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Show : THAD STEVENS. ; ' The Valley Star of Nashville, Cumberland i county, on August 11, 1859, under the headline, ; "More Bailoonery," stated that "the Honorable -Thaddeui Stevens hat offend Mr.- Wise sufficient . pecuniary aid for building and equipping a bal-l bal-l ' loon for crossing the Atlantio on condition that I Mr. Wise will pay no attention to Mr. La Mon-Z' Mon-Z' tains 's challenge to race from San Francisco to the Atlantic seaboard, but turn his immediate atten-; atten-; tion toward the great European voyage." That brings back for the moment a memory of - old Thad Stevens. This eountry never realized bow - great and splendid a man he was. Honest beyond ' - question ; brilliant beyond description ; brave aa Julius Caesar; for years dying with lingering ' disease, but as full of fight up to th hour of hisf i death aa a game chicken. He had the clearest , . judgment, he could see farther, talk more wisely -"- than any of those around him. He was ready '.' ' every moment of his life to die for principle, and with all was so candid and so modest that every - one who got to know him a little knew that he . was one of those men who could only be reached " ' through his affections, that to try to drive him ' would be impossible, to try to frighten him would be ridiculous, and that the only way he could ever . . be convinced would, be through appeals to ' his reason; and then his own reasoning was 'so acute that all who tried to convert him fell down defeated. . He was raised up for a particular -period; he . was one of the standard bearers to bold his eountry level when the waves of disunion were breaking over it;, and he was like one of those ship masters on a great trans-Atlantio trans-Atlantio liner, who simply goes on the bridge and stays there until the storm goes down, regardless of food or sleep or any of the comforts or, absolute necessities of a man. He bad a soul as resolute as old John Brown; he had a much clearer judgment, judg-ment, his only idea waa to meet fores with force, . .- and his thought was, that if a twelve-pound ham-mer ham-mer was not sufficient to break the rock, the only thing to do was to get a sixteen-pound hammer, but keep hammering away. If ha encouraged ballooning balloon-ing fifty years ago it was through some prompting of his soul which held this old world too small, and which had a perpetual longing to break its environment environ-ment and to seek new worlds. , |