. Then the Merrimac backed away,
leaving her iron beak broken off in the
sides of the luckless frigate, and quickly
turned upon the Congress with a raking
stern fire.
The Cumberland continued in action
nearly an hour. When bailed to strike
colors her commander, Lieut. Morris,
shouted, “Never, I’ll sink alongside!” She
was leaking badly all of this time and her
crew was driven by the rising water to
the upper decks and there continued firing
from the deck guns. A sailor on the roof
of the ram was cut in two by a shell from
the Cumberland just as she went down.
She sank in fifty-four feet of water and her
flag floated from her topmast above the
waves. The crew saved themselves by
jumping and swimming ashore.
The Congress tried to avoid the fate of
her consort and escape, but she grounded
and the Merrimac ran up to within 200
yards and riddled her with shells. Her
commander, Lieut. J. P. Smith, was killed,
her scuppers ran blood, her crew was being
slaughtered with no chance to retaliate, ______________________
and her officers displayed the white flag, jty, Louis Bernard had to fly from France.
He Makes His Hands Do the Work of His
Paralyzed Legs.
Although born as strong and perfect as
most men Jules Keller, who is well known
to all Americans fond of witnessing feats
of skill, strength and daring, was so cruel-
ly handicapped by a misfortune at an early
age that his stage career seemed ended.
But Keller’s feats, although remarkable,
are noi nearly so wonderful as the story oi
his life. He was born in Konigsburg, old
Prussia, and is one of a family of eleven,
all healthy and muscular. When a mere
lad he was apprenticed to a trapeze per-
former, and quickly showed that he was
born for a life in mid air.
A Tale of Love and Devotion, Persecu-
tion and Imprisonment—There Came a
Day of Reckoning, When Virtue Was
Rewarded and a Tyrant Lost His Head.
[Copyright, 1892, by American Press Associa-
tion.]
In the year 1787 the Count de Rochau,
one of those wealthy and profligate nobles
who prepared by their conduct the French
people for the bloody revolution that soon
followed, became enamored of a beautiful
schoolgirl. This young lady was the
daughter of a respectable tradesman named
Jean Guion.
The count, failing to win the daughter
by direct solicitation, determined to
frighten the father to his purpose.
M. Guion was a descendant from an old
Huguenot family, and had all the nobility
of mind and purity of character that dis-
tinguished those remarkable people. Al-
though he knew the power of the Count
de Rochau, he met his proposal with an in-
dignant response and ordered the wretch
from his presence.
The count had plenty of power without
any principle or magnanimity. Such an
act as M. Guion’s was beyond his compre-
hension, but he showed that he could en-
tertain revenge and plan the way for suc-
cess at the same time. On a trumped up
charge, and it is amazing how light the
charge of a noble might be in order to im-
prison a plebeian, M. Guion was arrested
and thrown into the Bastile.
down the northern
Goliath, some mir-
acle, some monster
of fabulous power
to make weight
and even things
up for the weak
THE RAM UNDER CHOSE FIRE,
attempting to rescue the disabled sailors
from drowning. The Congress burned all
night, and after numerous explosions of
shells and loaded cannon, at intervals, her
magazines blew up toward morning and
only blazing fragments remained.
At the commencement of the fight the
Union frigate Minnesota, a twin vessel
with the old Merrimac, steamed up to take
a hand. When the Congress dropped cut
the Merrimac started to meet the Minne-
sota, but the latter grounded in water
where the Confederate pilot feared to risk
his vessel. The frigates Roanoke and St.
Lawrence were not at all shy in scraping
acquaintance with the new product of the
Norfolk navy yard and were on the scene
about the time the Minnesota grounded.
The ram fired at all three alternately,
giving each a substantial memento of the
first ironclad. All three valiantly tried to
return the compliment, and hurled broad-
side after broadside that rolled off the
Merrimac’s roof like so much hail. What
the end would have been with a few hours
daylight no one can tell. Darkness ended
the matter and Buchanan hauled his vic-
torious David under the guns of friendly
batteries on the south shore and set about
counting bruises. A man killed and 20
wounded were the casualties. Two guns
had lost their muzzles by some good shoot-
ing from the other side. The 4-inch armor
was barely indented, but everything out-
side large enough to hold up a missile had
done so a brief second and then disappeared
along with it.
The smokestack was gone, likewise one
anchor. Davits, stanchions, railings and
steam pipes were all gone, and the flag,
during the last half of the battle, floated
from a boarding pike. But the monster
was a monster still. Eight of her re-en-
forced cannon and tjaeir crews were in
fighting trim, and the iron shield about
them was perhaps a little better for being
rubbed smooth* by the shot and shell that
had rained upon it only to glance off.
The north was paralyzed when the news
flashed along the wires that the Merrimac
was actually riding over the wrecks of the
sinking Cumberland and the burning Con-
gress and steering for the rest of the fleet.
Secretary Stanton exclaimed before the
cabinet at Washington: “The Merrimac
will change the whole character of the
war; she will destroy, seriatim, every naval
vessel; she will lay all the cities on the sea-
board under contribution. Not unlikely
we shall have a shell or cannon ball from
one of her guns in the White House before
we leave this room.” So the pioneer iron
ram was a champion bugaboo as well as
fighter, the greatest of all up to her date.
