VERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA--HIS
LEARNING AND HIS HUMOR--HE RECALLS MEN AND MATTERS OF THE OLDEN
TIME--HE SUITS HIS CREED TO HIS AUDIENCE--HIS SPEECH IN FAVOR OF
HORACE GREELEY.

A name to conjure with in the old North State is Zeb Vance. What Lee
was to Virginia, Hendricks to Indiana, Clay to Kentucky, and Lincoln
to Illinois, Zebulon B. Vance was for a lifetime to North Carolina.
He was seldom spoken of as Governor, or Senator, but alike in piny
woods and in the mountains, he was familiarly called "Zeb Vance."
He was the idol of all classes and conditions. A decade has
gone since he passed to the grave, but his memory is still green.
A grateful people have erected a monument to commemorate his public
services, while from the French Broad to the Atlantic, alike in
humble cabin and stately home, his name is a household word.

"He had kept the whiteness of his soul,
And thus men o'er him wept."

The expression "rare," as given to Ben Jonson, might with equal
propriety be applied to Senator Vance. Deeply read in classic
lore, a profound lawyer, and an indefatigable student from the
beginning in all that pertained to human government, he was the
fit associate of the most cultured in the drawing-room or the
Senate. None the less, with the homely topics of everyday life
for discussion, he was equally at home, and ever a welcome guest
at the hearthstone of the humblest dweller in pine forest and
mountain glen of his native State.

Of all the men I have ever known, Vance was _par excellence_ the
possessor of the wondrous gift of humor. It was ingrained; literally
a part of his very being. He once told me that he thought his fame
for one generation, at least, was secure, inasmuch as one-half
of the freckled-faced boys and two-thirds of the "yaller" dogs
in North Carolina had been named in his honor.

Upon one occasion in the Senate, a bill he had introduced was
bitterly antagonized by a member who took occasion in his speech, while
questioning the sincerity of Vance, to extol his own honesty of
purpose. In replying to the vaunt of superior honesty by his
opponent, Vance quoted the old Southland doggerel:

"De darky in de ole camp ground
Dat loudest sing and shout
Am gwine to rob a hen-roost
Befo' de week am out."

The summer home of Senator Vance during the later years of his life
was in his native county of Buncombe, about twenty miles from
Asheville, where for some days I was his guest, many years