Stories About Reed

STORIES ABOUT REED

Incidents in the Famous Ex-speaker's Career.
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AN EXAMPLE OF HIS SELF CONTROL
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How the Big Son of Maine Turned the Tables on a Carolina Congressman - His Expereince With a Baber and the Loss of His Mustache. Whe He Thought He Should Have a Pension.

When Thomas B. Reed, the former speaker of the house, was in congress, he was the subject of many anecdotes, among which may be cited the following:
On one occasion Congressman Charles W. McClammy of North Carolina said to Speaker Reed:
"Tom, won't you, for goodness' sake, recognize me and give me a chance to abuse you and call you a czar, autocrat and all that and denounce you? AlI those Alliance fellows are raising Cain down in my district, and I am liable to be beaten. I must have something to show up to my people, and the most popular thing is to pitch into you"
"All right," said Speaker Reed. "There will be a big crowd in the house tomorrow, and it will be a good opportunity for you."
The next day, in a great and lustrous gathering in the hall of representaties, Mr. McClammy got "the eye of the speaker" and was "recognized" in the drawling remark of the high functionary: "The gentleman from North Carolina." Then Mr. McClammy, with waving arms and indurated throat, proceeded to arraign the speaker and give him Hail Columbia.
Meanwhile the speaker stood with his fat hands resting upon the handle of his world renowned gavel, his big, round, immovable countenance turned toward McClammy and his small, unbllnking eyes fixed upon the North Carolinian in his elocutionary agonization while the latter shook his fist at the chair and denounced him in the strongest terms of the Carolinian vocabulary that could be used within the parliamentary limits. The thousands of people present enjoying the scene wondered at the self control of the speaker and the calm way in which he called up a new point of business after the breathless Carolinian took his seat in a roar of applause from the Democratic and southern side of the house.
Some time afterward McClammy met Mr. Reed in the house restaurant and said: "I am much obliged, Mr Speaker, for the chance you gave me, but I am afraid the effort did not reach. I guess those people in my district have done me up in spite of it all."
"Yes," said Mr. Reed, between a bite of pumpkin pie and a swallow of milk. "I thought that would be the case. You had a great opportunity, and you did not take advantage of it. You thought you did, but you didn't. You don't know the rudiments of vituperation. You were about as offensive as a sucking dove. Why didn't you consult Crisp and get some pointers before you sailed In?"

"The members of the last two congresses will recall the smooth shaven visage of former Speaker Reed," said an old attache of the house to a reporter, "and the older members will likewise remember that Reed at one time wore a mustache of a few straggling hairs, so often seen on the upper lips of extremely flesby men. " How Mr. Reed parted with his hirsute apology can best be told by a certaln barber in the house of representatives who attended to that gentleman's wants. "One day the big man from Maine settled himself in the barber's chair and requested a shave. When the operation was completed, Mr. Reed straightened himself and asked, 'Have you any of that old fashioned pomade to was mustaches with?'
"The barber hustled among his pots and jars and produced a French preparation in vogue a quarter of a century ago, and then proceeded to wax the ends of the Manie statesman's few wirelike hairs. "When the man of snapshot sentences arose and contemplated himself in the glass, he turned to the astonished barber and said, 'Cut this blanked mustache off, for you have made me look like a confounded catfish.'
"Since tben Mr. Reed has not worn any covering beneath bis nose."

When Thomas B. Reed first entered congress in 1877, be received the treatment which is usually accorded to new members and was appointed on the committee on territories. Afterward, in the Fifty-first congress, when a new member came to him and complained because Mr. Reed, the speaker, had put him on the committee on agriculture, of which he knew nothing, Reed said: "Oh, don't mind. You probably know as much about it as I did about tbe duties required of me in my first committee appointment. When I first came to congress, I was made a member of the committee on territories, and I wouldn't havo known a territory if I had met one walking down Pennsylvania avenue."

When Mr. Reed was a candidate for speaker in the Fifty-flrst congress, three of his competitors were the late President McKinley, Mr. Burrows, now a United States senator, and General Henderson of lowa, who was subsequently elected speaker, all of whom had served in the Union army. Toward the last the contest became rather warm, and the friends of one of these candidates raised an objection against Mr. Reed on the ground that he had no soldier record" in his favor. When was called to his attention, the Maine candidate, who had already figured out a clear majority of the Republican caucus, chuckled and said:
"Why, they don't know me or my record. You just say to them that I kept grocery on a gunboat down in Loulsina in the wartime."
As a matter of fact, he had aeen honorable service as an assistant paymaster in the nayy.

