MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 POEMS, SPEECHES 
 
 AND ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. C. LANGSTON 
 
 Y S/^fjiiAif.^-^l-A Y ^4.% ) 19 ly 
 

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DEDICATION 
 TO HONORABLE HERSCHEL S. WHITE, 
 
 the pupil of my younger days, the bosom friend of 
 my maturer years, the champion of every virtue and the 
 foe of every wrong, one of the few of nature's genuine 
 noblemen, I respectfully dedicate this little volume. 
 JOHN C LANGSTON. 
 Sylvania, Georgia, 1914. 
 
NOV 20 1918 
 
INDEX 
 
 Esther and Naomi; a Story of King Solomon's Wives 7 
 
 Educational Speech 15 
 
 Poem to Pupils 20 
 
 Memorial Address 22 
 
 Poem to Confederate Veterans 30 
 
 Response to Memorial Address 33 
 
 Fanaticism 36 
 
 Superstition 39 
 
 Poem — A Dream of the Austro - Servian War . . 42 
 
 Speech Introducing William Jennings Bryan ... 44 
 
 Welcome to the Savannah Automobile Club ... 46 
 
 Poem— "Why?" 48 
 
 Speech at School Rally 50 
 
 Address to Farmer's Union 55 
 
 Poem— The Militant Suffragette . 63 
 
 Address — What Constitutes a Successful Life ... 65 
 
 Speech at Woman's Civic Club Banquet .... 75 
 
 The Village Pastor 77 
 
ESTHER AND NAOMI; 
 
 A Story of the Wives of King Solomon. 
 
 The king sat in his royal hall, 
 
 His wives were gathered round him all ; 
 
 Deep was the dark of orient eyes, 
 
 And some were blue as summer skies ; 
 
 And snow white necks and dimpled arms, 
 
 Suggestive of still other charms, 
 
 Shone under lamps of burnished gold. 
 
 While amorous music softly rolled 
 
 Voluptuous strains of melting love, 
 
 That reached the cedar roof above. 
 
 Sweet was the perfume on the air, 
 
 And sweet the tints of beauty there. 
 
 The raven tresses and the gold 
 
 Fell down in many a plaited fold 
 
 On ivory shoulders satin skin, 
 
 And silken robes, so soft and thin, 
 
 They did not hide, but half revealed 
 
 The heavenly charms those robes concealed. 
 
 The king gazed on, abstracted, mute. 
 
 Nor music of the harp or lute. 
 
 Nor silver laugh, nor love-lit eye 
 
 Could rouse him from his revery. 
 
 His gaze was fixed, his head was bowed. 
 
 Upon his brow a gathering cloud. 
 
 Defying even the kings control. 
 
 Gave tokens of a troubled soul. 
 
 A month ago the king had led 
 
 Naomi to the nuptial bed ; 
 
 Latest and loveliest of them all 
 
 Within that monarch's regal hall ; 
 
 And Esther, once the favorite queen, 
 
 Most honored of them all, had seen 
 
Her royal lovers zeal decline, 
 To worship at another shrine; 
 She saw Naomi's star arise, 
 To shine within the royal skies. 
 All unavailing her regret, 
 For Esther's star for aye had set, 
 And she was doomed to see her foe, 
 Her rival, triumph in her woe, 
 Then jealous hatreds poisoned fang 
 Fixed in her heart a deadly pang, 
 That suffered neither sleep nor rest 
 Within her wild and maddened breast: 
 Then cherished she a dark revenge, 
 To see Naomi crawl and cringe, 
 And beg for mercy at her feet — 
 Revenge like this were heavenly sweet. 
 
 Naomi had not loved the king, 
 
 But wore perforce the wedding ring; 
 
 His was the right to look and choose, 
 
 No maiden might the king refuse ; 
 
 Her heart had long been Joseph's own ; 
 
 He was her king ; his was the throne 
 
 At which Naomi long had paid 
 
 The homage of. a Jewish maid. 
 
 By Joseph was Naomi loved, 
 
 His royal love 'he long had proved. 
 
 And when the king had fixed his eyes 
 
 Upon so fair and sweet a prize. 
 
 And claimed her as a sacrifice, 
 
 Then burned with fiery grief his soul. 
 
 Then burst the bonds of self control. 
 
 And passion urged, with scorpion sting, 
 
 To mete out vengeance to the king. 
 
 W'hen night drew down her sable pall, 
 Then haunted he the palace wall, 
 To catch a glimpse of eyes that shone, 
 And shone with love for him alone. 
 He heard a song — Naomi's voice, 
 Like music, made his heart rejoice ; 
 Beyond the casements latticed light, 
 
 8 
 
He saw Naomi's face ; the sight 
 Made all his pulses faster beat 
 With passions maddening fever heat, 
 And bade him dare or death or shame 
 To call upon Naomi's name, 
 With beating heart and flying feet, 
 Within the garden's cool retreat. 
 She met her lover, face to face, 
 And clasped within a warm embrace. 
 With tears that fell like summer rain. 
 She spoke her passion all again. 
 Thc}^ planned to leave the tyrant's hall, 
 To scale the guarded garden wall, 
 And fly wherever fate might prove 
 The way to freedom and to love. 
 
 But hark, what spy is dimly seen 
 
 The heavy shrubbery between ? 
 
 'Twas Esther's form; 'twas Esther's tread 
 
 That swiftly to the palace sped. 
 
 And ere another day took wing, 
 
 Had told that meeting to the king. 
 
 And this is why the king sat still. 
 
 Within his heart a deadly chill, 
 
 The storm cloud gathering on his brow. 
 
 And in his soul a deadly vow 
 
 To render all their plans but vain. 
 
 And wreak upon the lovers twain 
 
 A vengeance deadly in its aim, 
 
 Of mingled suffering and shame, 
 
 Which yet the monarch dare not name; 
 
 Even to himself ; not yet he knew 
 
 If Esther's tale were false or true. 
 
 Ah, if Naomi could have known 
 
 What caused that monarch's threatening frown, 
 
 As swift of foot as light gazelle. 
 
 When chased by hounds o'er hill and dell. 
 
 She would have sped that night away, 
 
 Far from her sceptered monarch's sway, 
 
 And hid herself in forest cave. 
 
 Or plunged herself in ocean wave. 
 
And not abide that jealous ire, 
 That smouldered like some pent up fire, 
 Within the deep volcano's breast, 
 Whose lava tides nov^ ebb and flow 
 The crested crater far below, 
 Till sudden frenzy hurls on high 
 Fire, smoke and ashes to the sky, 
 And all that touch it scorch and die. 
 
 The music's soft and melting strains, 
 Cooled not the monarch's fevered veins; 
 Nor could he longer brook delay, 
 Or boiling tide of anger stay ; 
 He sent for Joseph ; Joseph came. 
 Then loud he called Naomi's name; 
 The trembling lovers, side by side. 
 Must now their dreadful fate abide, 
 Pronounced by him whose humbled pride 
 Would spare them naught of shame or pain, 
 E'er dreamed by fever maddened brain. 
 
 Beside the monarch Esther stood. 
 Revenge ran riot in her blood ; 
 Within her eyes a spark of fire 
 Gave token of her jealous ire ; 
 She ofifered there the tale to prove 
 Of Joseph's and Naomi's love; 
 Naomi's tears and Joseph's vows. 
 The warm embrace that love allows, 
 The clinging kiss, and last of all. 
 The plan to flee the royal hall. 
 
 Then swift Naomi made reply, 
 With heightened cheek and flashing eye; 
 'Your Esther speaks the truth, my lord, 
 For rather would I brave the sword 
 Than utter with my living breath 
 A lie to save myself from death. 
 I loved youngs Joseph — do not start — 
 With all the ardor of my heart, 
 Long ere your lordship came between. 
 
 10 
 
And made me an unwilling queen ; 
 Now do your worst, come life or death, 
 I'll tell you with my latest breath 
 As long as Joseph's love remains, 
 I spurn the captive's silken chains, 
 And rather would I die, than prove 
 A traitress to the one I love." 
 
 Then Esther, with a haughty smile, 
 And heart and lips both full of guile, 
 Said "Pray my lord, this boon I crave, 
 I beg Naomi's life to save. 
 And ask Naomi for my slave ; 
 With Joseph do whate'er you will — 
 It matters not, or good or ill." 
 Spoke then the king, with bitter heart, 
 'Naomi, Esther's slave thou art ; 
 To do for her a menials part. 
 O'er thee shall Esther have full sway. 
 And her commands shalt thou obey; 
 Failing to do what she commands, 
 'Tis thine to suffer at her hands. 
 And Joseph, traitor tho' thou be. 
 Thy life I yet shall spare to thee. 
 On this condition, that thou wed 
 And take unto th}^ nuptial bed 
 The lowest menial of them all 
 That serve within my royal hall." 
 
 No choice had they ; their cups o'erflow 
 With all the bitterness of woe. 
 No longer did the king delay, 
 The menials came in long array, 
 And rneanest of that menial tide 
 The king did choose for Joseph's bride. 
 Stern, stalwart soldiers stood at hand. 
 To carry out the kings command. 
 Naomi saw; her heart stood still. 
 Her very blood grew deadly chill. 
 When Joseph w^ent adown those halls, 
 A prisoner in the palace walls. 
 
 11 
 
But Joseph recked not his fate, 
 
 Nor thought he of his menial mate, 
 
 His only care, his only thought 
 
 Was of Naomi's cruel lot; 
 
 Of all she suffered, all she bore, 
 
 Of grief and shame within the store 
 
 Of fiendish tortures womans brain 
 
 Can nurse when racked with jealous pain. 
 
 And sweet Naomi — where was she, 
 
 Thus doomed Queen Esther's slave to be? 
 
 Ah, could her Joseph then have seen 
 
 Naomi kneeling to the queen. 
 
 Her lovely shoulders stripped and bare, 
 
 While on them fell, now here, now there. 
 
 The merciless and cruel lash, 
 
 While many a stripe and many a gash. 
 
 Disfigured all that loveliness — 
 
 Then like some maddened lioness, 
 
 When hunters shaft has pierced her young, 
 
 And all her brain to madness stung. 
 
 Springs fiercely on 'her human foe, 
 
 And strikes him down with one fell blow — 
 
 Even thus would Joseph in his rage. 
 
 Have burst the bars of iron cage. 
 
 And swifter than the lightning stroke 
 
 Which splintering rives the mountain oak. 
 
 Have struck the queen with fatal dart, 
 
 And spent the life blood of her heart. 
 
 Three nights had passed; each night the same 
 
 Of Joseph's grief — Naomi's shame ; 
 
 When rumor took to Joseph's ear. 
 
 The tale, then recked he naught of fear. 
 
 But swift as eagles dizzying fliglit, 
 
 When soaring o'er some mountain height, 
 
 Within his heart the fires of hell. 
 
 He broke the gratings of his cell ; 
 
 With glittering dagger strong and keen. 
 
 He sought the chamber of the queen ; 
 
 Down crashed the door with deafening sound, 
 
 That waked the echoes all around. 
 
 Nor paused he there, but with one bound, 
 
 12 
 
Like tiger springing on his foe, 
 He struck the queen a fatal blow. 
 Swift from her heart the life blood sped, 
 And dyed her robe a deeper red; 
 She gasped — gave one convulsive start, 
 The deep wound gurgled in her heart; 
 The death glaze gathered in her eyes. 
 And Esther fell, no more to rise. 
 
 He raised Naomi from the floor, 
 With blood stained arms, her form he bore 
 Swift o'er the chambers splintered door. 
 The wakened guards were swifter yet. 
 And ever}^ pass was thick beset 
 And every hall ablaze with light. 
 While rang the cries of wild affright, 
 And every palace sentinel 
 Joined in the chase with deafening yell, 
 Till Joseph, stumbling, tripped and fell. 
 Then rushed the hunters on their prey. 
 And seized, and bound, and led away 
 The captives to a separate cell, 
 Until tomorrows morn should tell 
 What fearful doom should wait upon 
 The judgment of King Solomon. 
 
 The morn arose serene and fair. 
 Sweet was the circumambient air, 
 And naught in Natures smiling face 
 Betrayed a single sign or trace 
 Of deeds of blood, or what a fate 
 The captive lovers should await. 
 The king sat in his robes of state, 
 Courtiers and guards around him sate. 
 While every eye and every ear, 
 Was strained upon the king, to hear 
 The sentence of the captive pair. 
 
 13 
 
Ere yet the morning sun was high, 
 
 Two captive lovers, doomed to die, 
 
 Knelt side by side; their heads were bowed, 
 
 Around them stood the pitying crowd. 
 
 The throng was hushed, there was no stir. 
 
 The fearful executioner. 
 
 Still as a statue, stood close by, 
 
 His gleaming sword upraised on high. 
 
 His gaze fixed on his monarch's eye, 
 
 To catch the signal from the king. 
 
 To let two human souls take wing. 
 
 Dow^n fell the sword, Naomi's head, 
 
 Rolled in the dust, her spirit fled ; 
 
 Again the gleaming blade flashed high, 
 
 Like lightning in a summer sky, 
 
 It fell, and Joseph's soul had flown, 
 
 Its course to join Naomi's own. 
 
