(Melchizedek Communique, MC111009) Two Millard Fillmore Stories:

In 1848, just before he was elected Vice-President (with Zachary Taylor elected President), Millard Fillmore was the Comptroller for New York State. On the State House grounds, some boys were playing baseball, or townball as it was then called. Fillmore happened to be visiting in the New York Secretary of State's office.

Suddenly, the boys' baseball smashed through the window! The ball rolled to the feet of Fillmore. Picking up the missile, Fillmore strode outside to where stood the frightened boys.

The boys trembled. There stood Millard Fillmore himself with the offending baseball in his hand!

But with a merry twinkle in his eye, our Millard tossed the ball gently to the boys, and said, "Boys, I wish you would try and knock your ball in some other direction." Then, with a courtly bow, Fillmore walked back to the State House.

Awhile later, when Vice-President Fillmore presided over the U.S. Senate, a snuff box incident caused Fillmore minor annoyance. Our Millard neither used tobacco nor drank alcoholic beverages. Yet there was an old tradition by which two marble snuff boxes always remained on a ledge behind the Vice-President's dais. The snuff boxes were always kept filled by the congressional pages. (Even so late as 2001, and perhaps still, the two same snuff boxes were being kept filled with snuff.)

This was 1849, and some Senators at the time chewed tobacco and even had tobacco juice running down their chins. Charles Dickens called Washington, DC, the "headquarters of tobacco tinctured saliva."

There would be a "rush for snuff" all in the vicinity of Millard Fillmore! Fillmore finally had had enough of all the crowding about for snuff. He leaned down to congressional page Isaac Bassett, and said, "I want you to take this snuff box away from here, I can't understand what is going on in the chamber because of the interruptions and the conversations of Senators who come here for snuff."

(The Friends Of Millard Fillmore (FOMF) know the deeper truths of Millard Fillmore. More information may be released to the general public when and if the time is deemed appropriate.)

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(Source: Millard Fillmore, by Robert J. Scarry. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2001)