But her day was brief. The workshop of
the Swedish wizard, Ericsson, was yet to
hear from when the Merrimac startled the
world and sounded the doom of wooden
ships as factors in naval contests.
George L. Kilmer,
Oscar Wilde’s Uncle. A
Recently, while visiting friends in cen-
tral Illinois, I learned a great deal about
Dr. Wilde, the noted Oscar Wilde’s uncle,
who some twenty years ago was a pic-
turesque and well known figure in that
part of the great state.
Dr. Wilde was “an Irish gentleman of
the old school,” which means that he was
knightly in his bearing toward women
and ready to drink or fight with the men.
He was a tall, handsome man, with
wavy iron gray hair and a white military
mustache, when he first came to Illinois.
That he was a fine scholar even the illit-
erate soon came to understand, and that
he was a skillful physician was not long in
doubt.
! But Dr. Wilde had his peculiarities
or defects, and these defects were of a char-
acter which we mistakenly associate with
men of his nationality. He was unmar-
ried, which fact, taken in connection with
his gallantry to the fair sex, led the more
romantic to coin a story to the effect that
he was self exiled from Ireland on account
of an unrequited passion for the daughter
of one of his titled countrymen. But the
unromantic saw a more plausible reason
for the doctor’s leaving Ireland and coming
to Illinois in his inordinate fondness and
immeasurable capacity for whisky.
Dr. Wilde was picturesquely profane,
and his gifts in this way he used to de-
nounce the vile corn whisky of the land of
his adoption, but while “it was not to be
mentioned in the same breath with Irish
whisky the doctor drank it, not as an ordi-
nary toper drinks, but in great wassail
bowlfuls, as the Scandinavian skalds drank
beer when offering libations to Odin.”
The doctor was strong. He never got
drunk in his legs and but seldom lost his
head. The effect of liquor on him was to
make his brilliant wit more sparkling and
his satire more caustic. But he had en-
tered into a contest with a king who has
never yet been conquered, and who has
brought low many higher heads than Dr.
Wilde’s.
People who speak of him now are very
sure that mort of his bright sayings while
in their midst were lost for want of appre-
ciation, and hence are forgotten, but many
anecdotes survive, a few of which will
serve to illustrate the wit of this remark-
able man.
The doctor’s normal condition when
awake was mellow inebriety. One day,
while in a drug store at Joliet, Ills., with
a friend, his attention was directed to the
conduct of a shallow pated clerk, who was
admiring his face in a mirror.
“Look over there,” said the doctor, nudg-
ing his friend and jerking his head in the
direction of the self absorbed clerk, “and
tell me, sir, if you don’t think that’s one
of the most rimarkable young men in the
worruld. ”
“Really, doctor,” replied the friend, “I
think the fellow is disgustingly common-
place.”
“Not at all,” said the doctor.
man’s dead in love with himself, and,
egad! he hasn’t a rival in the whole wide
worruld.” —
On another occasion a boorish fellow,
who had been one of the doctor’s compan-
ions on a carouse, but who was ignored
when they met a few months after, was
very anxious to renew the acquaintance.
Walking up to Dr. Wilde, who was in one
of his most dignified moods, the man as-
sumed an air of vulgar familiarity and,
reaching out his grimed paw, said:
“Don’t say, Dr. Wilde, that you’ve for-
got me.”
“Faith,” was the response, "I don’t see
why I should belie myself by saying any-
thing of the kind, in view of the fact that
I never remembered you.”
“Never saw me before, eh?”
“Not to the best of me knowledge and
belief; but let me look at you again. Oh,
yisi maybe I saw you on one of me visits
to the Joliet penitentiary,” said the doctor.
Not at all abashed by this the fellow
laughed:
“No, it was at Mike O’Neil’s hotel down
at Pontiac. There was me and you and
Jack Simmons, and we did have a h—1 of
a time. Don’t you remember now? And
then Mike O’Neil cooked a fine turkey in
your honor.”
“Oh, yis, yis. I’m glad you remind me
of it. My recollection of that turkey, sir,
is intirely distinct.”
It was Dr. Wilde who, in speaking of a
woman with an unusually large mouth,
uttered the now well known pun:
“Yis, gintlemin, that woman’s mouth is
like time.”
“In what way?” asked some one.
“Because, gintlemin, it extinds from
year to year” (ear to ear).
It would take columns to record the bon
mots of the doctor that still survive and
are often repeated along the line of the
Chicago and Alton road. |
Whisky at length conquered. He died
in an obscure hamlet and was buried in
the black prairie in a fenceless, treeless
graveyard. A few years after his. death a
tombstone Was placed at his head by some
unknown friend. And when a beautiful,
silver haired woman in black visited the
grave immediately after the stone was put
up and vanished soon after, without hav-
ing exchanged a word with the people near
by, the story of the doctor’s romantic love
was revived. Alfred R. Calhoun.
7 need a David to
1
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Burson, J. W. Evening Tribune. (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 12, No. 191, Ed. 1 Saturday, June 25, 1892, newspaper, June 25, 1892; Galveston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1262885/m1/2/?q=Lamar+University: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rosenberg Library.