“His arguments before the senate, or before its important committees, coming from his well-stored and well-balanced mind, always gained keen attention, for they were characterized by clearness, force, and dignity of diction; they were made to enlighten and instruct his audience, and he never permitted himself to descend to buncombe, billingsgate, specious pleading, or petty politics. His language was chaste Anglo-Saxon ‘from the pure well of English unalloyed.’ He preferred to inform his hearers by presenting plain, pertinent facts rather than to resort to the tricks of the rhetorician in order to secure the passing tribute of applause.” CHAPTER VI EUROPE AND THE CAMPAIGN OF ’96 I In the summer of 1895, after the adjournment of the legislature, Mr. Kern, on the advice of his physician, went to Europe for a period of rest and relaxation, and spent a few weeks in France and England. We are permitted glimpses of him in his meanderings through letters written at the time to his father and sister, Mrs. Sarah E. Engel. He sailed from New York on June 29th on a German ship “not fashionable but substantial and safe.” Landing at Southampton, he hurried on to London, greatly impressed by “the beautiful agricultural country--said to be the finest part of rural England, and rivaling in appearance any part of America I have seen,” but amused at “the little Jim Crow cars” and the “freight cars about the size of covered wagons.” In London, where he stayed at the Morley Hotel, he was fascinated by the throbbing greatness of things. “It is as far ahead of New York as New York is ahead of Indianapolis,” he wrote. Here he settled down to seeing London in his own way, and we find him seated beside the driver of an omnibus, “getting a bird’s-eye view” of the city, and for an additional six pence having pointed out the great parks, the British Museum, St. Pauls, London Bridge, the Bank of England, the Tower, the Mansion House, the Temple, Westminster, and the various churches. Having thus got his bearings he settled down to intensive touring, delighted with everything he saw except the people whose condescension he resented. General Patrick Collins of Boston, a friend, and then consul-general to London, was attentive, and he had a letter to T. P. (Tay Pay) O’Connor, the famous member of the Irish parliamentary party, who pointed out the lions of English public life in the House of Commons. He spent some time in the courts, visited points of historic interest, and attended services in St. Pauls, which he found “bewildering.” “The music of the great double organ and all the hundred voices of the choir, reverberating throughout the arches and the domes, was beautiful, but awe inspiring.”