The Semi Weekly Miner

Interviewing a Greystone.

I have just returned from a visit to Greystone, and have had an experience which reminds me very much of the day that I fell into the front end of a thrashing machine and came out with the straw and was tramped on by the horses. Reading in the newspapers that Mr. Tilden was in robust health, with rosy cheeks and sinewy mind, I concluded to go up and interview him.

When I arrived at the front gate of the baronial demesnes, I saw Mr. Tilden down by the house sawing wood. As he stopped to rub his saw with a piece of bacon rind, he caught sight of me. Suspecting me to be a reporter, he shouted to a hired man, at work near by, not to let me pass. I never heard such a voice in my life. It sounded like a Nova Scotia fog horn. A mate on the Mississippi River in olden times would have paid a rental of $25 a month for the use of that voice. I bribed the hired man with a cigar to let me go by.

When Mr. Tilden saw me advancing he dropped his saw and started to run. The first thing he did was to clear a garden hedge about five feet high. I lost fully half a minute in hunting a breach in the hedge through which I could pass. By this time Mr. Tilden had bounded away towards the barnyard. Clearing an empty straw rick which lay in his course, he alighted in close proximity to the orchard fence. I am an agile man myself, and as I ran around the end of the rick he took the fence, and before I could get over he had climbed a tall cherry tree with squirrel-like celerity. I thought I had him, but just as I neared the tree he saw his strategic mistake, and with one bound he leaped out of the tree and started for the house. I got close enough to him at one time to shout: "What do you think of the Ohio Republican platform on the tariff question?" but he eluded me and entered the front door of the house.

I chased him from room to room and from story to story, when finally he emerged upon the roof. Before he could close the door I was beside him, note-book in hand. This, then, was the end of the steeplechase.

"I see," said I, "that you are familiar with Thomas & Kempis. Will you permit me to inquire whether''

Before I could finish the sentence Mr. Tilden turned upon me like a wild boar at bay. He caught me by the shoulders, brought me down upon my stomach, and after wiping up the roof with me raised me in his arms and actually hurled me from the battlements.

Fortunately I alighted in the midst of a flower plat upon my cheek. I sustained no serious injury beyond the slight fracture of the humerus, a dislocation of the patella and a slight indentation of the left parietal bone. But the next time there is to be any interviewing done at Greystone while Mr. Tilden remains in his present state of robustiousness you can send Mr. John L. Sullivan, of Boston.

S. PERKINS (Brother of Eli).

-In New York World.