With all this rich experience of the larger world, he remained the simplest of natures. He was as interested in a new fishing-tackle as in a new book, and carried both to his houseboat on the Kankakee, where, at odd moments, he retouched a manuscript for the press, and discussed politics with the natives. Here was a man who could talk of the _Song of Roland_ as zestfully as though it had just been reported from the telegraph office.
I frankly confess that I never met him without a thrill, even in his last years and when the ardor of my youthful hero worship may be said to have passed. He was an exotic, our Hoosier Arab, our story-teller of the bazaars. When I saw him in his last illness, it was as though I looked upon a gray sheik about to fare forth unawed toward unmapped oases.
No lesson of the Civil War was more striking than that taught by the swift transitions of our citizen soldiery from civil to military life, and back again. This impressed me as a boy, and I used to wonder, as I passed my heroes on their peaceful errands in the street, why they had put down the sword when there must still be work somewhere for fighting men to do. The judge of the federal court at this time was Walter Q. Gresham, brevetted brigadier-general, who was destined later to adorn the cabinets of presidents of two political parties. He was cordial and magnetic; his were the handsomest and friendliest of brown eyes, and a noble gravity spoke in them. Among the lawyers who practiced before him were Benjamin Harrison and Thomas A. Hendricks, who became respectively President and Vice-President.
Those Hoosiers who admired Gresham ardently were often less devotedly attached to Harrison, who lacked Gresham's warmth and charm. General Harrison was akin to the Covenanters who bore both Bible and sword into battle. His eminence in the law was due to his deep learning in its history and philosophy. Short of stature, and without grace of person,--with a voice pitched rather high,--he was a remarkably interesting and persuasive speaker. If I may so put it, his political speeches were addressed as to a trial judge rather than to a jury, his appeal being to reason and not to passion or prejudice. He could, in rapid flights of campaigning, speak to many audiences in a day without repeating himself. He was measured and urbane; his discourses abounded in apt illustration; he was never dull. He never stooped to pietistic clap-trap, or chanted the jaunty chauvinism that has so often caused the Hoosier stars to blink.