 14 
 
EDUCATIONAL SPEECH DELIVERED IN 
 WARE COUNTY, 1905 
 
 When Demosthenes was asked what were the 
 first three requisites of a good orator, he summed 
 them all up in one word, "Action." So if I were 
 asked what I considered the most essential elements 
 of a good citizen, I should answer, "Education." 
 In the first place, in this rapid age in which we live, 
 it is almost essential to business success. It is a 
 dangerous thing now to hazard competition in the 
 keen rivalries of every department of business life, 
 in a period when brawn no longer copes with brain, 
 and thought is winged with lightning. The men of 
 power today are those who think, and they think 
 best whose minds have been best trained to think. 
 While it is true that here and there may be found 
 some man or woman who has achieved signal suc- 
 cess without the advantages of education, yet they 
 are the exception, and not the rule; and that where 
 one imperious genius has triumphed over the 
 adverse circumstances of untutored youth, many a 
 soul fitted for high and worthy aims, has had its 
 aspirations crushed, and its sweet voice silenced by 
 parental tyranny or neglect. We can readily 
 understand the value of physical training. The 
 oarsman, the sprinter, the pugilist must be trained 
 until their muscles have become strong and alert 
 to do their masters' will. And so the mind must 
 be trained, its faculties cultivated, and expanded, 
 if we mean to get the largest out of living. 
 
 But when I use the word ''Education," I do not 
 mean mere book learning; the pouring into the 
 head, of historical dates, and geographical locations, 
 and miscellaneous facts, piled up in heterogeneous 
 and inextricable confusion. But I mean intellectual 
 development and expansion ; the quickening and 
 enlarging of the mental powers, which enables the 
 
 15 
 
trained faculties to plan railways, and conceive 
 oceanic cables, and fits the man to better cope with 
 man in the struggle of life. 
 
 Looked at from this utilitarian standpoint, it is 
 an advantage which the dullest mind can compre- 
 hend. But it does more than this : By giving us 
 clearer perceptions, it enables us to lay a well 
 defined line of demarkation between right and 
 wrong, and makes us better citizens, better jurors, 
 and better statesmen. Some one has well said that 
 the public schools are the bulwarks of our national 
 liberties. It is there that our sons must be taught 
 those eternal principles of truth and justice which 
 will bear rich fruit in the halls of legislation in the 
 years to come, and save our country from the 
 dangers of discord and disunion to which ignorant 
 and partisan legislation subject her. Governor 
 Crittendon of Missouri has truly said that "Par- 
 simony to education is liberality to crime." Then 
 let us count no expense of education, extravagance, 
 but let us build academies, and colleges, and univer- 
 sities, and fill them with teachers whose hearts, 
 and minds are aglow with love for their chosen 
 profession, and we shall then be ''Heirs of all the 
 ages, in the foremost files of time." No Russian 
 despotism can then grind us beneath its iron heel, 
 for the plowman in the field, and the delver in the 
 mine, the operative in the factory, and the toiling 
 millions who now support the world of idleness and 
 luxury upon their shoulders, will rise in the majesty 
 of an enlightened citizenship, and confound their 
 oppressors by the exercise of an intelligent fran- 
 chise. Then the passion and the prejudice* the 
 bitterness and the hate which have so Ipng cursed 
 this fair land of ours, will wither beneath the burn- 
 ing searchlight of an enlightened public sentiment. 
 
 If there is one curse which more than another 
 mars this splendid globe of ours, it is the curse of 
 ignorance. It is the fruitful mother of superstition, 
 and fanaticism, and persecution, of disease, and 
 crime and death. It is the builder of alms houses, 
 and asylums and penitentiaries. It caused the 
 
 16 
 
Thirty Years War in Germany, it instigated the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, founded the Spanish 
 Inquisition, invented the thumbscrew and the rack, 
 and shed the blood of thousands of the best and 
 bravest of the human race. It lighted the grounds 
 of Nero with burning Christians, and held the 
 hemlock to the lips of Socrates. It shackles 
 reason, and enthrones credulity. It worships creeds 
 and imprisons conscience. To the ignorant man, 
 creation is a mighty maze, and all without a plan. 
 To the man of cultured mind, all nature is pregnant 
 with lessons of a great First Cause. He sees a 
 design in leaf and bud and rainbow tint, and realizes 
 the majesty and might of a matchless designer. He 
 treads upon the hydra head of dogma, and feels 
 that 
 
 'Tor modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight. 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 For him the prayer of Pope in his ''Universal 
 Prayer" covers the whole ground, 
 
 "Teach me to feel another's woe, 
 To hide the fault I see; 
 That mercy I to others show. 
 That mercy show to me." 
 
 Education unlocks the doors of Astronomy, and 
 walks w^ith airy tread the star-paved path of the 
 milky way. The educated man sees God in the 
 moving of the mighty hosts through the vast 
 unbosomed depths of space. In Jupiter, full orbed 
 and magnificent, Saturn with her dusky rings, and 
 far-off Neptune, the outpost sentinel of the solar 
 system, so far distant that it takes eighty-four years 
 to make one revolution around the central sun. To 
 him these systems of suns and planets are 
 
 "Forever singing as they shine. 
 The hand that made us is divine." 
 
 17 
 
As education advances, the world grows better. 
 An ignorant priestcraft no longer deludes us with its 
 foolish mummeries; astronomy takes the place of 
 astrology, and chemistry supersedes alchemy. 
 
 It may be chimerical to look for a day of univer- 
 sal education in the early future, but the signs of the 
 times give hopeful promise, and when that time 
 shall come, 
 
 "Then shall war-drums throb no longer, 
 and the battle flags be furled 
 In the parliament of man, the federation 
 of the world." 
 
 "No longer, then, will be seen the beggars out- 
 stretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony stare; 
 no longer heard the weary clanking chains of weary 
 exiles to Siberian snows; but the development of 
 all that is purest, and best, and noblest, — the reign 
 of *'The Prince of Peace." 
 
 Young men and women, let me appeal to you to 
 make the most of the opportunities offered to you 
 here, and bear in mind that upon you to some extent, 
 however small, depend the stability and perpetuity 
 of our commonwealth, and the reformation of 
 society. Study and strive, and toil, not for the 
 selfish greed of pelf or power, but that the world 
 may be the better for your having lived in it. It 
 will make you happier, and better, and worthier. 
 You will better understand the philosophy of life, 
 and your relation to your fellow man, and to the 
 universe in which you live. Your intellectual hori- 
 zon will be widened, your sympathies quickened, 
 and your love for humanity deepened. You will 
 be more tolerant in opinion, and you will learn that 
 yours is not the only religion, yours not the onl}^ 
 politics, yours not the only theories. You will see 
 some good in all things, and will discover that 
 none are altogether evil. You will not undertake 
 to persecute your neighbor for opinions sake, 
 but will accord to him the largest liberty 
 of conscience and of speech. Creeds and 
 
 18 
 
dogmas will lose much of their force as 
 merely human and imperfect thmgs ; you wil 
 be wiUing to see some good in all religions, and will 
 realize that all are "but roug'h and devious paths 
 that man has worn with weary feet in sad and 
 painful search for truth and peace; and that all 
 the streams, no matter how they turn and wander, 
 curve amid the hills and rocks, will sometime reach 
 the sea." 
 
 It will seem entirely possible to you that the 
 conscientious followers of Zoroaster, who wor- 
 shiped the sun and stars upon the plains of Persia; 
 the devotees of Isis and Osiris on the banks oi 
 the sluggish Nile; the worshipers of Jupiter and 
 Juno on the vine-clad hills of Greece, and the 
 disciples of Wodin and Thor amid boreal storms 
 and snows, may all meet at last, and worship at 
 the throne of one common Father. Then, when 
 your life's temple has been completed, and the glory 
 of life's setting sun streams down on gilded dome 
 and glittering spire, and fluted column, and Corin- 
 thian capital, laying down the chisel and the mallet 
 from tired hands, in the twilight shadows of life's 
 closing day, you may retire to rest, "Like one who 
 wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and 
 lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 19 
 
FAREWELL POEM TO THE STUDENTS OF 
 MILAN COLLEGE, TENNESSEE 
 
 First Published in the Louisville, Ky. Courier-Journal 
 
 1 
 
 These delicate tokens from pupil to teacher, 
 
 Speak more of affection than poem or song; 
 There's a voice in the exquisite language of Nature, 
 
 More potent by far than the art of the tongue. 
 The delicate cedar with violets twining, 
 
 "Here's an emerald pledge of my constancy," saith, 
 While the rose on the breast of the lily reclining. 
 
 Is a whisper of love on the bosom of faith. 
 Oh thus may our friendship, thro' sunshine and 
 shower. 
 
 Be as changeless and bright as the cedar and rose. 
 As fair as the lily, the fairest of flowers, 
 
 And trusting like it in its gentle repose. 
 
 Ay, friends let us be, as the friends we are parting, 
 
 The years may be long ere I'll meet you again ; 
 On a wide severed pathway our vessels are starting, 
 
 To be rocked on the waves of a wreck covered 
 main ; 
 But tho' the last rays of the daylight, declining. 
 
 Shall sink from my gaze in the darkness of gloom ; 
 Tho' the tremulous starlight of hope may cease 
 shining. 
 
 And my barque may, unguided, drift on to its 
 doom ; 
 Yet far o'er the watery waste of the billow, 
 
 Your mem'ries shall flash into beauty and bloom, 
 And breathing a moment a balm on my pillow, 
 
 Shall shed on the tempest their richest perfume. 
 
 20 
 
'Tis not mine to pursue where your young hopes 
 are straying, 
 
 Or gaze on the castles that brighten your dreams ; 
 No seer may reveal what the future's arraying, 
 
 To darken with shadows the sunshine it seems ; 
 But be it each lot that the green arbor-vitae 
 
 Of hope may hang over lifes stream to its goal ; 
 And roses of love kiss the pure crystal waters 
 
 To sweeten the tide of your 3^ears as they roll. 
 And when age, with a step like the pulse of the 
 midnight, 
 
 Treads swiftly and soft on the heels of the hours, 
 In the last fading glow of a beautiful twilight. 
 
 May your lives pass away like the breath of the 
 flowers. 
 
 21 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESS 
 Delivered in Sylvania, April 26, 1910 
 
 A miuature Mosaic Palace of beautiful thought 
 from various authors 
 
 The patriotic ladies in charge of the ceremonies 
 of today made every reasonable effort to secure a 
 suitable orator for this occasion, and when all their 
 attempts had met with failure, they asked me only 
 a few days ago to say something to fill in this 
 vacancy in their program. Their request came at 
 a peculiarly inopportune time, just on the eve of 
 our school commencement, when my hands were 
 full of preparation for our closing exercises. 
 But appreciating their loyalty to the cause which 
 we have met to honor, and feeling that some one 
 ought to respond to their call, I am here to represent 
 them today: Not to make a finished and polished 
 memorial address, but merely to acknowledge their 
 compliment to me, which however late, is not 
 unappreciated, and as the son of a southern soldier, 
 to show my love and veneration for the ''Lost 
 Cause," and the veterans who surrendered their all 
 to defend it. Therefore, I promise you that I shall 
 detain you for the briefest possible time. 
 
 It boots not to enter upon a prolix discussion of 
 the causes which led up to the Civil Wa-V, nor to 
 recapitulate the story of its bloodshed and its suffer- 
 ing. Its history is familiar to us all. "*After a 
 four years conflict, when soldiers stood eye to eye, 
 and hilt to hilt; a conflict in which every step was 
 a battle field, and every battle field a grave yard ; 
 where on one side the Stars and Stripes waved in 
 triumph, and on another the Stars and Bars 
 
 •Gen. Wm. B. Bate. 
 
 22 
 
answered with the shouts of victory; when the 
 battle axe of the Crusader was met by the magic 
 blade of the Saracen ; and when the last arrow from 
 his quiver was spent, and last shot from his locker 
 gone, grasping with one mangled hand his broken 
 blade, as he held up with the other his battered 
 shield, with Manassas and Shiloh and Chickamauga 
 imprinted upon it, what must be our admiration 
 for the gallant Confederate hero?" "**I need not 
 present you the dark and bloody picture, to aw^aken 
 your love and your admiration for their heroism 
 and their devotion. I need not recall those who 
 formed that glittering line of bayonets on Maryes 
 burnng hill ; who met the red storm of blood and fire 
 at Chancellorsville ; who stepped like bridegrooms 
 to a marriage feast up the stony ridge at 
 Gettysburg, and meeting foemen worthy of their 
 steel, fell back like the sullen roar of broken waters. 
 I need not recall those noble spirits who drew their 
 expiring breath in the mortal trenches at Peters- 
 burg, or who bore their wasted forms and looked 
 for the last time on earth on the bleak hills of 
 Appomattox. Human history from the beginning 
 has failed to furnish a brighter example of all the 
 devoted qualities of solders duty than was daily 
 exhibited in the army of the South. The world 
 yet listens as we tell of their dauntless courage, and 
 impetuous charge : Their names are written on 
 the hearts of their countrymen ; their deeds are a 
 priceless heritage to our children, and will be cher- 
 ished as long as men worship truth, or women love 
 the brave." ''tThe restless tide of humanity will 
 rush hither and thither over the land of battles. The 
 ages will, sweep on, and rift the hills, and roll the 
 waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun. The 
 wiiite sails of commerce thicken on our rivers, 
 and the smoke of increasing factories blacken our 
 skies. Mountains will pour forth their treasures, 
 and the fields will glow in the garniture of richer 
 
 'Matt W. Ransom. tJohn W. Daniel. 
 
 23 
 
harvests. New stars will cluster on the flag, and 
 the sons of the South will bear it as their fathers 
 bore it to make the bounds of freedom wider yet. 
 But no greater souls will rise than those who find 
 rest under Southern sod, from Sumter's battered 
 wall to the trailing vines of Hollywood." "?They 
 sleep all over our southern land. The sweet wind- 
 ing Etowah shall hymn their requiem as long as the 
 Iron Mountain around whose base she pours her 
 waters shall remain. The great Father of Waters 
 shall mingle his hoarse deep dirges with the tolling 
 bells of floating steamers, while commerce shall 
 gather the rich fruits of her labors. And Georgia, 
 unrivaled mother, holds them all over her broad 
 bosom, richer in them than India with her treasures, 
 and prouder than Egypt, lifting her changeless 
 pyramids to the skies." 
 
