who disdained any semblance of oratory. He told us simply that in his youth he had met and got to know very well a certain Colonel in the army who had known Thomas Paine intimately. This Colonel had assured him more than once that all the accusations against Paine's habits and character were false—a mere outcome of Christian bigotry. Paine would drink a glass or two of wine at dinner like all wellbred men of that day; but he was very moderate and in the last ten years of his life the Colonel asserted that Paine never once drank to excess. The Colonel cleared Paine, too, of looseness of morals in much the same decisive way and finally spoke of him as invariably well-conducted, of witty speech and a vast fund of information, a most interesting and agreeable companion. And the Colonel was an unimpeachable witness. Whitman assured us, a man of the highest honor and most scrupulous veracity.
Whitman spoke with such uncommon slowness that I was easily able to take down the chief sentences in longhand: he was manifestly determined to say just what he had to say, neither more nor less—which made an impression of singular sincerity and truthfulness.
When he had finished, I went up on the platform to see him near at hand; and draw him out if possible. I showed him my card of the "Press" and asked him if he would kindly sign and thus authenticate the sentences on Paine he had used in his address.
"Aye, aye!" was all he said; but he read the half dozen sentences carefully, here and there correcting a word.
I thanked him and said Professor Smith, an Editor of the "Press", had sent me to get a word-forword report of his speech for he purposed writing
