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 erected to the memory of Hon. John Sherman, "impossible, Colonel, that you could have seen Shakespeare write those plays; they were written three hundred years ago." "Three hundred years, three hundred years," slowly murmured the Colonel in pathetic tone, "is it possible that is has been so long? _Lord, how time does fly!"_ The Colonel often told the following with a gravity that gave it at least the semblance of truth. Many years ago, his State was represented in part in the Upper House by a statesman who rarely, when in good form, spoke less than an entire day. His speeches, in large measure, usually consisted of dull financial details, statistics, etc. He became in time the terror of his associates, and the nightmare of visitors in the galleries. His "Mr. President," was usually the signal for a general clearing out of both Senate Chamber and galleries.