 "■'■?We have no painted porch like that of Athens, 
 where for half a thousand years, the descendants 
 of the men who followed Miltiades to victory might 
 trace the glories of her Marathon ; no grand his- 
 toric Abbey like that of England, where hard by 
 the last resting places of her princes and her kings, 
 sleep the great soldiers who have writ glorious 
 names high upon their country's roll with the point 
 of their stainless swords. Only the frosty stars at 
 night keep solemn watch and ward over the wind- 
 swept graves of those who from Virginia to Texas, 
 yielded up their lives that they might transmit to 
 their children the memory of their fathers." Yet 
 we have a land rich in the memory of heroic men, 
 and prolific in daring deeds. "'''Not all the rain 
 that falls upon the Alleghanys side ; not the swift 
 tides that swell the banks of the Potomac, the 
 Savannah or the Mississippi can wash away from 
 our hearts the memories of the precious blood that 
 cruel warfare shed. Nor mountains hide from 
 sorrowing eyes those grave yard highways that 
 stretch across our land," 
 
 JBenjamin H. Hill. tJW. Gordon McCabe. *Henry May. 
 
 24 
 
'Where every turf beneath our feet, 
 Hath been a soldiers sepulchre." 
 
 ((jk^ 
 
 A land without ruins is a land without mem- 
 ories ; a land without memories is a land without 
 liberty. A land that wears a laurel crown may be 
 fair to see, but twine a few sad cypress leaves around 
 the brow of any land, and be that land beautiless 
 and bleak, it becomes lovely in its consecrated 
 coronet of sorrow, and it wins the sympathy of the 
 heart and history. Crowns of roses fade, but 
 crowns of thorns endure. Calvaries and crucifixes 
 take deepest hold of humanity — the triumphs of 
 might are transient, they pass away and are for- 
 gotten—the sufferings of right are graven deepest 
 on the chronicles of nations. 
 
 "Yes, give me a land where the ruins are spread, 
 And the Hving tread light on the hearts of the dead; 
 Yes, give me a land that is blest by the dust, 
 And bright with the deeds of the down-trodden 
 
 just; 
 Yes, give me the land that hath legends and lays, 
 Enshrining the mem'ries of long vanished days; 
 Yes, give me the land that hath story and song. 
 To tell of the strife of the right with the wrong. 
 Yes, give me the land with a grave in each spot, 
 And names in the graves that shall not be forgot ; 
 Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb — 
 There's a grandeur in graves— there's a glory in 
 
 gloom ; 
 For out of the gloom future brightness is born. 
 As after the night looms the sunlight of morn ; 
 And the graves of the dead, with the grass over- 
 grown, 
 Shall yet be the footstool of Liberty's throne; 
 And each single wreck in the war-path of Might 
 Shall yet be a rock in the Temple of Right." 
 
 '♦Alexander H. Stephens. 
 
 25 
 
*'tln view of such patriotism to inspire, such 
 heroism to praise, and such love to sanctify, shall 
 we fail to honor them who wore the Gray because 
 their cause went down in the dust of defeat? 
 Shall we not rather love them more, and the land 
 w^hich gave them birth? If Scotland's plaided 
 soldier finds music in his bagpipe, if the son of 
 Tell winds his mellow horn in patriotic pride, if 
 the Frenchman goes wild over his Marseillaise, if 
 ''Hail Columbia" excites American patriotism, may 
 we not glory in the soft and melancholy cadence 
 of ''Maryland, My Maryland," and worship the 
 genius that inspired "The Land of Dixie?" May we 
 not look back too, with purest emotions, and remem- 
 ber with sweetest and sadest affections the cross of 
 St. x\ndrew, with its stars and bars, as it waved in 
 triumph over a hundred battle fields, and was 
 baptized in the best blood of the land, ere it became 
 the "Conquered Banner?" My comrades, we owe 
 it to the heroic dead who fell under that banner 
 and in that cause to show the world our appreciation 
 of their valor and patriotism by votive offerings 
 from the hands of our fair women, great in their 
 weakness, noble in their charity, beautiful in their 
 patience, and whose devotion at the cross tand 
 sephulchre was but an earnest of their high and 
 holy mission. If by some mystic means the spirit 
 land could commune with the natural world, and 
 let the spiritual eye of the dead Confederate soldier 
 look down upon each annual ]\Iemorial day, and see 
 the same soft hands that tied the ribbon and pinned 
 the rosette in days of hope and enthusiasm, place 
 the wreath of honor around the little white board 
 at the head of his grave, and plant the flower cross 
 above the heart so still and cold, it would inspire 
 a shout of triumph, and a song of praise in an angel 
 choir known to blessed immortality. There is 
 a tenderer touch of sympathy, a sweeter fragrance, 
 and a iM-ighter hue of beauty thrown around the 
 
 tGen. Wm. B. Bate. 
 
 26 
 
memory of our dear departed by the offerings of 
 sweet April flowers, than wealth or power ever 
 gave to the loved and lost. There is more of hope 
 of the Life Eternal in spreading upon the unosten- 
 tatious graves of our soldiers these simple offerings 
 of nature, than is found in the censer bowl of the 
 king, or around the gilded altars of the proud and 
 great. There is more of tender history entwined 
 in flower wreaths, and made to glow in unblushing 
 beauty upon her truthful pages, than was ever 
 wrought by the chisel of Praxiteles. It is the heart 
 throbs wdiich build strongest and most touching: 
 monuments, and write the truest and sweetest 
 history of our patriot dead. The one stands in 
 its granite strength and massive symmetry, sug- 
 gestive of culture, and challenging admiration ; the 
 other is the simple tribute of the heart, furnished 
 by the hand of Nature from her own genial bosom^ 
 and strewn over the consecrated spot by the minis- 
 tering angels of beauty and of love. The marble 
 with its resistive power, may stand the sunshine 
 and the storm ; but it is cold and passionless, it 
 utters no prayers of devotion, it sheds no tears of 
 sorrow, it sings no songs of love." 
 
 Then let us continue from year to year to scatter 
 floral oft"erings upon the graves of our loved and 
 lost. Though no grateful government has gathered 
 their bones into magnificent cemeteries, adorned 
 with all that wealth can command, or taste suggest 
 to beautify those cities of the dead ; though thou- 
 sands of them sleep far away from the homes of 
 their childhood, in the deep bosom of the forest 
 where human footsteps rarely tread ; and where 
 the birds of the wildwood sing their morning and 
 evening hymn above their unrecorded graves ; 
 though no monumental marble stands sentinel at 
 the spot where they sleep, and no ancestral oaks 
 throw their welcome shadows over their heroic 
 dust ; yet we can meet to offer tribute to their 
 memories, and say from our heart of hearts, 
 
 27 
 
*'Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead, 
 
 Dear as the blood ye gave ; 
 No impious footsteps here shall tread 
 
 The herbage of your grave. 
 Nor shall your valor be forgot 
 
 While Fame her record keeps, 
 Or Honor points the hallowed spot 
 
 Where Valor proudly sleeps. 
 
 Nor wreck, nor change, nor winters blight. 
 
 Nor Times remorseless doom, 
 Shall dim one ray of holy light 
 
 That gilds your glorious tomb." 
 
 *"^01d men of the Conquered South — I salute you 
 reverently : You were a part of the past glory of 
 the South — you shared her downfall. Your work 
 was not in vain. Confederate bonds, wherein your 
 fortunes took their flight, will forever be worthless 
 on the stock exchange, but they will pass current 
 in Heaven ; they will be redeemed when the Great 
 Cashier of human accounts reads upon them the 
 signature of your patriotism, their makers — your 
 self sacrifice and your valor, their endorsers. Your 
 wisdom is your country's pride, your virtue is 
 her glory : Serene be the evening of your days, and 
 hopeful. 
 
 "For age is opportunity no less 
 Than youth itself, tho' in another dress ; 
 And as the evening twilight fades away. 
 The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.'' 
 Women of the Conquered South, God bless you. 
 Two traits conspicuous and pre-eminent have ever 
 characterized the Saxon race ; firm adherence to the 
 right of local government, "home rule :" reverence 
 for woman, the chief of all "home rulers." Let 
 these traits be cherished. Let no man forget that, 
 of all the altars of religion ever reared, whether 
 under the dome of St. Peters, or the spire of St. 
 Pauls, there is no shrine of God so sacred as the 
 mothers knee : that of all the schools, academies and 
 
 •John W. Daniel. 
 
 28 
 
universities that open their doors to learning, there 
 can be none whose light so fructifies the mind or 
 kindles the heart, as that which radiates from the 
 hearthstone of home. The drum and trumpet 
 histories of the world have no place for you ; in 
 the sequestered vales of life your mission lies. 
 And long may the sons of the South revere and 
 guard its mothers and its daughters. 
 
 Young men of the Conquered South; imitating 
 the example of your fathers, but not repeating their 
 acts, breathe the spirit of the advancing age in 
 which you live; yet clinging to home right, town 
 right, county right, state right, country right — yet 
 clinging to those essential principles of freedom 
 which died not in England when Harold fell at 
 Senlac, nor died yet in America when Lee sheathed 
 his sword at Appomattox." 
 
 In conclusion : The war is over, and we shall 
 not have to fight it again. The seven millions of 
 negro slaves have been freed ; but in their places 
 more than seven millions of white slaves, men 
 women, and children are toiling in the sweat shops 
 of the great cities, and eking out a miserable exis- 
 tence under the tyranny of a worse foe than any 
 civilized army. We are not called upon to fight 
 again with the bayonet, but a bloodless battle at 
 the ballot-box. A united country must wage a 
 relentless war against a common foe of all sections — 
 the subsidized courts and congresses of an organized 
 and merciless plutocracy. As soldiers of the 
 common good, our country is calling for volunteers, 
 and I urge that you enlist without hesitation or 
 selfish consideration on the side of civic righteous- 
 ness. We have brave leaders in the North, like 
 LaFollette of Wisconsin, and Hughes of New York, 
 and God speed the day when men such as these, 
 regardless of section or party name, shall sweep 
 out of ofiiice those who would fasten the chains 
 forged by the greed and graft of heartless monoply 
 upon the toiling millions of our country. 
 
 I thank you one and all, for this opportunity to 
 address you, and for your kind attention. 
 
 29 
 
TO THE CONFEDERATE VETERANS 
 
 Delivered in Sylvania, April 26, 1912 
 
 A sad anniversary calls you 
 
 To another reunion today, 
 And a half of a century's winters 
 
 Have thinned out the heroes in Gray. 
 With faltering footstep, and feeble, 
 
 A broken procession I see. 
 All wea.ry from marches and battles — 
 
 Those left of the soldiers of Lee. 
 
 No militant music invites you 
 
 To the bayonets charge in the fray; 
 No reveille call of the bugle 
 
 Awakes the old soldier today; 
 But a solemn and sad re-assembling 
 
 Of those whom the Southland reveres, 
 To honor the dead with our service, 
 
 And to sprinkle their graves with our tears. 
 
 What they did for their country is written 
 
 In the blood which they shed for her sake. 
 At Gettysburg, Shiloh, Manassas, 
 
 By mountain and river and brake. 
 Chickamauga keeps watch o'er their ashes. 
 
 And Kennesaw Mountain will keep 
 A watch and a ward o'er the heroes 
 
 Who lie on their bosoms asleep. 
 
 30 
 
While the crest of the Cumberland mingles 
 
 With the blue and the gold of the skies; 
 While the Etowah sings to the forest, 
 
 And the echoing forest replies ; 
 While Potomac rolls on to the ocean, 
 
 And Chesapeake kisses the sea, 
 The world will remember and honor 
 
 The soldiers of Jackson and Lee. 
 
 Let them sleep — but they sleep unforgotten, 
 
 Though their names be obscure and unknown; 
 Though the forest may hide them forever. 
 
 And their graves be unmarked with a stone ; 
 They fought a good fight, and tho' vanquished, 
 
 They fell in the midst of the fray, 
 With the ''Stars and the Bars" floating o'er them, 
 
 And wrapped in Confederate Gray. 
 
 Oh, heroes of bloody Manassas — 
 
 Oh, spirits of Gettysburg's heights — 
 Who felt" the hot breath of the cannon. 
 
 When the carnage rushed red on your sight- 
 From Virginia to Texas, soft fl.owers 
 
 Are falling above you today, 
 And the tears of fair women bedew them, 
 
 As sweet as the dew-drops in May. 
 
 31 
 
And you, ye intrepid survivors, 
 
 Whose forms are now stooping with years; 
 Whose locks many winters have whitened 
 
 With the snows of their sorrows and tears; 
 You too must soon go to the bivouac 
 
 Where only the sentinel stars 
 Keep watch o'er the camp of your comrades 
 
 Who fought neath the "Stars and the Bars." 
 
 And yet you shall not be forgotten, 
 
 Nor your mem'ry sleep in the tomb ; 
 As oft as the flowers of April 
 
 Shall burst into beauty and bloom, 
 Fond hearts shall assemble to honor 
 
 The soldiers who greet us today, 
 AVhen the summons has called the last hero 
 
 Who wore the Confederate Gray. 
 
 J. C. LANGSTON. 
 
 32 
 
MEMORIAL RESPONSE 
 Delivered in Sylvania, April 26, 1911 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, and heroes 
 of the sixties : 
 
 Again I have been honored by an invitation to 
 say something on the occasion of this annual anni- 
 versary, and this time in the way of a response in 
 behalf of these assembled veterans of "The Lost 
 Cause." 
 