Through all his career in congress, whether on the floor or in the speaker's chair, Mr. Reed was recognized by the opposition as a fighter. Representative Champ Clark once said, "I like fighters, and to borrow the language of Sut Lovinggood, Reed is a fighter from the headwaters of Bitter creek." And Lafe Pence of Colorado referred to him as the mentor of the Republlcans and the tormentor of the Democrats." 

On a certain occasion, when Mr. Reed was speaker of the house, some one in his presence asked how it was that such cold, phlegmatic and conservative man as Senator Proctor of Vermont was so eager for war. "Probably because he is a wholesale dealer in tombstones." was the Maine man's reply. When Proctor heard of this a few minutes later, he said,"I suppose then, that Reed is opposed to war because he is adjuster for several large life insurance companies,"

One day he was making a speech when Mr. Alderson of West Virginia, a handsome and highly respectable member of six years' service in congress, without rising from his seat, jogged his memory about something he did when Speaker Reed paused long enough to attract the attention of everybody and then with his most exasperating nasal twang said: "Yesterday I had a discussion with Mr. Wilson, the head of the West Virginia delegation, and today, however unpleasant it may be, I suppose I will be compelled to have a discussion with the tail of the West Virginia delegation."
Of course, the house roared. It couldn't help itself.

On another occasion while in the full tide of eloquence, Mr. Reed was interruped by the late Amos Cummings of New York. Reed looked at him in a fatherly sort of way for a moment and then, with mock pathos, asked, "Now, Amos, must you - must you really get your name into my speech - must you?"
The theatrical pose and injured expression set the house in a broad grin at the expense of the New York member.

One day when a discussion on pensions was dragging its slow length along Mr. Reed, who was the very picture of health, amused a coterie of friends in the cloakroom by giving a reason why he should have a pension. It ran something as follows: "I had never been able to makt more than $500 or $600 a year," sald he, with a chuckle, "till I was appointed acting assistant paymaster of the United States navy at a salary of $1,400, with board, lodgings, uniform and two servants to wait on me. That induced an extravagant style of living, which I have kept up ever since and which has cost me thousands and thousands of dollars, for which the government ought in good conscience to compensate me."

A man of national reputation had occasion some months ago to employ the services of Mr. Thomas B. Reed in a case before the United States supreme court, says the Saturday Evening Post. He met the ex-speaker in New York and, after concluding the arrangements for presenting the case for the corporation which he represented, said to him: . "And now, Mr. Reed, I should like to pay you a retaining fee at once."
"Oh, never mind that now," was the reply. "Wait until I think it over, and I shall write to you."
The man was in Washington when he received Mr. Reed's letter. The ex-speaker began by saying that he was "a young fellow in the law business" and was "afraid of charging too much" and concluded by saying that if $1,000 wasn't too high he might send that amount. The rest of the letter was written in Mr. Reed's characteristic style of droll humor. "I wouldn't have balked for a moment at paying a fee of $25,000," said the corporation man in telling of it afterward, "but I drew a check and wrote a letter about like this:
Dear Mr. Reed-If the young fellows in the profession are going to be such bears in the market, how are the older ones going to make a living? l have taken the liberty of tampering with your bill by inclosing a check for $2,500.
The next morning the man received the following telegram:
Washington, D.C. - You are altogether too good for this world. T. B. REED.
Mr. Reed won the case for the corporation.

A good story is told in West Virginia, says Cyrus Patterson Jones, involvlng two of the former congressmen from the snug little state and Thomas B. Reed, the gigantic ex-speaker. The two West Virginians are Hon. Blackburn B. Dovener and Hon. Romeo Hoyt Freer. Both are small in stature and wonderfully alike in their appearance. Together they went up to the ponderous Maine man to be introduced.
"Humph!" said Mr. Reed. "Is that the best the Persimmon State can do?"
"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Freer. "Nothing," drawled the elephantine speaker. "I was only wondering at the uniformity of things down your way. I suppose the horses are all ponies and the persimmons all dwarfs"-
"Well," interrupted Mr. Freer, "there is one thing to our favor- the persimmon has more taste than the pumpkin."
The laugh was on the speaker, and he acknowledged it by cordially grasping the hands of the Lilliputians and joining in the merriment.

