The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII.: InterviewsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII.: Interviews
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
[* Our "Royal Bob" was found by _The Gazette_, in the gloaming of
a delicious evening, during the past week, within the open portals
of his friendly residence, dedicated by the gracious presence within
to a simple and cordial hospitality, to the charms of friendship and
the freedom of an abounding comradeship. With intellectual and
untrammeled life, a generous, wise and genial host, whoever enters
finds a welcome, seasoned with kindly wit and Attic humor, a poetic
insight and a delicious frankness which renders an evening there a
veritable symposium. The wayfarer who passes is charmed, and he who
comes frequently, goes always away with delighted memories.
What matters it that we differ? such as he and his make our common
life the sweeter. An hour or two spent in the attractive parlors
of the Ingersoll homestead, amid that rare group, lends a newer
meaning to the idea of home and a more secure beauty to the fact
of family life. During the past exciting three weeks Colonel
Ingersoll has been a busy man. He holds no office. No position
could lend him an additional crown and even recognition is no longer
necessary. But it has been well that amid the first fierce fury
of anger and excitement, and the subsequent more bitter if not as
noble outpouring of faction's suspicions and innuendoes, that so
manly a man, so sagacious a counsellor, has been enabled to hold
so positive a balance. Cabinet officers, legal functionaries,
detectives, citizens--all have felt the wise, humane instincts,
and the capacious brain of this marked man affecting and influencing
for this fair equipoise and calmer judgment.
Conversing freely on the evening of this visit, Colonel Ingersoll,
in the abundance of his pleasure at the White House news, submitted
to be interviewed, and with the following result.]
_Question_. By-the-way, Colonel, you knew Guiteau slightly, we
believe. Are you aware that it has been attempted to show that
some money loaned or given him by yourself was really what he
purchased the pistol with?
_Answer_. I knew Guiteau slightly; I saw him for the first time
a few days after the inauguration. He wanted a consulate, and
asked me to give him a letter to Secretary Blaine. I refused, on
the ground that I didn't know him. Afterwards he wanted me to lend
him twenty-five dollars, and I declined. I never loaned him a
dollar in the world. If I had, I should not feel that I was guilty
of trying to kill the President. On the principle that one would
hold the man guilty who had innocently loaned the money with which
he bought the pistol, you might convict the tailor who made his
clothes. If he had had no clothes he would not have gone to the
depot naked, and the crime would not have been committed. It is
hard enough for the man who did lend him the money to lose that,
without losing his reputation besides. Nothing can exceed the
utter absurdity of what has been said upon this subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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