 I shall not enter into a long eulogium upon 
 Southern patriotism, and heroism, and devotion 
 to conviction, nor into a history of the causes of 
 the war, and a defense of the principles for which 
 our heroes fought and fell. This has been done 
 so often and so eloquently here and elsewhere in the 
 South, that anything which I might say now would 
 be but tedious repetition. There is, however, one 
 argument of the victorious party upon which they 
 base their strongest claim to right, which I will 
 refute with all the energy of my mind and soul — 
 and that is the claim that the issue was decided 
 by the God of Hosts and, therefore, that their cause 
 was right, and ours was wrong. 
 
 If history proves anything, it proves that in this 
 world, might triumphs oftener than right, and that 
 victory is usually perched upon the banner of the 
 biggest cannon and the strongest numbers. This 
 is not the first time in human history that a right- 
 eous cause was overwhelmed by superior force, 
 and the flag of Truth, and Liberty, went down in 
 the dust and defeat. Let your minds travel back 
 to that sad day in the annals of Poland, when the 
 ruthless hand of Russia, and the other cormorant 
 powers of Europe dismembered the bleeding body 
 of that little kingdom. 
 
 33 
 
"Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time — 
 Sarmatia fell unwept, without a crime ; 
 Hope for a season bade the world farewell, 
 And freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell." 
 
 Look at the invading hosts of the Spaniards in 
 the Netherlands, and see the liberties and lives of 
 men, women and children crushed out under the 
 iron heel of the bloody Duke of Alva. 
 
 Read the infamous atrocities of Catherine de 
 Medici, at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, when 
 the light of French Protestantism was quenched 
 in the blood of the Huguenots, and see how the 
 liberties of France for hundreds of years were 
 manacled by the bigotry, fanaticism and persecution 
 of Roman Catholicism. 
 
 The most casual glance at the pages of history 
 will convince the most superficial mind that truth 
 and justice do not always triumph, in the affairs 
 of men, and that the mere issue of the contest can 
 never prove the right. 
 
 Therefore, we yet hold fast to the principles for 
 for which we fought. Accepting our defeat as final 
 and inevitable, and still believing that we were 
 right; still cherishing the memory of those who 
 fell, as soldiers w^ho died in the defense of liberty, 
 and ranking our leaders as patriots alongside 
 Sobieski, and Kosciusko, and Garidaldi, and William 
 Tell. 
 
 Therefore we shall continue with tender affection 
 to celebrate this April anniversary, to show our 
 appreciation of our living heroes, and our reverence 
 for the dead. 
 
 And you, ye loyal daughters of patriotic sires, 
 in thus commemorating the valor and heroism of 
 our southern soldiery, you not only place the floral 
 wreaths of benediction upon the graves of the dead, 
 but like the vestal virgins of old, help to keep alive 
 within the sanctuary of our hearts the light of 
 sacred fires. There is no influence so sweet and 
 ennobling to the heart of man as the appreciation 
 of pure and noble women. Your sympathy, your 
 
 34 
 
devotion and your love is not only an inspiration to 
 deeds of heroic daring, but when the carnage of 
 battle is over, and the "mufifled drums sad roll has 
 beat the soldiers last tattoo" your tears fall like a 
 soothing balm upon the crushed hopes and burning 
 scars of the soldiers who survive. 
 
 In behalf, then, of this surviving remnant of the 
 Confederate army, who fought their country's fight 
 so well, and who will soon go to join their comrades 
 beyond the silent river, I extend you thanks for 
 every tribute of your grief and love. Soon, ah, 
 too soon, the last bowed form and tottering step 
 shall go to that eternal bivouac which knows no 
 bugle reveille. 
 
 The summer flowers shall bloom and fade, the 
 autumn leaves will turn to gold, and winter whirl 
 and drift her snow above their dreamless sleep. 
 Yet while the years shall wax and wane, and 
 changing seasons come and go, cease not at each 
 returning spring to meet, and place your tributes on 
 their tombs. 
 
 Spirits of our departed veterans ; you have gone 
 to your final sleep with a peoples benedictions upon 
 your names. We no longer fire a salute over your 
 dust, but as often as we meet to do honor to your 
 memory, the pulses of our hearts beat like mufifled 
 drums, and every deep drawn sigh breathes a low 
 and passionate requiem. Memory will keep her 
 guard over your graves ; Love will bedew them 
 with your tears ; Faith will draw from them her 
 inspiration for future sacrifices ; and Hope, kindling 
 her touch at the fires which glow in your ashes, 
 will, in its light, look forward to a day when the 
 whole world will confess that your death was not 
 in vain. 
 
 35 
 
FANATICISM 
 
 Ignorance and fanaticism go hand in hand. The 
 man who reasons, thinks, investigates and explores, 
 can never become a fanatic. The more honest the 
 fanatic is, the more dangerous he is. His purposes 
 may be good, and his intentions honest. But some 
 one has very truly said, "Goodness is often but 
 another name for density, and mistaken honesty 
 has caused more ennui and suicide than violent 
 mendacity." 
 
 It was fanaticism that imprisoned Galileo and 
 held the hemlock to his lips, because he taught 
 a creed antagonistic to the polytheistic religion of 
 his time. It was fanaticism that nailed the Christ 
 to the cross because he preached what was heretical 
 in the sight of an ignorant and barbaric race. It 
 was fanaticism that burned Servetus at the stake, 
 and sent to death Gordiano Bruno, one of the best 
 and bravest of the human race. Fanaticism that 
 instigated Peter the Hermit to raise an army of 
 one hundred thousand children to rescue the Holy 
 Land from the hands of the Moslems, and whose 
 whitened bones were left on every plain from 
 France to Palestine. It was the author of the 
 Spanish Inquisition, the mother of the Massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew, and the cause of the Thirty 
 Years War in Germany. It has banished and 
 ostracised and persecuted and imprisoned and mur- 
 dered. It invented the rack and the thumbscrew ; 
 it has whetted the sword and lighted the fagot ; it 
 has torn out the tongues, burned out the eyes, and 
 racked the limbs of heretics. It tortured for the 
 sake of opinion. 
 
 The thoughtful student of history cannot but be 
 impressed with the truth of these statements, and 
 with the incalculable harm caused by the intolerance 
 and the dogmatism of mad and unreasoning zealots. 
 This is what precipitated the Civil War in our own 
 country. The fanaticism of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
 
 36 
 
and Joshua R. Giddings and Sumner, and other 
 tall and stately criminals of the North hurled the 
 two sections into an internecine war which cost 
 billions of money and thousands of lives. 
 
 The progress of the world to intellectual freedom 
 has been slow and painful ; the victories of mental 
 liberty have been won at a fearful cost. But we 
 have steadily progressed, in spite of superstition. 
 One hundred thousand martyrs suffered death at 
 the stake for the impossible crime of witchcraft, 
 but we have quit burning them now. A religious 
 test is no longer a qualification for the elective 
 franchise, and instead of the oath, which is nothing 
 but a relic of mediaeval barbarism, a simple affirm- 
 ation is all that is required of a witness. In spite 
 of the denunciations of the pulpit, and the threats 
 of hell-fire everlasting, people have begun to think 
 for themselves, and to question the fiat of priests 
 and dogmatists. Even a universalist, who enter- 
 tains a merciful idea of God is now tolerated in good 
 society, and a man may doubt that Baalams ass 
 actually spoke, and still not be sent to jail. We 
 are growing intellectually. There is decidedly less 
 of fanaticism than there used to be. There are 
 about five hundred different religions in the world, 
 some of which are very old and which have hun- 
 dreds of millions of devotees, and the man who has 
 a sane idea of God is now perfectly willing to admit 
 the possibility that all these countless millions who 
 difter from him upon a question of which the wisest 
 know nothing, may escape the tortures of eternal 
 damnation. 
 
 Just a few years ago, the people of the United 
 States actually became tolerant enough to allow 
 a Unitarian, William H. Taft, to be President of 
 the United States, and to elect a Unitarian Chaplain 
 to Congress. Of course this was a source of untold 
 agony to those who insisted upon the mathematics 
 of the Trinity, but it was a great step forward. 
 It determined this fact, that the great body of the 
 people of the United States believed that in matters 
 of religion the individual conscience should be free, 
 
 37 
 
and that the doctrine of "Separation of Church 
 and State" was not a meaningless platitude. 
 
 The public schools of our commonwealth are no 
 longer dominated by sectarian bigotry, and all the 
 great Universities of the country elect their pro- 
 fessors without regard to their religious convictions. 
 The days of fanaticism are numbered. It prevails 
 now only in the rural "deestricts" and in the isolated 
 villages, where the traditional "hell-fire" preacher 
 thunders his antiquated denunciations. We no 
 longer burn martyrs at the stake, and quarrel as 
 did the mediaeval saints about "How many angels 
 can stand on the point of a needle." In fact, we 
 are not much concerned about "angels" nowadays, 
 but about motor cars, and wireless telegraphy, 
 and aeroplanes, and hygiene and sanitation, and 
 everything that goes to make the world happier 
 and brighter and better. AVe are rapidly getting 
 to understand the truth of Pope's lines, 
 
 "For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 We are learning the lesson that the garnered 
 experience of countless centuries teaches us that 
 "He loads the dice against himself, who scores a 
 point against the right." The world, at least the 
 civilized world, has practically agreed upon a code 
 of morals, and there is little room for the fanatic. 
 God hasten the day when the land that "knows him 
 now, shall know him no more forever." 
 
 38 
 
SUPERSTITION 
 
 Whence came our ideas of the supernatural? 
 Whence our ideas of gods and ghosts, and devils, 
 and witches? These are questions that we cannot 
 answer. They were probably born in the cradle 
 of the human race, when man was a primeval 
 savage, living in caves, clad in skins, and eating 
 the flesh of wild beasts raw. Go back as far as 
 we may, we find that these notions always obtained. 
 Mystery, miracle, incantation, magic, sorcery and 
 witchcraft seemed to be the inheritance of the 
 human race. Every nation has its gods and devils, 
 and we have them still. The ancient Egyptians 
 worshiped Isis and Osiris, but they have long since 
 become as lifeless as the shrouded mummies within 
 their granite pyramids. Greece and Rome paid 
 homage to twelve great gods, who dwelt upon 
 Mount Olympus, and feasted upon ambrosia, while 
 their devil Pluto dwelt within the shadowy confines 
 of the infernal regions. Nymphs and dryads and 
 naiads danced in every forest, and swam in every 
 stream. Our ancient Celtic ancestors knelt to 
 Wodin and Thor, who waged fierce battles with 
 mighty giants of frost and snow. But Jupiter no 
 longer hurls his thunderbolts, and Juno lives only 
 in poetic simile. "The giant Emir long ago strode 
 from the icy halls of the North, and Thor no longer 
 smites the mountains with steel glove and glittering 
 hammer." 
 
 But the supernatural did not die with the death 
 of these ancient peoples. Sir Thomas More, the 
 author of Utopia, believed in witchcraft, and John 
 Wesley w^as a firm believer in ghosts. Sir Matthew 
 Hale, the eminent English lawyer and jurist, sen- 
 tenced a woman to be hanged for causing children 
 to vomit crooked pins. She was convicted of witch- 
 craft, was executed, and her body was burned. 
 Pope Innocent the Third issued a bull directing 
 inquisitors to be diligent in searching out and pun- 
 ishing those guilty of witchcraft. Popes Alexander, 
 Leo, and Adrian issued bulls to the same effect. 
 
 39 
 
For two hundred and fifty years the world was 
 busy burning witches. The Protestants were as 
 active as the Catholics. One hundred thousand 
 people were executed in one year in the diocese of 
 Como. One hundred thousand were put to death in 
 one year in Germany alone. Thirty thousand 
 persons suffered death in England for this impos- 
 sible crime. The last act against witchcraft in 
 England was passed when Lord Bacon was a 
 member of Parliament. Sir William Blackstone, 
 the great English commentator on English law, 
 insisted upon the existence of witchcraft. 
 
 Martin Luther believed that the devil could beget 
 children, and claimed that he himself once came in 
 contact with one of these children. He advised 
 the child's mother to throw the infant into the river, 
 in order to free her home from the presence of the 
 devil. In 1692, nineteen persons were executed in 
 Salem, Massachusetts, for witchcraft. As late as 
 1815, Belgium was disgraced by a "witch trial.'' 
 In 1836, within the memory of many people now 
 living, near Dantzic, a sorceress was plunged into 
 the sea. The poor woman persisted in rising to the 
 surface, and she was therefore adjudged guilty, and 
 beaten to death. 
 
 During those days, a belief in lycanthropy was 
 prevalent ; that is, that some people had the power 
 of changing themselves into wolves. A man was 
 bitten by a wolf. He succeeded in cutting off one 
 of the wolf's paws. Upon his arrival at home, he 
 discovered that his w^ife had lost one of her hands. 
 When he took the wolf's paw out of his pocket, he 
 discovered that it had changed to a human hand ; 
 whereupon his wife was tried for lycanthropy, con- 
 victed, and executed. 
 
 In New England a woman was charged with 
 changing herself into a fox. A committee was 
 chosen to examine her body for "witch spots ;" 
 these were spots where a pin could be thrust into 
 the flesh without causing pain. The committee 
 reported that such spots had been found upon her 
 person, and she was convicted and executed. 
 
 40 
 
Nor were people alone supposed to be guilty of 
 these crimes. A hog and her pigs had partially 
 eaten a child. These animals were tried for demon- 
 iacal possession, and while the hog was convicted; 
 the pigs were acquitted. In 1740, a cow was accused 
 of being possessed by a devil. She was tried, coti- 
 victed, and put to death. At Basle, in 1740, a 
 rooster was tried for laying an egg. Rooster eggs 
 were supposed to be used for the purpose of 
 making witch ointment. The rooster was solemnly 
 tried, convicted, and burned in the public square. 
 
