As our little party passed in front of the speaker's platform to reach the door, he halted in his discourse, and stated to the audience that the strangers within their gates were leaving because of the near departure of their train and not because of any disrespect to the service. Then, bowing his aged head, he invoked the blessing of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, upon the Gentile strangers, and prayed "that their long journey might be ended in safety, and that in the fulness of time, having witnessed the manifestations of Almighty Power, they might return again, not as sojourners, but as fellow-citizens with the saints, to dwell in the Holy City."
XIV A KENTUCKY COLONEL
COL. WINTERSMITH'S GREAT POPULARITY—HIS ADMIRATION FOR MR. CLAY —HIS MARVELLOUS MEMORY—HIS WIT AND HUMOR.
Few men were better known in Washington, a quarter of a century and more ago, than Colonel Dick Wintersmith of Kentucky. He had creditably filled important positions of public trust in his native State. His integrity was beyond question, and his popularity knew no bounds. Without the formality of party nomination, and with hardly the shadow of opposition at the polls, he had held the office of State Treasurer for nearly a score of years. An ardent Whig in early life, he was a devout worshipper at the shrine of Henry Clay. In the later years of his life, he would often with the deepest emotion refer to himself as "the last of the old guard." He never tired of relating interesting incidents of Mr. Clay. It was his glory that he had accompanied "the great pacificator" to Washington, when, with the fond hope of being able by his historic "compromise" to pour oil on the troubled waters, he returned to the Senate for the last time.
Wintersmith was the close friend of Theodore O'Hara, and stood beside him when at the unveiling of the monument to the Kentuckians who had fallen at Buena Vista he pronounced his now historic lines beginning—
"On fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread."
Colonel Wintersmith knew, as he knew his children, two generations of the public men of Kentucky. His memory was a marvel to all who knew him. He could repeat till the dawn, extracts from famous speeches he had heard from the lips of Clay, Grundy, Marshall, and Menifee. More than once, I have heard him declaim the wonderful speech of Sargent S. Prentiss delivered almost a half-century before, in the old Harrodsburg Court-house, in defence of Wilkinson for killing three men at the Galt House.
It is hardly necessary to say that the Colonel was the soul of generosity. It was a part of his living faith that—
"Kind hearts are more than coronets."
That he was possessed in no stinted measure of wit and its kindred quality, humor, will appear from an incident or two to be related.