Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/47

 Sketch of Thomas F. Marshall. 47

efforts at reformation, he still continued to relapse into the excessive use of stimulants. The hand of death was on him; he knew it, and he desired to die near his old home in Versailles. He was taken there, and there died on the 22d day of September, 1864, with the pathetic words upon his lips: " Here I lie in a borrowed house, on a borrowed bed, and under a borrowed blanket. God pity me!"

Mr. Marshall was noted all over this country for the brilliancy of his wit and the quickness of his repartee. It has been said that one of the neatest retorts ever made by a public speaker was that made by Coleridge to some marks of disapprobation during his democratic lectures at Bristol: " I am not at all surprised that when the red-hot prejudices of aristocrats are suddenly plunged into the cool element of reason, they should go off with a fa'ss." Happy as was this reply, it wis surpassed in overwhelming effect by the somewhat irreverent one made by Mr. Marshall, towards the close of his life, at Buffalo, New York. He was making a speech to a crowded audience in that city when he was interrupted by a political oppo- nent, who, pretending not to hear distinctly, tried to embarrass him by putting his hand to his ear and crying out, " Louder ! " Mr. M., thereupon, pitched his voice several times on a higher and yet higher key; but the only effect on his tormenter was to draw forth a still more energetic cry of " Louder ! please, sir, louder ! " At last, being interrupted for the fourth time and in the midst of one of his most thrilling appeals, Mr. Marshall, indignant at the trick, as he now dis- covered it to be, paused for a moment, and fixing his eyes first on his enemy and then on the presiding officer, said: "Mr. President, on the last day, when the angel Gabriel shall have descended from the heavens, and, placing one foot upon the sea and the other upon the land, shall lift to his lips the golden trumpet, and proclaim to the living and to the resurrected dead that time shall be no more, I have no doubt, sir, that some infernal fool from Buffalo will start up and cry out, 'Louder, Gabriel, louder!' 1 Marshall went on with his speech, but there were no more cries of "louder."

But the jokes and stories in which he figures are innumerable. During the political campaigns, and often at the bar, they are told and re-told down to the present day. He was once defending a man charged with murder in Jessamine County, Kentucky, Judge Lusk presiding. The testimony against the prisoner was strong, and Mar- shall struggled hard on the cross-examination, but to little purpose, for the old judge was inflexible in his determination to rule out all the improper testimony offered on the part of the defence. At last