 We look back upon these superstitions with a 
 smile of derision ; and yet this twentieth century 
 of automobiles, telephones, wireless telegraph, and 
 aeroplanes, is not free altogether from the super- 
 stition and the credulity of those crude and barbaric 
 times. It is probable that none but the densely 
 ignorant now believe in "haunts," "ghosts," "hob- 
 goblins," and "boodaddles." The man who 
 makes any pretensions to intelligence, knows 
 that people are not ''possessed by evil spirits," 
 which can be driven out by sorceries and 
 incantations, but by erysipelas, and epilepsy, 
 and fever, and other natural diseases, and 
 he applies to a physician for scientific treatment, 
 instead of resorting to magic rites and cereaionies ; 
 but there are very many people yet, who still 
 cherish the idea that Friday is a day of bad luck, 
 that thirteen is an unlucky number, and that the 
 cry of the screech-owl is an evil omen — a presage 
 of approaching death. This goes to show how 
 deep-seated is the influence of heredity. These old 
 superstitions have been handed down from genera- 
 tion to generation, until they have become almost 
 a heritage of the human race. The nursery stories 
 cling with wonderful tenacity, in spite even of 
 college training. Many of us are still inclined to 
 believe in dreams, which depend not upon demoniac 
 visitation, threatening coming evil, but upon the 
 amount of mince pie we have eaten for supper, or 
 upon some derangement of the nervous system. 
 
 Will the human mind ever be able to completely 
 free itself from these ghosts of a buried past? 
 
 41 
 
A DREAM OF THE AUSTRO-SERVIAN WAR 
 
 By John C. Langston 
 
 'When the war-drums throb no longer, and the 
 
 battle-flags are furled 
 In the parliament of man, the federation of the 
 
 world ;" 
 Thus I read in Locksley Hall, from thrall of war 
 
 a sweet release. 
 And I fell asleep a dreaming of a universal peace. 
 
 In my dream I saw the cannon torn from frowning 
 
 battlements, 
 And the sword and bayonet moulded into peaceful 
 
 implements ; 
 All the Dreadnoughts of our navies, riding thro' 
 
 the ocean gales. 
 Changed to argosies of commerce, filled with piles 
 
 of costly bales. 
 
 But a change came o'er my vision ; darkness veiled 
 the scene from sight ; 
 
 Then the darkness slowly reddened to a glow of 
 lurid light ; 
 
 Hark — I hear the cannon thunder from its grim 
 and gory lips. 
 
 And again I see the war-flag hoisted on the battle- 
 ships. 
 
 42 
 
Lo; I see the marching millions of the armies of 
 
 the world, 
 Hear the war-drum's mighty throbbing — see the 
 
 battle-flags unfurled; 
 Nation warring against nation with the sword and 
 
 bayonet, 
 While the rivers turn to crimson, and the earth 
 
 with gore is wet. 
 
 Again Marengo's bloody field is shaken by the 
 
 nations tread, 
 And again the field of Jena piled with thousands 
 
 of the dead ; 
 Again at gory Austerlitz, the smoke the sun shines 
 
 dimly through. 
 Again the charging of the squadrons shakes the 
 
 plain of Waterloo. 
 
 The vision of the flame and death upon my sight 
 
 runs bloody red — 
 God of riiercy, draw the curtain on the dying and 
 
 the dead ; 
 Furl the crimson flag of murder, let the white flag 
 
 wave again, 
 Speaking brother love to nations — "Peace on earth, 
 
 good will to men." 
 
 43 
 
SPEECH INTRODUCING WILLIAM 
 JENNINGS BRYAN 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 History produces but few really great men 
 within a generation. Men who stand head and 
 shoulders above their fellowmen, as some great 
 tree aflame with life stands rapt and sublime above 
 its heedless fellows. Patriots, who like William 
 Pitt of England, disdained the voice of popular 
 clamor, and followed the dictates of conscience and 
 of duty, when he took the side of the oppressed 
 American Colonies of Great Britain, and proclaimed 
 the injustice of "Taxation Without Representation." 
 Patriots like William C. Pinckney of South Carolina, 
 who said, "Millions for defense, but not one cent 
 for tribute." 
 
 Patriots like Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, who 
 lived, 
 
 "The applause of listening senates to command 
 The threats of pain and ruin to despise ; 
 To shed a glory on his native land, 
 And read his history in a nations eyes." 
 
 Patriots like William J. Bryan of Nebraska, who 
 thundered that immortal declaration to the myrmi- 
 dons of the Wall Street interests, ''You shall not 
 crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." 
 
 Politicians are as plentiful "As the leaves in 
 \^allambrosa;" statesmen as rare as epic poets. 
 The one dares not act until he has sounded public 
 sentiment; the other acts in obedience to the voice 
 of conscience and of duty, and molds public senti- 
 ment. 
 
 44 
 
In this age of greed and graft and commercialism, 
 unrivaled since the days of the Caesars; when the 
 trusts subsidize our congress, and throttle the will 
 of millions; when special interests buy seats for 
 United States senators, to shackle our people, and 
 paralyze our liberties; when a syndicate of pluocrats 
 is threatening us with a tyranny worse than any 
 threatened by George the Third ; it is an inspiring 
 and a glorious sight to see a tribune of the common 
 people, advocating civic righteousness for the 
 nation, rise up from the mass of political putre- 
 faction around him, 
 
 ''As some tall cliff that rears its awful form, 
 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
 Tho' round its base the rolling clouds are spread,' 
 Eternal sunshine settled on its head." 
 
 Such is the man whom I have the honor to 
 introduce to you today. Possibly he is familiarly 
 known ^ to more people as the champion of 'Tree 
 Silver." But he is far more than that. He is the 
 champion of "Equal rights to all, special privileges 
 to none." He is the foe of monopolies, of illegit- 
 miate trusts, of subsidized courts and congresses, 
 and of the most infamous tariff law the world has 
 ever known. Like Alexander H. Stephens of 
 Georgia, he is "The Great Commoner." 
 
 I now have the pleasure and the honor of intro- 
 ducing to you the peerless orator, the matchless 
 statesman, and the thrice national standard-bearer 
 of Democracy, the Hon. William Jennings Bryan 
 of Nebraska. 
 
 45 
 
ADDRESS OF WELCOME 
 
 TO THE SAVANNAH AUTOMOBILE CLUB 
 
 Delivered in Sylvania, 1911 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 It is not only a pleasure, but a distinguished 
 privilege to welcome to our little city this large 
 and representative gathering. The sight of so many 
 lovely women and splendid men from our magnifi- 
 cent city of Savannah, as well as from other towns 
 in Georgia, and some from beyond the confines of 
 our state, mingling with us as guests, and stimu- 
 lating our people to a higher appreciation of the 
 facilities of easy and rapid communication, is 
 inspirational in the highest degree. Baalam's 
 historic vehicle of transportation, and the wonderful 
 *'one horse shay" made famous by Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, are the things of the ancient past, and we 
 welcome the advent of more inviting means of 
 transportation. As representatives of this better 
 system, which is heralded by the rush and roar of 
 the modern automobile, we extend to you the glad 
 hand of our sympathy, our cordial co-operation, 
 and the warmest hospitality we have at our com- 
 mand. 
 
 There is no people on earth whom we delight 
 to honor more than the people of Savannah. A 
 city famous for its beauty, for its historic memories, 
 for the chivalry of its men, and the loveliness of 
 its women. A city wdiich is liberal towards its 
 educational institutions, progressive in its policies, 
 and whose credit is unimpeachable. A municipality 
 which stands without a peer as a port on the South 
 Atlantic Seaboard, the greatest naval stores market 
 in the world, the second greatest cotton market, 
 and where bank failures are never known. A 
 city to which we are already linked in business 
 
 46 
 
by two railroads, and whose ties will be yet 
 closer drawn by the highway which you have 
 so graciously accepted for this run. 
 
 As president of the Optimist Club of Sylvania, 
 I must not be accused of boastfulness when I say 
 that this young and not financially strong institu- 
 tion was the first to take steps looking towards 
 securing this national highway, and to appeal for 
 help to you. 
 
 Composed largely of men in salaried positions, 
 without the stimulus of selfish interests as repre- 
 sented in real estate and other property, we made an 
 earnest appeal to you. Looking with prophetic eye 
 into the future, we saw the tremendous advantage 
 of a great permanent highway through our town 
 and county, and the splendid advertisement it would 
 be to us through the throngs of financiers and 
 tourists who w^ould pass over this road from North 
 to South and back again. We appreciate your 
 philanthropic spirit in giving us this opportunity, 
 in spite of its obvious and confessed disadvantages, 
 and we pledge you our best efforts before the Dec- 
 ember run, to make a paved road that shall match 
 the splendid highways of ancient Rome, and cause 
 our rivals for this honor to withdraw from the field, 
 and leave to us and to our posterity for all time to 
 come, the possession of this thoroughfare so aus- 
 piciously entered upon today. 
 
 Again I thank you in behalf of the Optimist 
 Club, the City of Sylvania, and the County of 
 Screven. 
 
 47 
 
WHY? 
 
 We ask the question, all in vain, 
 
 Why thus create a world of pain? 
 
 Where sin and sorrow, grief and death, 
 
 Are comrades of each fleeting breath ; 
 
 Where famine's cold and fever's heat 
 
 Arrest the bosom's pulsing beat; 
 
 And want, and crime, and foul disease 
 
 Fill all the world — say, why are these? 
 
 Why no almighty force displayed 
 
 To stay the dark assassin's blade? 
 
 Why tear the infant from the breast 
 
 Of her who bore it, and caressed. 
 
 And deaf to all her love and care, 
 
 Heed not her agonizing prayer? 
 
 Why fill the w^orld with fools and knaves, 
 
 Fanatics, madmen, tyrants, slaves? 
 
 Why should the truth be trampled down. 
 
 And error wear a golden crown? 
 
 Why yet withhold the longed-for light, 
 
 And leave us groping in the night? 
 
 Why fill the world with want and woe? 
 
 Canst tell us, God, why is it so? 
 
 Whoever made this mortal frame. 
 And breathed within the vital flame, 
 Must sometime right each cruel wrong. 
 And every groan must turn to song. 
 And peace for all, his mercy prove. 
 Else God is not a God of love. 
 To suffer here, and then in hell, 
 The tortures mad fanantics tell, 
 Would make the Godhead too unjust 
 For aught but fools or slaves to trust ; 
 'Twere better that we ne'er had birth. 
 Nor came upon our mother earth ; 
 That thou hadst left us — far more just — 
 Asleep within the unconscious dust, 
 
 48 
 
A part of the insensate clod, 
 
 An atom of the soulless sod, 
 
 Beneath the whisper of the pines. 
 
 Or under forests tangled vines, 
 
 A grain of sand on granite hill, 
 
 Where falls the sunlight, warm and still. 
 
 And not a grief, and not a care 
 
 Should mar our dreamless slumber there. 
 
 Perhaps— who knows ? we all shall take 
 A sleep from which we'll never wake; 
 A dreamless sleep beneath the sod, 
 Where natures universal God, 
 Than man more wise, than man more just, 
 Shall give us back— "Dust unto Dust". 
 
 49 
 
SPEECH DELIVERED AT SCHOOL RALLY 
 AT NEWINGTON, 1911 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 In behalf of the teachers and pupils, I desire to 
 express to the Board of Education our apprecia- 
 tion of their kindness, as manifested by their giving 
 us this day of festivity and recreation from the 
 routine of daily v^ork, and in their generous gift 
 of medals to stimulate the oratorical talent of the 
 boys of our country. It is a worthy and judicious 
 step, and I trust that it may go far towards inspir- 
 ing the pupils of our public schools to cultivate 
 the power of expression, and the magic of oratory, 
 now so much neglected, not only in our schools, 
 but which I am told is almost an unknown quantity 
 in the halls of congress, once vibrant with the 
 eloquence of such men as Hill, and Toombs, and 
 Ransom of North Carolina. When we read the 
 tame little speeches made by the great majority 
 of our present representatives in Congress, so puny 
 that they are ashamed to speak them, but have 
 them printed in the Congressional Record, we long 
 for the impetuous and fiery eloquence of Hayne and 
 Prentiss, and Grady, and others whose splendid 
 flights could move an audience to anger or to tears. 
 When the iniquitous and infamous tariff bill was 
 proposed in Congress by the Payne-Aldrich com- 
 bination, we longed for some Southern patriot 
 gifted with the power of fervid eloquence, to rise 
 in defence of the poor and oppressed consumer, and 
 thunder forth the philippics of invective against the 
 robber barons of plutocracy and protection, against 
 the merciless greed of the New England manufac- 
 turers, who tax with an enormous and infernal 
 tariff the millions of their suffering countrymen, in 
 order that they may pour into their already burst- 
 ing coffers uncounted millions wrung from the brow 
 of honest toil ; and against the subsidized treachery 
 
 50 
 
of some of our Southern representatives, who be- 
 trayed their country in the hour of her direct need, 
 into the hands of the unscrupulous advocates of 
 class legislation. Oh, for a Pickney to thunder 
 forth the defiance, "Millions for defence, but not a 
 cent for tribute". Oh, for a Patrick Henry, to rise 
 from his seat, and hurl defiance into the teeth of 
 our oppressors, and the traitor tories who aid 
 them. 
 
