When communities turn loose
Social forces that produce
The disorders of a gale,
Act upon a well-known law,
Face the breeze, but close your jaw;
It's a rule that will not fail.
If you bay it in a gay,
Self-sufficient sort of way,
It will land you, without doubt,
Upside down and wrong side out.'"
Mr. Reed, who learned French after he was forty years old, enjoys the
masterpieces of French fiction and French verse in the original. He
reads and rereads Horace, or, rather, certain parts of Horace which
appeal strongly to him. But his one great admiration is Balzac. "Yes,
I like to read Balzac," Mr. Reed often says. "His closeness to nature
and life hold you in spite of yourself. There is hardly a book of his
which is not sad beyond tears. 'Eugenie Grandet' is a most powerful
delineation of the absorbing grasp which love of money has on a strong
man, and the power which love has over an untutored spirit, but
sadness permeates everything. That wonderful love story of the
'Duchess de Langais' is like no other love story ever written. Could
anything be more sad than her life at the convent, and her lover's
long search for her hiding-place? unless it be that lover's discovery,
when he scaled the convent walls, that death had been stronger than
love, and that, after a life of wasted devotion, nothing could be
said of her beautiful form as it sank into the ocean except the
mournful words, 'She was a woman; now she is nothing.' And what an
extraordinary picture that is in the 'Peau de Chagrin' of the
controlling power of society over a fashionable woman! And again, in
'Pere Goriot.' How sad they all are, and the sadness of a life that
toils not nor spins! Verily, to be happy we must take no note of the
flying hours, and live outside of ourselves. Is not the condition of
joyous life to forget that we are living? Here most of the characters
are so entirely selfish that one sometimes thinks there is not one
single friendly heart in the entire story. All are so conscious of
living--even those in the higher sphere--and so anxious to appear
other than they are, that their entire lives are only ignoble
struggles, with nothing of serene repose. When the strife is not for
gold or position it is for love, which is thus degraded!"
I was talking the other day to that brilliant orator, Benjamin
Butterworth, of Ohio, and the conversation turned to Tom Reed, as
Butterworth affectionately called him. Said Butterworth: "The way
Reed's constituents have stood by him is one of the most gratifying
things to me in American politics. During one of his campaigns, in
which I spoke for him, I met some Democrats in his district. I said,
'Gentlemen, I do not know anything about your politics, but you have a
man of sterling qualities to represent you.' 'Yes,' they replied, 'he
is an intense Republican and has peculiarities, but we like him
because he represents the best thought of the district, and we vote
for him on the sly.'"
That plain-speaking man, whose chief characteristic is to be true to
his own convictions, is a pretty good specimen of the Puritan. Had he
been in Cromwell's army he either would not have prayed at all or he
would have prayed just as long as Cromwell did. In either case he
would have fought for what he believed to be the right, all the time,
and given no quarter.
Apropos of what might be called his blunt frankness, I recall an
incident told me by a member who had charge of what was known as the
Whiskey Bill. Mr. Reed had baffled the attempts of the whiskey men to
get it up, but in his temporary absence, through the inadvertence or
incapacity of a member, the bill was forced on the House. Reed ran
down to the fellow, and vented his feelings in the remark, "You are
too big a fool to lead, and haven't got sense enough to follow."
[Illustration: MR. REED'S PORTLAND LAW OFFICE.]
If his bits of speeches flung about in the heat of debate, either in
retort or in attack, were gathered, they would make a mighty
interesting book. No other man has like him the power to condense a
whole argument in a few striking words. His epigrams are worthy of the
literary artist in that they are perfect in form. Though struck out on
the spur of the moment you cannot take a word from nor recast them.
They have for solid basis a most profound knowledge of human nature,
of life, and they exhibit to a luminous degree the possession in their
author of that prime quality of a true man--horse sense. I remember
this fragment of a speech of last session: "Gentlemen, everybody has
an opinion about silver, except those who have talked so much about it
that they have ceased to think."
There are many people who believe that Mr. Reed himself disproves one
of his epigrams, that "a statesman is a successful politician who is
dead." As for me, I venture to say that Mr. Reed is right, but he has
there formulated a rule to which he is one of the rare exceptions.
"HUMAN DOCUMENTS."