fe, he would often with the deepest
emotion refer to himself as "the last of the old guard." He never
tired of relating interesting incidents of Mr. Clay. It was his
glory that he had accompanied "the great pacificator" to Washington,
when, with the fond hope of being able by his historic "compromise"
to pour oil on the troubled waters, he returned to the Senate
for the last time.

Wintersmith was the close friend of Theodore O'Hara, and stood
beside him when at the unveiling of the monument to the Kentuckians
who had fallen at Buena Vista he pronounced his now historic lines
beginning--

"On fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread."

Colonel Wintersmith knew, as he knew his children, two generations
of the public men of Kentucky. His memory was a marvel to all who
knew him. He could repeat till the dawn, extracts from famous
speeches he had heard from the lips of Clay, Grundy, Marshall, and
Menifee. More than once, I have heard him declaim the wonderful
speech of Sargent S. Prentiss delivered almost a half-century
before, in the old Harrodsburg Court-house, in defence of Wilkinson
for killing three men at the Galt House.

It is hardly necessary to say that the Colonel was the soul of
generosity. It was a part of his living faith that--

"Kind hearts are more than coronets."

That he was possessed in no stinted measure of wit and its kindred
quality, humor, will appear from an incident or two to be related.

The Hon. Ignatius Donnelly, member of Congress from Minnesota, had
written a book to prove that Lord Bacon was the veritable author
of the plays usually accredited to Shakespeare. Soon after the
appearance of Donnelly's book, he met Colonel Wintersmith on
Pennsylvania Avenue.

After a cordial greeting, the Colonel remarked, "I have been reading
your book, Donnelly, and I don't believe a word of it."

"What?" inquired Donnelly, with great surprise.

"Oh, that book of yours," said the Colonel, "in which you tried to
prove that Shakespeare never wrote 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth' and 'Lear'
and all those other plays."

"My dear sir," replied Donnelly with great earnestness, "I can
prove beyond all peradventure that Shakespeare never wrote those
plays."

"He did," replied Wintersmith, "he did write them, Donnelly, _I
saw him write three or four of them, myself."_

"Impossible!" replied Donnelly, who was as guiltless of anything
that savored of humor as the monument recently