Pictures of the great Gen. Butler.
--That our sketch of this illustrious warrior may not be considered overdrawn, we beg to invite in confirmation of it the following description from a journal which is laboring assiduously in the manufacture of heroes for Northern worship and admiration, out of the
military Generals and
Colonels of
Lincoln's army:
Anecdote of the early Life of Gen. Benj. F. Butler.--Ben was sent to the High School, and at length to Waterville College, Maine, the principal institution of the
Baptist denomination, entirely, or in part, as a charity student.
Here he distinguished himself for everything gather than a close application to his studies, bring in fact the wildest customer and most incorrigible scapegiace that pious professors of this seat of learning had ever before been put at their wits' ends to deal with.
However, he contrived at length to graduate, and returned to his home at
Lowell.
It was now that my acquaintance with him for the first time became intimate, commencing at my father's house.
I thought him the queerest looking specimen of humanity I had ever seen.
He was about five feet eight inches in height, with short, crooked legs; a full, pale face, bearing the most decided marks of intellect and indomitable character; the top of his head bald, and his back hair falling in a long, light brown cascade far below his coat collar!
added to which, he was most curiously and wonderfully squint-eyed, the lids of his eyes, while talking with me, being nearly closed, resembling those of an owl in the day time.
Subsequently these remarkable organs of vision assumed another appearance.
Shortly after the
French operation for the
strabismus was introduced into this country, a distinguished surgeon of
Lowell persuaded
Butler to submit to it; but one optic having been set right, he positively refused to have the other touched, declaring that the agony he suffered was too great to be endured again, so that at present the expression of his eyes is decidedly striking, not to say comical.