 You will pardon me if I seem to be digressing 
 into the field of politics, but I often think that we 
 do not give enough attention in our schools to Civil 
 Government and Current Events. While we are 
 teaching our children to raise more cotton and corn, 
 and training them in Algebra and Mathematics, 
 the scheming politician and the mercenary hench- 
 men of the "Special Interests" are planning through 
 governmental aid to rob us of all that we produce. 
 Of what avail is it that we double our production 
 of corn and cotton by scientific methods, if we al- 
 low a band of Northern robbers, aided by Southern 
 traitors, to make laws which enable them to corner 
 markets, and the raise the price of necessaries sky 
 high; to build a tariff wall against competition^ 
 thus enabling them to sell their manufactured prod- 
 ucts much cheaper to foreigners than they do to 
 us — of what avail. I say, is all our labor and 
 all our toil? Let us train our children in our 
 schools in the principles of civic righteousness, and 
 teach them how to rise upon any occasion, and to 
 express themselves fluently and forcibly upon the 
 issues of the day. We need patriots and orators 
 now as we never needed them before. Our own 
 government of this enlightened twentieth century is 
 a picture of class legislation, and of prostitution 
 of high office to the insatiate greed of trusts, and 
 combines, and corporations, and monopolies of every 
 kind. The steel trust is now selling rails to foreign 
 countries at the rate of nineteen dollars a ton, and 
 is demanding thirty-two dollars a ton from our own 
 countrymen. The food trust is cornering and stor- 
 ing away in vast packing houses, millions of pounds 
 
 51 
 
of the necessaries of life, and forcing the ill-paid 
 laborer to pay exorbitant and extortionate prices 
 to save his wife and children from starvation. Un- 
 der our corrupt system of legislation, the woolen 
 trust is compelling you and me to pay a duty of 
 one hundred and sixty-five per cent, on blankets to 
 shield us from the cold of winter. The damnable 
 tariff is making you and me pay double and treble 
 the value of everything we wear and every manu- 
 factured product that we use, simply that a few 
 multimillionare corporations may swell themselves 
 to utter bursting with the hard earned dollars of 
 the consumer. 
 
 And yet, with these facts staring us daily in the 
 face, we still go on with our eyes upon the ground, 
 and our noses to the grindstone, and continue to 
 send back to Congress the contemptible politicians 
 who are selling our homes and firesides, our wives 
 and our children, and all that we hold dear, into 
 a state of serfdom to the Morgans and Rockefellers 
 and their allied interests, who are threatening us 
 with a tyranny worse than that threatened by George 
 the Third. Let us teach our children in our homes 
 and in our schools to honor truth and justice, to 
 despise deceit and treachery, and to hold above all 
 other things — "As high as hope's great throbbing 
 star above the darkness of the dead" — loyalty to 
 principle, and obedience to duty; and that he who 
 sells his vote, or betrays trust, is no better than 
 Judas Iscariot. 
 
 There never was a time when our country needed 
 patriotic speakers more than she needs them to- 
 day. It is an age of commercialism, and of insatiate 
 greed for gain. Venal courts pronounce righteous 
 laws unconstitutional, and when the national law- 
 maker is, presented with an iniquitous proposition, 
 he ''Holds his hands behind him". Equal rights to 
 all, and special privileges to none", is a forgotten 
 motto, and the old Latin maxim, "Justitia Fiat, Ruat 
 Coelum", is as obsolete as the mythology of Jupiter. 
 We should teach our children "To spurn the rage 
 of gain"; 
 
 52 
 
''Teach them that states of native strength pos- 
 sessed, 
 Tho' very poor, may still be very blessed. 
 While Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, 
 As ocean sweeps the labored mound away." 
 
 Universal education, moral, as well as mental, is 
 the only panacea for the ills that afflict us. The 
 training of the intellect to perceive the line between 
 right and wrong, and the universal acceptation of 
 the truth that ''He loads the dice against himself, 
 who scores a point against the right." When we 
 have so trained our sons that they shall know the 
 true meaning of patriotism — no North, no South, 
 no East, no West ; and when we become 
 intelligent enough, and brave enough to send such 
 men to make our national laws, then, and then 
 only, can we feel that we are an equal part of a 
 great and glorious country, and not a section of 
 serfs ; then we shall feel the inspiration of the im- 
 mortal Ben Hill, when he said, ''Raise high that flag 
 of our fathers ; let Southern breezes kiss it, let 
 Southern skies reflect it ; Southern sons will love it. 
 Southern patriots will defend it, and Southern 
 heroes will die for it. And as its folds unfurl be- 
 neath the heavens, let the voices of patriots from 
 the North and from the East, and from the West, 
 join our voices from the South, and raise to heaven 
 the universal according chorus, wave on, flag of our 
 fathers, wave forever; but wave over a land of 
 equals, and not over a land of serfs ; wave over a 
 land of law and liberty, and not over anarchy, op- 
 pression and strife". Then shall we of Georgia 
 and of the South sing with Joseph Rodman Drake : 
 
 "When Freedom from her mountain height 
 
 Unfurled her standard to the air, 
 She tore the azure robe of night, 
 
 And set her stars of glory there. 
 She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 
 
 The milky baldric of the skies. 
 And striped its pure celestial white 
 
 With streakings of the morning light. 
 
 53 
 
Flag of the free, on oceans wave 
 
 Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; 
 When death, careering on the gale, 
 
 Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, 
 And frighted waves rush wildly back 
 
 Before the broadside's reeling rack, 
 Each dying wanderer of the sea 
 
 Shall look at once to heaven and thee, 
 And smile to see thy splendors fly 
 
 In triumph o'er his closing eye. 
 
 Flag of the free heart's hope and home, 
 
 By angel hands to valor given, 
 Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, 
 
 And all thv hues were born in heaven." 
 
 54 
 
ADDRESS TO THE FARMERS UNION 
 Saturday, May 27, 1911, at Jackson Church 
 
 Fellow Citizens : 
 
 I fully appreciate the honor conferred upon me 
 by the invitation so cordially extended me to address 
 you upon this occasion. We have not met here 
 today with the fanfare of martial music and parade 
 to give utterance to heroic platitudes, nor to 
 advocate any personal and selfish aspirations; but 
 if possible to say some words of encouragement, 
 and give some inspiration to an organization com- 
 posed of men who constitute the very backbone of 
 industrial and economic progress, and whose pur- 
 pose is the betterment of agricultural environment 
 and conditions, upon which rest the very founda- 
 tions of our national prosperity. All other classes 
 of employment have their organizations and their 
 unions, and I see no reason why the farmers should 
 not have theirs. They may have different names 
 and dress in the guise of different garbs ; but their 
 aim is one and the same — mutual co-operation and 
 endeavor, and a defensive alliance for self-preser- 
 vation and self betterment. The carpenters, pain- 
 ters, mill operatives and miners have their unions. 
 The bankers have their conventions and associ- 
 ations ; the various professions have their com- 
 binations, and annual gatherings, and I have heard 
 it intimated that even the steel, sugar, lumber, 
 tobacco, rubber, and whisky industries have organi- 
 zations which sometimes go under the name of 
 trusts. The difference between your organization 
 and these last which I have mentioned, is that while 
 yours is a defensive alliance, for mutual protection, 
 theirs is chiefly an offensive federation for predatory 
 warfare upon mankind at large. 
 
 When I tell you that I am the son of a farmer, 
 and that I was reared upon a farm amid the old red 
 
 55 
 
hills of North Georgia, and did not leave it until I 
 went off to cqjlege at the age of sixteen, you can 
 readily understand without any fervent declaration 
 upon my part, where my sympathies lie. Some of 
 my lifes sweetest memories yet linger amid the hills 
 and vales of that old plantation, where I plowed 
 and hoed the cotton and the corn, and helped gather 
 the golden fruited grain and the snowy staple in 
 the dreamy days of Indian Summer. And some of 
 the highest aspirations of my boyhood days were 
 gathered under the shade of the old cedar trees, 
 where I often lay when the crops were ''laid by," 
 and gathered inspiration from reading the master- 
 pieces of Walter Scott, and Byron and Pope and 
 Burns. My sympathies were kindled even then 
 for the simplicity, purity, and guilelessness of farm 
 life and my indignation aroused when I would read 
 of the tyranny of the English plutocrat upon the 
 tenant farmer, and I never forgot such sentiments 
 as these from the poet Burns — 
 
 "See yonder poor, o'erlabored wight. 
 So abject, mean and vile. 
 Who begs a brother of the earth 
 To give him leave to toil ; 
 
 And see his lordly fellow worm 
 
 The poor petition spurn. 
 Unmindful though a weeping wife 
 
 And helpless offspring mourn." 
 
 As often as I looked into the old atlas that 
 accompanied the geographies of that day, and saw 
 the picture of the Fabled Giant, Atlas, supporting 
 the world upon his shoulders, I thought he was 
 fitly typical of the farmers of the world, the producer 
 carrying the burden of the idle rich, the consumers, 
 upon his shoulders. And those sympathies, then 
 kindled, have never grown cold or ceased to burn 
 for those who till the soil, and feed the millions of 
 the world. The older I grew, the more I learned to 
 appreciate and to honor the ''man behind the hoe," 
 and the more I hated the organized and rapacious 
 
 56 
 
greed of plutocratic monopolies which would 
 rob him of the hard-earned product of his toil, and 
 the more I despised the crafty duplicity of the 
 scheming politician who cajoled the farmer for his 
 vote, simply that he might betray him for a price 
 to the merciless interests of the favored and soulless 
 few. 
 
 I congratulate 3^ou, then, upon your "Union." 
 Stick to it, and stick to each other. May your plans 
 and purposes strengthen and increase, from year 
 to year, and from decade to decade. And I earnestly 
 pray to Almighty God that the day will sometinie 
 come when the farmer can and will dictate to the 
 manufacturers the price of the product of his 
 farm, instead of having it fixed for him in Liverpool, 
 or New York, or anywhere else beneath the broad 
 canopy of the skies. I am so tired of hearing my 
 toiling countrymen of the South say to the bloated 
 tyrant of the East, "What will you give me for mine, 
 and what will you take for yours?" I tell you my 
 friends, you may talk about your bloody victories on 
 the battle field ; but I remember one which the 
 farmers won without bullets or bayonets, and which 
 thrilled my heart with a far greater feeling of exul- 
 tation than the triumphs at Santiago or Manila ; it 
 was when you banded yourselves into a determined 
 and relentless warfare against an infernal extortion, 
 and knocked into ten thousand smithereens the 
 diabolical "Jute trust." 
 
 This was made possible only by systematic 
 organization, and unselfish co-operation, for the 
 accomplishment of one great and common end. 
 The various business forces of the world are organi- 
 zed, and working together with the precision of a 
 drilled arid disciplined army ; and woe betide the 
 irregular and unorganized forces which they meet. 
 Therefore, I say to you, your only hope of safety 
 is in union : and although I no longer follow the 
 plowshare, or stoop to pluck the fleecy locks that 
 go to clothe the nations, my deepest and profoundest 
 sympathies and heartfelt benedictions rest and abide 
 now and forever upon the "Farmers Union." 
 
 57 
 
It would be the work of supererogation on the 
 part of a schoolteacher, and I should be deemed 
 presumptuous to undertake to give advice to 
 experienced and expert farmers upon the subject 
 of practical farming. I could easily take lessons 
 from you in this school, and therefore I shall not 
 undertake to read you homilies and theories about 
 agriculture which I now know only in books. It 
 might not be amiss, however, to say that progress 
 is being made in every department of science, and 
 in every branch of the worlds vast and varied indus- 
 tries. Improved means of preparation of the soil, 
 of fertilization, of drainage, of cultivation are being 
 devised and advertised from year to year, and newer 
 and better agricultural implements invented. The 
 intelligent and progressive farmer, like the intelli- 
 gent and progressive man in any other line of busi- 
 ness, is never satisfied to rest in complacent self- 
 satisfaction with the idea that he knows it all, and 
 that we have reached the "Ne plus ultra." It is 
 his duty to read and investigate and experiment 
 without ceasing, if he wishes to keep up with the 
 march of progress ; and I say it modestly, as far as 
 opportunity offers, to sometimes take a trip away 
 from his own home, and see the conditions of the 
 farms and the roads and the fences in other sections 
 than his own, for I believe with all my heart that 
 there is no greater educator than traveling and 
 seeing what the world about us is doing. To illus- 
 trate this fact, a friend of mine some years ago was 
 well contented with his idea of farming until he 
 took a trip through southern Indiana, and there saw 
 one man making a crop of ten thousand bushels of 
 corn on a hundred acre farm, cultivated by an 
 improved sulky plow drawn by four huge Percheron 
 horses. So I say we must not be satisfied to rest 
 upon our laurels, and to view with suspicion and 
 prejudice the developments in the great world 
 about us. 
 
 But as I said to you a moment ago, I am not 
 qualified to advise you upon this really great 
 science. What I say to you must of necessity be 
 
 58 
 
upon other lines. There are two things which I 
 wish to emphasize particularly, and I will do so 
 brieny. for my talk is going to be short. 
 
 In the first place we are giving too much of our 
 time to our private business, to the neglect of our 
 public affairs. While you have been busy planting, 
 and plowing, and hoeing and digging, your public 
 servants have been betraying your interests into the 
 hands of the malefactors of unhallowed wealth, and 
 unless you and all of us wake up to a realizing 
 sense of the situation, our government will soon be 
 in the hands of a tyrannical oligarchy of Morgans 
 and Guggenheims and V^anderbilts and Rockefellers. 
 The note of warning has been sounded to you again 
 and again by a few patriotic sentinels who have been 
 standing on guard, but you heeded them not. 
 Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina, one of the 
 greatest men that the South has produced since 
 the Civil War, said in a public utterance that the 
 American government of today reminded him 
 forcibly of the degenerate days of Rome, just before 
 the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The 
 greed and graft of the insatiate billionaire has 
 entered and seized upon the legislation of our con- 
 gresses and the decisions of our highest courts. 
 The most damnable tariff law the world has ever 
 known was passed by our last Congress, by which 
 the cost of living has been vastly increased to ninety 
 millions of our common people, and for the benefit 
 only of predatory and merciless wealth. Some of the 
 men who thus sold their birthright for a mess of pot- 
 tage, and sold your homes and firesides into slavery 
 were put there by your own vote. You did not do it 
 intentionally, but nevertheless you did it. The infer- 
 nal scoundrels who advocate this enormous tariff tell 
 you and me that it is necessary to protect our Ameri- 
 can labor from the pauper labor of Europe ; at the 
 same time they are chartering steamships to import 
 millions of these same European paupers to com- 
 pete with the American laborer, and selling their 
 products cheaper in foreign countries than they do 
 to their own countrymen here at home. 
 
