Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/277



CURRENT TOPICS. Gesture. — A very pretty and gentlemanly quar rel has sprung up in " The Century " magazine, be tween Edward L. Pierce and Noah Brooks, on the important question whether Charles Sumner practiced his gestures before a mirror. This charge was made by Senator Douglas, in a public speech, in which he further ridiculed the great abolitionist by alleging that he went through this drill "with a nigger hold ing a lamp on each side of him." This very vulgar, unbecoming and absurd charge was treated by Sum ner with silent contempt. Mr. Brooks now revives it, minus the "nigger" accompaniment, on the authority of the 1 ' young daughters " of a Mr. Gardner, in whose house in Washington Sumner lived. Mr. Brooks's language is as follows : — "Mr. Gardner, among other things told us of Mr. Sum ner, said that the family knew, when the senator made a requisition for additional lamp-light, that he was preparing an important speech; and that his young daughters, ' with a curiosity natural to youth,' were accustomed to watch, from the rear windows of the apartment, the senator re hearsing before the pier-glass fixed between the windows in front, with a lamp on either side of him." Mr. Pierce, as a former biographer of Sumner, in dignantly resents this charge, and has been at the pains to obtain the certificates of a number of Sum ner's most intimate friends and associates, in cluding several well known lawyers, that they do not credit it. The matter was not worth repro ducing by Mr. Brooks, and probably would not have been reproduced but for a very evident dislike which he entertains for the Massachusetts statesman. He accuses him of much worse things than this, in the same article, and in a later one he speaks of Sumner's •"studied pose" in the chamber of the Supreme Court on the occasion of Chase's taking his seat as Chief Justice. Mr. Sumner was a proud man, but hardly a weakly vain man. His gestures bore no in dication of forethought or practice. In fact they were not at all noticeable nor profuse. It is a pity that Washington gossip, founded on the reported spying of some giddy young girls, should be revived to subject a great philanthropist and statesman to ridicule after his death. If it is worth while to ex plain his extra demand for candles and his apparent 248

gestures, they may easily be explained by reference to the operation of his toilette, brushing his hair with two brushes, as the manner of some is, or something of that kind. It would never have occurred toanybody who heard Sumner that his gestures were studied, while on the other hand Everett's had every appear ance of it. On one occasion, the latter, having been engaged to deliver an oration in New York, de manded to be taken to the hall in the afternoon, and there paced the stage from about the middle to the front, throwing up his arms at the footlights in ac companiment to a subdued utterance, and the pre cise repetition of this in the evening produced great admiration among all of the audience, except the committee-man who had attended the private rehear sal. Even Erskine liked to visit his court-rooms be fore the trial-day, to "get the hang of them," as the Yankees phrase it. But artificiality in elocution is a good deal like the same in flowers, it lacks perfume. Everett's glow was that of the iceberg under the polar sun. As George William Curtis once said, "he froze early in life and never thawed out." Sum ner undoubtedly did not wear his heart on his sleeve, and he loved not to shake hands with Tom, Dick and Harry, but he devoted himself, and went prematurely to his grave, in the championship of an inferior and despised race. It is well to think of this, and not to rake up improbable and belittling gossip about a good and elevated statesman. That Codf1sh. — It is sad to see that the Massa chusetts lawmakers are becoming ashamed of their honest but humble origins. For many years a huge codfish has hung over the interior of the door of the lower house of the legislature under the gilded Hub, emblem of one the chief sources of the Commonwealth's prosperity. Now when the legisla ture is moving into grander quarters there is a dis position to suppress or tuck away that fish. This is very unbecoming. The emblem is far more pleasing than would be a cask of New England rum, or a pair of slave manacles, which would be the natural emblems of the two other chief articles of the Bay State's early traffic. Next we shall hear of a pro posal to change the name of Cape Cod. For many