The speech which opened Mr. Reed's way to fame was short. It was delivered not long after he began his career in congress. He had not up to that time taken much part In debate, but one day while he was making a somewhat labored argument an older member tried to break him up by putting a question to him suddenly and demanding an immediate answer. Reed gave the answer readily. Then he paused, turned toward the speaker's desk and drawled out:
"And now, having embalmed that fly in the liquid amber of my remarks, I will go on again."
The house roared. The galleries took it up. The newspaper correspondents sent it flying all over the country, and to his own surprise more than any one else's Reed found himself a man of note from that hour.

If ex-Speaker Reed's epigrams and scattered witticisms thrown off in the rough and tumble debates in the house or at dinners or in chats at the club could be compiled, they would make a unique and valuable collection. He has coined many phrases which will live forever in our political nomenclature, and here are two of the best known of them:
"A statesman is a politician who is dead."
"The senate is a place that good representatives go to when they die." One of Reed's replies to the late Representative Springer of Illinois, who received many a sharp thrust from him, is also celebrated. Springer had retorted to Reed on one occasion that he "would rather be right than be president."
"You need not be alarmed," responded Reed coolly; "you will never be either."

Congressman Sherman of New York relates this story of ex-Speaker Reed, which has to do with a visit made by Mr. Reed to Lake Champlain, New York: Mr. Reed, Mr. Sherman and Congressman Foote were being shown around by a native who had the story of that region at his tongue's end and who, much to the amusement of his listeners, was throwing in a lot of historical fiction as embellishment to his tale. The native seemed to take a particular interest In "stuffing" Mr. Reed, whose identity was unknown to him. In a spirit of fun Mr. Sherman introduced the ex-speaker. "This gentleman," he said to the native, "is Speaker Reed, the speaker of the American congress."
"Do tell," said the native without any great degree of astonishment.
"I've heard somewhat of you," he continued, addressing the ex-speaker. "They do say as how you be the greatest speaker what they have ever had. They do say that you can speak for fifteen hours on a stretch."
"This is too much," said Mr. Reed.
"He takes me for a United States senator."

The following story is told of Thomas B. Reeds aptness, for it will be generally conceded that few men have equalled him in his quickness at repartee. Mr. Reed was conducting some of the Canadian members of the joint high arbitration commission through the capitol at Washington one winter. They were greatly impressed with the importance of their cicerone and the ease with which all places flew open at his appearance. But they finally arrived at a door which failed to swing aside at the speaker's "open sesame."
"Your authority does not seem to be so absolute here," remarked Sir Wilfrid Laurier to the czar.
"Oh, it isn't a hair trigger, but it will be all right in a minute," responded Mr. Reed. At that very moment the door was opened by unseen hands, which persuaded his followers that be had spirits also at his command.
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Art and the Cabinet.
With the wane of the discussion on the subject of bear hunting in the cabinet has come another spicy topic, with the point of the joke all on Secretary Hitchcock, says the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune. The duties of the secretary of the interior are somewhat hazy and ill defined in the minds of the majority of people. The corresponding range of subjects referred to Secretary Hitchcock is somewhat astounding. He affirms, however, that the limit was passed the other day when he received the following request through the mail: "Will you pleas give me the names and addresses of three or more art students, where they want a woman with perfect form to pose as a model?"
"That seems clearly to belong to the secretary of the 'exterior.'" was Mr. Hitchcock's dry comment.
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Gift For Original Research.
A Mr. Mason of Oxfordshire, England, has given $1,000 to the laboratory of the Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians and has established a scholarship of the annual value of $1,000, tenable for two or three years, for original research into the diseases of the thymus and ductless glands, the physiology and pathology of which are still very incomplete. The first holder of the scholarship will be Dr. Swale Vincent, who was formerly assistant professor at the University college, London. He will carry on the work under Professor Shafer of the University of Edinburgh.
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American Volcanoes.
North America is credited with twenty volcanoes, Central America with twenty five and South America with thirty-seven. Many of these are upon islands.