 59 
 
Only a short time ago the United States Senate 
 refused to turn out of that august body a certain 
 millionaire, Lorimer, the tool of the trusts, whose 
 election by the Illinois legislature was bought by a 
 slush fund of $100,000 raised by certain interests 
 in Chicago, although it was indisputably proven 
 by many of the legislators who confessed that they 
 had received $1,000 each for their votes. 
 
 What a melancholy spectacle when a United 
 States Senator, convicted of election by bribery can 
 still hold his position in the lawmaking body of 
 the greatest nation on earth ! Where is our civic 
 righteousness departed? Where are the Pinckneys, 
 and the Calhouns, and the Stephens and the Hills, 
 and the Herschel V. Johnsons? "Are the hopes 
 which sustained them all poisoned in us? Is our 
 high expected destiny all eclipsed, and before its 
 noon?'' Are we going to blindly follow the furrow, 
 and allow our public servants to sell us soul and 
 body to the human monsters whose lust for gain 
 not all the gold of the Klondike or the gems of 
 Golconda could satisfy? Are we going to continue 
 to fatten the traitorous representatives who are 
 giving our heritage to our enemies, and repaying us 
 with smooth words and an occasional package of ten 
 cent garden seed? God of our Fathers, where are 
 the descendents of Marion and Sumter who fought 
 for principle, and who would rather eat a dinner of 
 cold potatoes under the naked arch of the blue sky 
 as free men, than feast at the table of an opulent 
 master, and wear the livery of slaves? 
 
 Fellow citizens, let us wake up, and look the 
 truth squarely in the face. Let us read what our 
 national lawmakers are doing, and when they have 
 proven recreant to their trusts, let us consign them 
 to the everlasting ignominy and obloquy of Judas 
 Iscariot. 
 
 The trouble seems to be that the farmer does not 
 pay enough attention to the cost of what he has to 
 buy, provided only he gets a fair price for his crop. 
 But of what avail is 15 cent cotton, if you have to 
 pay three or four prices for everything you buy, 
 
 60 
 
from a plow point to a threshing machine, and from 
 a cotton handkerchief to a suit of clothes? 
 
 We are prone to complain about high local taxes ; 
 and yet I say to you with the absolute assurance of 
 my correctness that the man who pays a state and 
 county tax of $100 for which he derives some pro- 
 tection and service, pays twice that much through 
 the tortuous tariff to the greedy cormorants of the 
 North and East, from which neither he nor his 
 government derives the slightest benefit. The 
 tariff on overcoats is 250 per cent, on woolen 
 blankets 150 per cent, and on nearly everything the 
 farmer buys, 100 per cent. That means that you 
 pay $25 for a $10 overcoat, $12 for a pair of $4 
 blankets, $60 for a $30 sewing machine. Your 
 special school tax this year was only three mills, 
 which would amount to $30 on a property valuation 
 of $10,000, and there is not a man who has bought 
 one of these fine $60 steel ranges who did not pay 
 indirectly to the manufacturer a tax on this one 
 cooking apparatus more than the cost of his childrens 
 education for the year 1911. No government has 
 any moral or legal right to make laws which operate 
 for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, 
 and the man who knowingly helps elect these 
 subsidized lawmakers is not only false to his home, 
 but is accessory to a crime against his country. I 
 have always been proud of the state of my nativity. 
 It has produced some of the greatest men in the 
 nations history; her Hills, and Stephens, and 
 Toombs, and Gradys will live forever in the hearts 
 of their countrymen ; but I bowed my head in shame 
 over her humiliation when in the year of our Lord 
 1909 six of her congressmen practically lined up with 
 the advocates of the Payne-Aldrich tariff, and put 
 a, stain of infamy upon the escutcheon of the Empire 
 State ofthe South. But I shall not linger longer 
 upon this subject. 
 
 In the second place, the farmer must not neglect 
 the education of his children. There are some 
 things of greater value than crops of cotton and 
 corn, as indispensable as they may be. The future 
 
 61 
 
citizenship of our country is a more valuable asset 
 than our banks and our railroads, and magnificent 
 structures of steel and granite. In the mad rush 
 for material gain, not only we of the South, but the 
 entire American people are in danger of forgetting 
 that our deepest possessions are boys and girls, our 
 embryo citizens — our future men and women. 
 Cultivate these, and instill into them principles of 
 uprightness, and integrity, and loyalty to duty, and 
 we are safe ; neglect these, and not all the gorgeous 
 temples, and splendid armies, and mighty navies can 
 give any stability of perpetuity to our Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Educate your boys, if you are not living for sordid 
 self alone, but have any interest in the welfare of 
 your children, and in the government under which 
 they must live. For a government is no stronger 
 than the individual units which compose it. And 
 when we have an educated citizenship, we will have 
 better citizens, better legislators, better jurors, a 
 purer ballot, and a truly democratic government of 
 the people, by the people, and for the people. 
 No giant monopolies can then enthrall us, no 
 hideous trust enslave. The fraud and graft 
 of courts and congresses will wither under the 
 burning searchlight of an enlightened public senti- 
 ment. No Russian despotism can then grind us 
 beneath its iron heel, for the plowman in the field, 
 and the toiler in all the multiplied industries of 
 earth, will rise with the power of an intelligent fran- 
 chise, and sweep away the minions and the myrmi- 
 dons of extortion and greed as the whirlwind scat- 
 ters the winters withered leaves. 
 
 02 
 
THE MILITANT SUFFRAGETTE 
 
 She has pulled off the feminine frizzes and stitches, 
 She has taken the war-path, and put on the breeches. 
 She has left her poor hubby at home cooking dinner. 
 While she struts with her ballot, and bets on the 
 winner. 
 
 Yea, the suffragette comes, "like the wolf on the 
 
 fold, 
 And she rants, and she swaggers, and rules at the 
 
 polls. 
 Leaves matters domestic to "hubby" to keep, 
 While her "hubby" at home rocks the baby to sleep. 
 
 The husband — poor devil — afraid of his wife, 
 Has surrendered to "wifey" the struggle and strife, 
 She rants in the courts, and she sits on the jury, 
 And she swears on the streets — does this feminine 
 fury. 
 
 She stands in the pulpit, she bosses the schools, 
 The affairs of the state and the nation she rules; 
 Even puts on a helmet, and carries a billy, 
 And arrests all the toughs — does this suffragette 
 silly. 
 
 63 
 
She is boss of the banks, and she cashes the checks, 
 Till she smashes the bank, and its credit she wrecks; 
 Though she bankrupts the town, and she ruins the 
 
 school, 
 Prav what does she care — does this feminine fool? 
 
 Look out for a season of cruel disaster, 
 
 When the scepter she takes from her lord and her 
 
 master. 
 For ruin, the reaper, his harvest will reap. 
 The nation will bleed, and the government weep. 
 
 Let the suffragette perish ; let woman not roam 
 From that Eden of earth — from our hearth and our 
 
 home; 
 For woman at home, gentle, modest, and true. 
 Is the spell and the light of each path we pursue. 
 
 Her home is her empire : there, there let her shine, 
 And to manhood the strife and the struggle resign; 
 Tho the storms sweep around us, beneath us, above. 
 She shall rule as a queen in that kingdom of love. 
 
 64 
 
WHAT CONSTITUTES A SUCCESSFUL LIFE? 
 Delivered at Goloid Church, 1909 
 
 To the reflecting mind, the question necessarily 
 often occurs, "What is the chief object of living? 
 What is the ultimate goal of our effort? What 
 means this tremendous struggle for existence — 
 the hurrying of the mighty hosts, thronging, 
 crowding on each others heels, and often trampling 
 each other down in the mad rush for pleasure, 
 pelf, or power?" 
 
 The truth of the matter is, that so many of us 
 are so busy looking after the most sordid material 
 wants of life, that we rarely pause long enough to 
 consider the question, "Am I making the most of 
 my life? Am I in pursuit of a worthy end and 
 ambition, measuring up to a high standard of living, 
 a factor in the uplifting of the world, or do I belong 
 to that 
 
 "Mighty multitude who creep 
 Into this world to eat and sleep, 
 And if whose tombstones, when they die, 
 Ben't taught to flatter and to lie, 
 There's nothing better can be said 
 Than they've eat up all their bread, 
 Drunk all their drink and gone to bed." 
 
 If indeed this ended all ; if the few short years 
 of mans allotted time stopped with the grave, and 
 death were the folding forever of wings, then there 
 were little need to consider. Well enough it might 
 be to spend the fleeting years like Anthony and 
 Cleopatra, or like Louis of France and Aladame 
 Pompadour, whose chief objects seemed to be the 
 indulgence of voluptuous pleasure. Or power 
 might claim our highest endeavor, and we might 
 emulate the lives of Caesar and Alexander, of 
 Hannibal and Napoleon ; or we might make the 
 
 65 
 
accumulation of money our chief concern, and con- 
 sider the modern "Lords of High Finance," the 
 Morgans and Rockefellers, the most successful men 
 of the century. But within us all there is a still 
 small voice which tells us we shall live again; an 
 immortal principle which neither the rolling years, 
 nor wasting rains, nor changing seasons can destroy. 
 
 "There is no death, the stars go down 
 To rise upon some fairer shore ; 
 And bright in heaven's jeweled crown 
 They shine forevermore. 
 
 And ever near us, tho' unseen, 
 
 The dear immortal spirits tread. 
 
 For all the boundless universe 
 Is life — there is no dead.'' 
 
 This belief is not peculiar to the Orthodox Chris- 
 tian only ; it was taught in all ages, and in all coun- 
 tries ; on the banks of the Nile, under the shadow of 
 the Pyramids. The ancient Egyptians worshiped Isis 
 and Osiris and Horus : on the sunny slopes of Greece 
 and Italy, temples were built to Jupiter and Juno; 
 our savage Celtic ancestors, amid boreal storms and 
 snows, bowed down to Wodin and Thor ; and 
 
 "Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
 Saw God in clouds, or heard Him in the wind." 
 
 Not all the greatest scientists the world has ever 
 produced have ever been able to eradicate from 
 the human mind the hope and the belief that "This 
 corruption shall put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal shall put on immortality." Poets have sung 
 it, orators have proclaimed it, sages have taught it, 
 and historians have written it. It may not be 
 susceptible of mathematical demonstration, but the 
 very universality of the longing, the world-wide 
 dominion of this belief, is in itself, a strong evidence 
 of its truth. We may not comprehend its mystery, 
 for we have not grasped the marvel of the x-ray, 
 
 66 
 
nor the wonders of electricity ; but we feel it, and 
 we hope it, and we believe it. The sweetest poems 
 ever written by bard or sung by minstrel voiced 
 this idea of God : Coleridge said, 
 
 "He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small, 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 Campbell in his "Last Man" exclaimed, 
 
 "Go sun, while mercy holds thee up 
 
 On natures awful waste, 
 To drink this last and bitter cup 
 
 Of woe that man shall taste; 
 Go, tell the moon that hides thy face, 
 Thou saws't the last of Adams race 
 
 On earth's sepulchral clod. 
 The darkening universe defy 
 To quench his immortality. 
 
 Or shake his trust in God." 
 
 So too, Alexander Pope, England's greatest 
 -poet-philosopher, said in his "Universal Prayer," 
 
 "Thou Great First Cause, least understood, 
 Who all my sense confined. 
 To know but this, that Thou art good. 
 And that myself am blind." 
 
 Yet gave me in this dark estate 
 
 To know the good from ill. 
 And binding Nature fast in fate. 
 
 Left free the human will." 
 
 Still again, Tennyson in his "In Memoriam," says, 
 
 "Nothing walks with aimless feet, 
 
 And not one life shall be destroyed. 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete.'* 
 
 67 
 
John Greenleaf Whittier, our American poet, says, 
 
 ''I know not where his islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
 And so beside the silent sea 
 
 I wait the muffled oar ; 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 
 On ocean or on shore." 
 
 And so we might go on multiplying quotations 
 from the worlds sweetest singers, until your 
 patience was exhausted. 
 
 When we stand at the grave of our loved and lost, 
 and look upon the pulseless clay, once buoyant with 
 the ruddy tide of life, we feel that we shall meet 
 again ; that we shall recognize and be recognized, 
 and again enjoy communion of spirit, sweeter and 
 purer than we have known before. Robert G. 
 Ingersoll, standing by the grave of his brother, gave 
 voice to this hope when he said, "In the night of 
 death Hope sees a star, and listening love can catch 
 the rustle of a wing." In fact, the book of Nature 
 is pregnant with proofs of a supreme First Cause, 
 and it were the veriest folly to suppose a self-created 
 Universe. AVhat a stupendous work of chance it 
 would have been that could have flung into space 
 the mighty hosts of the sky, moving with the pre- 
 cision of the most perfect clock-work ; suns and 
 planets and comets, each in its fixed orbit, and all 
 in perfect harmony. No wonder the Psalmist 
 exclaimed, "The Heavens declare thy glory, and the 
 firmament sheweth thy handiwork." Equally 
 absurd it is to suppose that man is a creature of 
 chance, evolved by some mysterious accident into 
 a Shakespeare, a Raphael, or a Mendellsohn, living 
 out his three score years and ten, and then passing 
 into oblivion and eternal nothingness. Of v/hat 
 use then were the virtues of loyalt}^ and patriotism, 
 and heroism and martyrdom? What then becomes 
 
 68 
 
of the heroes of Thermopylae and Balakiava, of 
 Bunker Hill and Gettysburg? Nay, all our notions 
 of justice, of virtue, of patience, of fortitude, of 
 self-sacrifice, spring from a belief in the immortalitv 
 of life. 
 
