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Show I SENATOR SHERIMN A BUSY MAN X iff v 1 If Senator Lawrence Y. Sherman, the junior member from Illinois, is not as busy as a bride on her wedding morn he is grieved. He has been in public life ever Bince 1896, with the exception of about two years, and he became known as such an indefatigable indefatig-able worker that the voters and public pub-lic officials with appointive jobs on their hands just kept handing him something new all the time. In 1896 he entered the lower house of the Illinois legislature. From 1900 until 1904 he was speaker of that body. Then he was elected lieutenant governor and presided over the upper house until 1908. Scarcely had he reached home and begun practicing law when Governor Deneen appointed him president of the board of administration. All he had to do was direct the work of eighteen state institutions which had just been consolidated. Sometimes he would not work more than sixteen hours a day. That was not hard on the senator, who started as a farm hand. Among the institutions under the board's control were the State Hospital for the Insane at Kankakee and the Deaf and Dumb School at Jacksonville. One day an inmate of the hospital called Sherman aside and unfolded a great scheme to aid him. "I would suggest," the patient said, "that you teach the barber trade to one of the mutes in the Jacksonville school and put him in charge of the hospital shop. A silent barber would rest the male inmates' minds greatly." "Sir," Sherman responded, "you aren't crazy!" And a month later the patient was discharged as sane. |