Life — September 23, 1897 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Plutarch’s Lives to Date. CATO REEDIMUS, THE CENSOR. HOMAS CATO REEDIMUS, the Censor, being from the Maine Province, was — naturally of iy a dry humor. h3£ To one who asked con- cerning his memorable congression- al career, he made reply: “T came, I saw, I ran Con- gress!" He was a statesman of Falstaffian girth, Brobdingnagian height, Web- sterian brain and offensive partisanship. The son of poor but honest parents, he received such an education, in arithme- tic particularly, that he was able later in life to count a quorum with his eyes shut. As a youth he was so devout that he prepared for the ministry at Bowdoin College, but his piety was all of the ‘‘early” variety. It was plainly evident during the Fifty-first Congress that he had forgotten all about the golden rule when he framed the rules of the House, Nor was he at all ashamed. We are told that a Western tribune who had been chairman of a vigilance committee once boasted to Cato Reedimus that, with a rope, he had aided in shutting off the breath of twenty men. “Only twenty?” cried the Censor. **T once choked off an entire Congress!” His first experience as a presiding officer was as pedagogue in a country school. One day a special committce of the larger boys attempted to put him out of the window, but he raised both hands, a big ruler and a point of order against the proceedings, and the special committee adjourned sine die for repairs. In 1876 Cato Reedimus invaded Con- gress, where his simple manners and frugality were at once conspicuous. He lived modestly in two rooms, rode a bi- cycke to save car fare, and was so con- servative concerning government expen- ditures that he held the Fifty-first Con- gress down to a paltry billion dollars. As Censor of that Congress he counted quorums and shut off debate until the capital resounded with the wreck of rules, the crash of precedents, and the * LIFE: inarticulate profanity of throttled tri- bunes. The following November a landslide struck his party just abaft the collar button, and the newspapers printed Cato Reedimus obituaries by the column. Only the good die young, and conse- quently Cato Reedimus was not dead but sleeping. He awakened ere long and again bestrode the House of Tri- bunes like an obese Colossus with a twenty-four collar, Reedimus had the collar for the Republicanus majority, which knew not its whereatness until he told it, and day after day he gave the minority what is known in Greek as the “Dingley dinkimus.” Every time his ponderous gavel fell the Spirit of Liberty needed a new solar plexus. At this time it befell that Lycurgus McKinlius, the Law Giver, who had been © 255 chosen Consul of the Republic, called together the tribunes in special session to tinker the tariff, likewise to sugar it. Although of the same party, Reedimus loved McKinlius nitimus, having been an ‘also ran" to the Law Giver in the great Consulship Nomination Selling Race; but at the behest of McKinlius he uncorked the House long enough to let the sugar-coated tariff bill run out. Then he corked the House up again and laid it on the shelf. As a corker he displayed even greater genius than asa quorum counter, It is said that during this period a schoolboy, thirsting for knowledge of the Constitution, asked Cato Reedimus one day what composed the Congress of the country. ‘*Me and the Senate,” was the reply. It was even so. And Freedom shricked when Cato’s gavel fell. Earle H. Eaton, She: (T'S A PICTURESQUE COSTUME, ISN'T IT? ‘yas, BUT IT WOULDN'T BE BECOMING 10 EVERYBODY.” comicbooks.com