 If, then, we are to regard this life as the vestibule 
 to another and a higher life, by what standards 
 should our lives be measured? History is full of 
 men who have accomplished deeds that will per- 
 petuate their memory. Zenghis Khan, the Asiatic 
 Conqueror, swept like a tornado over the east, and 
 built as a monument to his memory, a mighty 
 pyramid of human skulls. Alexander the Great con- 
 quered the known world, and wept because there 
 was no more to conquer. Napoleon won matchless 
 victories, at Austerlitz, Jena and Marengo, and had 
 all Europe at his feet, but his sun went down at 
 Waterloo, and he died a lonely exile on the island 
 of St. Helena, "unwept, unhonored and unsung." 
 Alexander died of a drunken debauch, and the grave 
 of Zenghis Khan has long been forgotten. They 
 lived the lives of despots, and are known only to 
 the student of history. But what of Bunyan, 
 Martin Luther, and of the poor Galilean peasant, 
 born in a manger more than 1,900 years ago? 
 
 How few men know anything of the world's great 
 orators, poets and philosophers ; but the influence of 
 Jesus Christ has lived for nearly two thousand 
 years, and his teachings are familiar to the rude 
 unlettered peasant as well as to the scholar. No 
 code of morals the world has ever known can 
 compare with that of the "Man of Galilee." Clearly, 
 then, that is the most successful life which approa- 
 ches most nearly the life of the lowly Nazarene. 
 Not a life of self-emolument or self-indulgence ; not 
 of selfish greed or gain, but a life of service and of 
 love. Evidently this is no easy task, for human 
 nature is weak, clad in a living robe of passionate 
 flesh, with all the vices of heredity, "stained by 
 crimes of many vanished years, and pushed by 
 hands that long ago were dust. When we look 
 about us, we are confronted on every side with 
 
 69 
 
unmistakable evidences of private guilt and public 
 wrong; of the oppression of capital, of judicial 
 corruption, of legislative injustice, of the extortion 
 of greed, and the license of lust. Congress passes 
 iniquitous tariff laws which discriminate in favor 
 of the rich manufacturer, at the expense of the 
 poor consumer. Judges are bought and sold, and 
 juries are bril^ed ; dishonesty stalks in high places, 
 and public officials boldly embezzle trust funds. 
 The liquor manufacturers and dispensers still ply 
 their nefarious trade, while the ''White Slave" traffic 
 thrives in the great Metropolitan centers, and the 
 great dailies reek with crime of every kind, until 
 we are sometimes inclined to. become pessimists, 
 and to cry out "What's the use?" And yet it 
 1)ehooves us to stand firm against the tide, in 
 unshaken loyalty to duty. There are men of 
 unshaken courage and conviction, who are fighting 
 fearlessly, and we should stand by them as "Soldiers 
 of the common s:ood." 
 
 'Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, 
 The eternal )^ears of God are hers, 
 But Error, wounded^ writhes in pain, 
 And dies among her worshippers." 
 
 The days seem very dark sometimes, but some 
 rifts within the darkest clouds still let the sunshine 
 through. In spite of the palpable evil that exists, 
 the world is steadily growing better: 
 
 ''Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing 
 
 purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with the 
 
 process of the suns; 
 Not in vain the distance beacons, forward, forward 
 
 let us range, 
 Let the great world spin forever down the ringing 
 
 grooves of change." 
 
 70 
 
To argue from the pessimists standpoint that the 
 world is degenerating, is to argue that creation 
 is a failure, and its author incompetent. We look at 
 things from an insufhcient viewpoint, and our gaze 
 is bounded by a narrow horizon. Ever and anon 
 there are periods of apparent retrogression, but 
 these periods are short lived, and the next advan- 
 cing wave of progression sweeps us still higher on 
 the shore. The storms which darken the sky are 
 evanescent, and when they pass away, the atmos- 
 phere becomes purer, the skies more serene, and 
 the hope of humanity more steadfast than before. 
 Let us not lose courage in the strife of the right 
 with the wrong, but fight steadfastly for principle, 
 despising duplicity, and spurning injustice. Let 
 us, like the Roman Vestals, keep forever alive the 
 fires of truth and justice, and brotherly love, main- 
 taining the purity of home life, loyalty to state, and 
 love of our country. A nation is great only as the 
 units which compose it are great. 
 
 If Georgia is to be a great state, if the United 
 States is to be a great country, we must be great 
 units to make a great composite whole. There is no 
 truer sentiment than that expressed by Sir William 
 Jones: 
 
 W^hat constitutes a state? 
 
 Not high raised battlements or labored mound, 
 Thick wall or moated gate ; 
 
 Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned, 
 Where low born baseness wafts perfume to pride; 
 
 Not bays or broad armed ports, 
 W^here laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 
 
 No, rnen, high minded men, 
 With powers as far above dull brutes endued, 
 
 In forest, brake or den. 
 As men excel cold cold rocks and brambles rude ; 
 
 Men who their duties know, 
 And knowing, dare maintain." 
 
 It is necessary, then, that we cherish high ideals, 
 no matter ho>v far short of these high aims our lives 
 
 71 
 
may fall. We love the man who has the courage 
 of his convictions. We love the man, who like 
 Socrates, could stand by his conscience, and drink 
 the cup of hemlock, rather than surrender his 
 convictions. We love the man, who like John 
 Bunyan, could lie in a London prison for thirteen 
 years, suffering persecution for opinions sake, and 
 whose Pilgrims Progress, born in Bedford jail, will 
 live forever to help mankind, when kings and con- 
 querors and financiers have been forgotten. And 
 3'et all the truly great cannot attain the distinction 
 of such men as I have mentioned. There is many 
 a hero, and many a heroine as genuinely noble as 
 those whose names have been embalmed in song 
 and story. Alany a nobleman dwells in the obscur- 
 ity of a humble home, and many an uncrowned 
 queen is wearing her life away in the discharge of 
 her dutv as wife and mother. 
 
 "Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
 
 The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear 
 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
 
 Perhaps in some neglected spot is laid 
 
 Some heart once pregnant w^ith celestial fire; 
 
 Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, 
 Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre." 
 
 It is the building of a noble character that makes 
 a truly successful life, and not the acquisition of 
 wealth, or fame, or power. Above the grave of 
 his hero Homer wrote the words, "He was a brave 
 man ;" above the grave of his hero, Plato inscribed 
 the words, ''He was a wise man ;" above the tomb of 
 his hero, Alcibiades lifted the words, '*He was a 
 rich man." What epitaph shall we write above the 
 grave of our hero? "He was a loyal man and true, 
 faithful in the discharge of his duty." 
 
 72 
 
"Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 
 'Tis only noble to be good ; 
 Kind hearts are more than coronets. 
 And simple faith than Norman blood. 
 
 In view not only of the existence of another life, 
 but of the exceeding brevity of this one, how vastly 
 important that we make the most of character 
 building here. The longest space of life is but a 
 span compared with the possibilities that lie out 
 beyond the grave. Looking backward down the 
 ascent which we have climbed, we see at the bottom 
 of the incline, a cradle; and forward, at the base of 
 that other incline, where twilight shadows deepen 
 into night — a grave. How eminently appropriate 
 the words, "So teach us to number our days that we 
 may apply our hearts unto wisdom." After the 
 cares of the busy day are over, indulging in retro- 
 spection, and introspection, in the still small hours 
 of the night, and giving heed to the voice of that 
 silent monitor Conscience. That monitor which 
 teaches us that the highest philosophy of living 
 is a life of service to our fellow man ; not the primal 
 and ignoble instinct which reduces life to the sur- 
 vival of the fittest, but which leads us to help man- 
 kind, so that the greatest possible number may be 
 fitted to survive. 
 
 Helping the weak, comforting the distressed, and 
 lifting the fallen — these are among the duties which 
 go not only into the building of a strong character, 
 but which make the world the happier, and brighter, 
 and better, and crown our lives with a benediction. 
 There is but little philosophy in that religion which 
 is but the offering of incense to the Almighty, and 
 which fails to respond to the cry of human needs; 
 *Tf ye love not your neighbor whom ye have seen, 
 how can ye love God whom ye have not seen?" 
 The great teacher himself has said, Inasmuch as 
 ye did it not unto these, ye did it not unto me." 
 In living for others, we are building for ourselves. 
 We may not live to see the promised millennium, 
 
 73 
 
but each generation can so live that a grander devel- 
 opment shall be stamped upon each succeeding 
 century. Let us do our part, then, not with an eye 
 single to self-aggrandeizment, but looking to the 
 universal good. Training our children so that when 
 our time comes to lay aside the chisel and the mallet 
 from tired hands, we shall leave the further building 
 of the architecture of God the destiny of the world 
 in better and more skillful hands than ours. 
 
 74 
 
TOAST, DELIVERED AT THE WOMANS 
 
 CIVIC CLUB BANQUET IN 
 
 SYLVANIA, 1913 
 
 I heard it whispered by some lady friend of mine 
 that I was invited to say pleasant things, which 
 another good lady friend says I didn't mean. The 
 latter part of this charge I gently but firmly repu- 
 diate. I confess that I am partial to saying pleasant 
 things to my friends, and about my friends, in 
 which I claim the utmost sincerity. And certainly 
 this is an occasion calculated to stir pleasant 
 thoughts, and provoke the utterance of pleasing 
 things, even by the veriest anchorite. When I 
 look around upon the assembled beauty and chivalry 
 of our sylvan city, gathered for the purpose of pro- 
 moting the most laudable civic enterprises, and 
 realize that without one single exception I am 
 talking to my true and loyal friends, whom I love 
 as I love none else beneath the vaulted blue, I feel 
 the kindling zeal that fires the poets mind, and 
 thrills the touch of music's master hand. 
 
 I feel as I have never felt before, that there is 
 going to be a revolution, a transformation and a 
 reformation in civic affairs in Sylvania, since her 
 women have become aroused, and dauntless hearts, 
 inspired by local patriotic pride and maternal love, 
 have sent from rosy and resistless lips the fiat, "It 
 shall be done." 
 
 **He is a fool, who thinks by force or skill, 
 To turn the current of a woman's will ; 
 For when she will, she will, you may depend on't. 
 And when she won't, she won't, and there's an end 
 on't." 
 
 It gives me the keenest pleasure to observe that 
 your energies have been turned in the best possible 
 direction — the improvement and beautifying of the 
 
 75 
 
school grounds, whereby your children may have 
 an attractive place for exercise and recreation. 
 Sylvania is a beautiful little city, but its beauty 
 is altogether too commercial. The dollar mark is 
 stamped in mammoth letters upon its banks and 
 stores of brick and stone. A handsome court house 
 rears its slated dome amid commercial buildings 
 which would be a credit to any town, and a white 
 way sheds its mellow light on streets thronged by 
 hurrying automobiles; but in the midst of all the 
 many splendid and expensive things, little or no 
 provision has been made for the children, the future 
 men and women of our town. If we really love 
 and cherish them as we profess, and the common 
 expression that they are the hope of the country 
 is not an empty platitude, as meaningless as "Sound- 
 ing brass and tinkling cymbal,'' it is high time that 
 we prove our declarations by our deeds. I am 
 glad, I say, that our fair women have taken the 
 initiative, and that ere long, beneath the magic 
 touch of woman's hand, the place where our chil- 
 dren live and move for nine long months in every 
 year will bud and blossom into beauty, and throng- 
 ing crowds of happy boys and girls can rove and 
 rest "far from the madding crowds ignoble strife," 
 on turfy green, beneath umbrageous trees, where 
 childhoods happy laugh may ripple with the music 
 of unsullied thought. 
 
 All honor, then, to the Woman's Civic Club of 
 Sylvania, which has inagurated this commendable 
 enterprise, and may their example be an inspiration 
 to the men to pause awhile from the engrossing 
 cares of business, and turn their attention to things 
 which enrich in the character of the men and women 
 vet to be. 
 
 76 
 
THE VILLAGE PARSON 
 
 There once lived a preacher— his name was Jawbone, 
 Who was sent the ''Glad tidings of joy" to make 
 
 known 
 To the town of Billvania, the sinners to save, 
 And to rescue their souls from death, hell and the 
 
 grave. 
 
 He came and he saw, and he conquered? Oh no- 
 Now list and I'll tell you his story of woe; 
 The job was too big for the brain of this pastor, 
 And his labors all ended in cruel disaster. 
 
 He was dumpy and squat, and he looked like a Jap, 
 Some wags of the town said he looked like a "yap"; 
 His brain was as small as his physical "figger" 
 And his foot was as flat as the foot of a "nigger". 
 
 The folks didn't ask if he had education, 
 
 They but asked that the preacher should give 'em 
 
 salvation 
 As cheap as they could, and they cared not a copper, 
 If he couldn't spell right, and he'couldn't talk proper! 
 
 77 
 
So he preached and he prayed, and he sweated and 
 
 snorted, 
 Riz up on his haunches, and foamed and cavorted, 
 And he slew — did this Jawbone — hke Sampson of 
 
 old, 
 All the "Bridge" and the "Fortv-two" g.jats of his 
 
 fold. 
 
 He riz like a czar in his clerical might, 
 
 And he "turned 'em out" left, and he "turned 'em 
 
 out" right, 
 Till the flock of the bulk of its "goats" is bereft, 
 And only a few of the "sheep" are now left. 
 
 Now what is the sequel? Alack and alas, 
 A dangerous thing's the jawbone of an ass ; 
 Like the flight of the boomerang, backward it sped. 
 And it hit him "kerwhack," and the preacher is dead. 
 
 78