TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11485, 19 January 1903, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Mr TiEman, LieutenantResenting Governor of South Uaroa Criticiem. lina, who is reported to hare shot an editor because the latter criticised him, is just the sort o* man to thus mark his disapproval of the least opposition. He ie one of the most remarkable minor characters of American politics. "Uncouth, with' uncurbed tongue, a fierce hater of conventionalism and shams, he at once repels by hi* extravagance of speech and attract* by Jwe evident sincerity and honesty of purpose." So wrote an American correspondent when, years ago, Tillman had just entered the Senate, in which great tbinge were expected of him. Hβ comes of an old slaveholding family of the South, and would have fought for the Confederates in the Civil war had he been old enough. Before he reached the age, 17, at which hi* services could be accepted, he injured an eye, of which he lost the eight, and by the time he recovered from bia injury the war waa over. Hβ took an active part In the anti-negro agitation that ensued in the South, but before long he took advantage of a split in the ranks of the whites and espoused tho eauee of the small farmeis and "mean whites* against the aristocratic county families, who had co long ruled the State. He stood for the State Governorship, and his speeches throughout the crueade made him the talk of tbs States. He denounced all rich people, especially lawyers and bankers, and his references to them were couched in the most violent language. "Wait till I get into the Senate," he shouted one day, "I'll punch that old bag of beet in the ribs with my pitchfork!" "My opponent ie like a big piece of mutton, and I want to chaw him some." Many of his phrases would not bear reproduction, bub ■his language and style captivated the farmere, and he had a triumphal progress from place to place, often drawn by men from one village to another, until he was elected by a huge majority. Once in power he became a little Cfcar. He fought against lawyers, bankers, railway companies ana monopolies of all kinds , . As the . hotelkeepers had opposed hi/c candidature, he attacked their trade by opening State Dispensaries, and when the Judges declared these were unconstitutional, he removed the Judges and appointed fresh ones. Hβ ruled tho State with a rod of iron, and it is declared that on one occasion he made hw own brother resign because he was not sufficiently respectful. There is always a suggestion of insanity about such characters as Tillman, and his latest exploit rather strengthens the suspicion. It is curious that -with The all the love for great Greatest Tree " trees expressed by Dr. in the World. Oliver Wendell Holmes in a well-known chapter of the " Autocrat at the Breakfast Table," he makes no mention of the huge trees for which America is celebrated. Readers of his charming book will remember hie remarks on the large New England eke his " tree-wives " on which ho put bis wwkEng ring, as he termed the measuring tape. He refers in detail to no other tarew, yet he avows "a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in general," and admitted having had "several romantic attaohments to certain trees in particular. . Chief of these seems to have been a great elm in Rfcode Island, of which he tod been told so much that the made a special journey to see and measure. After going some way and thinking each big tree he saw in the distance was the object of his visit, he at last came in sight of itr— "a great green cloud swelling in the horiaon, so vast, so symmetrical, of such Olympian majesty, and Imperial supremacy among the lesser forest growths, that my heart stopped short, then jumped at my ribs a& a hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through me, without need of uttering the words—'Thie is it!'" Some such sensation would have thrilled him had he had the good fortune to assist in the discovery, ac did some Oalifornian surveyors, of the greatest tree in the world. 1 Growing on the Sierra Nevada mountains, close to the General Grant National Park, "the home of Californian tree aristocracy," the giant of the forest towew above a circle of big trees which are dwarfed by its majestic proportions. Carefully measured, its girth one foot above the ground was found to be 108 feet, at four feet above ground! 98 feet, at six feet 93 feet. It belongs to the epeeies sequoia gigantea eempervirens, and je the undisputed monarch of its race. . The massive fluted trunk, straight and strong as a granite pillar, is covered with rich cin-namon-brown bark, almost two. feet thick, and is clear from limbs to a height of 175 feet, where it is estimated to be 11 feet in diameter. The branches, clothed in dense foliage, radiate symmetrically from every side of the trunk above this height, and form a thick flat crown, while myriads of cones nutter like gay green tassels on the outer borders of the foliage masses." lv.is impossible to estimate with accuracy the age of a living tree of this size, but an American scientist who came upon a huge tree stump 120 feet in circumference, in the same forest, calculated, after microscopical examination of ite rings, that it was a lusty sapling of some 20 feet girth at the beginning of the Christian era. TJhe newly discovered giant is in the centre of a lumber district, and is barely within the boundaries of the forest reserve. It it to be <hoped, however, that the conquering axe will spare it for centuries to cc-me. Apart from accidents, euch as fire or gake or lightning, such a tree might be in vigorous growth a thousand years hence.

Colonel Tom Ochiltree is One of the dead: The news doee not "Old South." mean much to us in New " Zealand, but the event may with truth be said to have eclipsed the gaiety of many people of two nations. An American by birth and education, be was am well known in London as in Washington, and he knew or had known everybody who was worth knowing in the old world, and the new. "You couldn't mention a well-known name; — man's or woman*—in Europe or America," writes "Mr T. P. O Connor, "who was not a. friend of Tom Ochiltree. Hβ had spoken to Louie Napoleon in Paris when he was Emperor. He knew every public man in the United States—of course, Mβ native country: for he hind been in war, in politics, in business, and lived the greater part of hit tame in various occupation* In Washington—in recent years as a lobbyist; he was in the racing world In both continents, and, among others, wae known and very much liked by the King; he was Ihe oorfidaot and the agent of the late John Mackay, the millionaire owner of the Cable Company and uhe Bonanza Mines; be had foaght on the Southern «ide during the Civil War; and lived to represent hi» na-

'tive State, Texas t in Congress; knew ;<jeateral Grant by having fought against him in war; by having fought with him in poHtios; was a veteran when President Roosevelt was a youngster; in short, did everytihiDg, saw everything, knew everything and everybody." He is described as almost the last of a race—such a eon of the old slave-owning South as one might expect to meet in fiction, but never hoped to see in tbe flesh. He bad all the manixrisms and thought* of the South—"the full, round oaths, the daringly picturesque and exaggerated diction, the extravagance of manner, of bearing, of idea." "Every friend was the greatest, the richest, the noblest, the most whole-souled being, by Gad. Yes, sir, by Gad; and the enemy —poor Tom really had very few enemies, if any—was blacker than any being, by Gad, sir. that ihad 'been scat by an indignant Deity to a climate warmer than even Texas." Rightly or wrongly, oa© gener--8% thinks of a fine old Southern gentleman, all of the olden time, as having a pallid complexion, black hair, and a long drooping moustache. Colonel Tom had none of these. In appearance he was farcically Celtic, with a great head of fiery red hair, a heavy red moustache, bulging blue eyes, with a ferocious squint, a rubicund complexion, and a stout figure, i To compensate for these accessories he had a ready tongue and a witty brain. He 'became in time a national character* and was probably the father of quite one per cent, of the fchous-' ands of good stories credited to him, and tbe ihero of perhaps the same proportion. No one could nave said or done more of the things whkh the imagination of his lively fellow-countrymen delighted to attribute to him. *