Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/112

 to two governors—Hartranft and Hoyt—and John Sword, who, after editing some law books with great ability, entered the Church, became a devotee and has given his life to celibacy, charity and genuflexions.

I also met there Alfred Rochefort Calhoun, a Steerforth, in another line of life, who had temporarily considerable influence over all brought into contact with him. As a character, he forms an unsolvable but interesting study. About five feet nine inches in height, with black hair and blue eyes, with muscles hard as iron, measuring forty-six inches around the chest, he had a ball in his lungs, the healed gash of a sabre cut across his hand and he walked with a limp upon an artificial foot. Few ventured to compete with him in strength of will or of muscle. He had a gift of fiery oratory which appealed to the passions, and sympathy went out to one who bore the evidence of many a combat in the war, so that it was difficult for either man or woman to resist him. He had the title, and presumably the rank, of major. The slightest provocation found him ready to fight. Any indication of sympathy with the South angered him, and I have heard him bring more than one discussion to an end by calling his opponent “a damned liar.” At this time the road to political preferment was through service in the war, and about this time the Grand Army of the Republic was organized. Among the old soldiers, none had greater influence than Calhoun, and he commanded Post 19 and later became Department Commander of the Grand Army in the State. A friend of Bayard Taylor, who gave him an autograph copy of the translation of Goethe's Faust, he had the Post named for Colonel Charles Frederick Taylor, who was killed at Gettysburg. He wrote a play called “The Color Guard” which became popular and is still enacted for the benefit of the Posts. He was accepted on terms of relationship among the descendants of the South Carolina Calhouns, and he told me he was also related to Sir Roderick Murchison, president of the Royal Geographical Society, 102