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When Morris Sheppard was a schoolboy in Wheatville, Tex., he studied physiology. One illustration in the class textbook was a study of a drunkard's stomach, done in passionate colors. He never got over it, and last week he died a teetotaler.

As the climax of a life devoted to battling Demon Rum, he introduced the law that became the 18th Amendment, helped the tall, droop-mustached Minnesota zealot, Andrew J. Volstead, write the Prohibition enforcement law. But as saloons became speakeasies and gangsters turned to bootleggers, Volstead got all the knocks. Almost nobody had it in for genial, kindly Morris Sheppard. He was no fanatic, and everyone knew it. He simply thought liquor was poison. Texas went right on drinking and re-electing Morris Sheppard.

Sheppard didn't try to be a great statesman, but he knew a lot about the fine art of being a little Senator. He kept a little black book of his daily attendance record in Congress. The average was less than a day's absence per year, for 38 years. Any Texan could ask him to do anything and be sure he would try. He was a "typewriter Senator," answering every scrap of mail faithfully, always regarding himself as the errand boy of a great State.

Almost every year, on Jan. 16, anniversary of Prohibition, he delivered a long address on the glories of abstinence, the vileness of John Barleycorn. As chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee he was regarded by the War Department as invaluable, since he was that rare person, a civilian expert on military matters.

Last week Morris Sheppard died from overwork, eight years short of his goal. His consuming ambition was to serve in Congress longer than anyone else.

His death left the Administration up a pair of trees. By seniority, North Carolina's bumptious isolationist, "Roaring Robert" Reynolds, is entitled to become chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. Elegant Mr. Reynolds is known to the public as a legislator who fought to delay conscription, to kill the Lend-Lease Bill, and against repeal of the arms embargo.

And Morris Sheppard's death stampeded Texas' political cattle. As Senator Sheppard's casket went quietly down Texarkana's State Line Avenue to the little cemetery last week, Red-Hunter Martin Dies, Attorney General Gerald C. Mann, a horde of shorthorns were hot after the seat. Texas' House of Representatives petitioned Governor W. Lee ("Pass-The-Biscuits-Pappy") O'Daniel to appoint himself for the 90-day interim before an election must be held. Pappy held his peace, and pondered. Morris Sheppard was buried. The little people of Texas, the Anti-Saloon League of America, the high command of the Army mourned him most. They knew him best.

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