Prose
MISCELLANIE
Thos. E» Watson
FOURTH EDITION
PUBLISHED BY
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY
THOMSON, GEORGIA
1927
it
SENATOR THOS. E. WATSON
Prose Miscellanies
Thos. E. Watson
FOURTH EDITION
PUBLISHED BY
THE TOM WATSON BOOK CO.
THOMSON. GA.
1927
Copyright
BY THE AUTHOR
1912
Copyright By
GEORGIA WATSON LEE BROWN
1927
i f f>.>
Dedication
to
Miss Georgia Durham
TN whose pure affection and loyal soul' a briefless young law-
-"- yer found favor in the good year 1877, and who not so very
long afterwards — for the course of true love, as from time im-
memorial, did not run smooth — became Mrs. Thos. E. Watson,
and who has, ever since, walked the long path by his side, through
health and through sickness, through joy and through sorrow,
through sunlight and through the tempest, with the unfaltering
devotion of the typical wife, and who now turns with him to
face the afternoon of life, without any sort of fear, and with the
peace of soul that passes understanding.
April 7, 1912.
589147
Preface
IN every individual, there are several natures; and the loom
of Life weaves these into the blend that make up our record.
The shuttle flies back and forth, from one extreme to the
other, as the Loom relentlessly, incessantly, does its work; and, at
most, we can but hope that the finished fabric will show some
golden strands where the web and the woof have intertwined.
To most of us there come, now and then, bright days and exalted
moods. The angel of our best nature hovers about us, softening,
refining, inspiring. We forget the sordid and the selfish; we
are wrapt in communion with all that is tender and noble and
true: are filled with the beauty of nature and with radiant
thoughts.
As though the chords of our harp of life had been swept by
the hand of some Israfel, we respond, in chastened meditation, in
tender affection, in softened expression.
The hurly, burly of a very tempestuous and laborious career,
in which there has been too much of conflict and heart-burning,
has been my lot, but, there have visited me, at brief intervals,
those rarer moods of calm and reflection, of quiet, and softer
sentiment. It was during such an interval — and they were far
between — that each of the fugitive pieces were written, which,
herein collected, are called "Prose Miscellanies."
THOS. E. WATSON.
Thomson, Ga., March 26, 1912.
Southern Pamphlets
Rare Book Collection
UNC-Chapel Hill
CONTENTS
Planting Corn
Page
.. 7
.. 10
The New Year
A Forgotten Scholar
20
A Tragedy in a Tree-top
24
In the Mountains •
28
Convalescent
Glimpses Behind the Curtain ^^
44
Not Quite
How I Came to Write Napoleon
At Fifty
Eccentricities of Nervous People
Dream Children
The Oddities of the Great
73
Bubbles on the Stream
A Rose on the Snow
7Q
Reverie and Suggestion
As It Is and as It May Be ^^
The Song of the Bar-room
92
The Vulture
The Wine Cup ^^
Toward the Light
The Country Wife ^^^
The Path of Glory ^^_
Is It Worth The Price? 1^"^
The Late ^^^
The Old Packet Boat by the James H''
An Incident in the Life of E. P. Steed 119
123
Fortitude
Planting Corn
'T^ HE bluebird was out today ; out in his glossiest plumage,
his throat gurgling with song.
For the sunlight was warm and radiant in all the South,
and the coming spring had laid its benediction on every field
and hedge and forest.
The smell of newly plowed ground mingled with the subtle
incense of the yellow jasmine; and from every orchard, a shower
of the blossoms of peach and apple and pear was wafted into
the yard, and hung lovingly on the eaves and in the piazzas
of the old homestead — the old and faded homestead.
Was there a cloud in all the sky? Not one, not one.
"Gee! Mule!!!"
"Dad blast your hide, why don't you gee-e-EE!!"
"Co-whack" goes the plowline on the back of the patient
mule — the dignified upholder of the mortgages, "time piece" ac-
counts, and the family credit, generally.
Down the furrow, and up the furrow, down to the woods,
and up to the fence — there they go, the sturdy plowman and
his much-enduring but indispensable mule.
For the poplar leaves are now as big as squirrel-ears, and
it's "time to plant corn."
On moves the plowman, steady as a clock, silent and reflective.
Right after him comes the corn-dropper, dropping corn.
The grains fairly chink as the bare feet of the corn-dropper
hurry past; and before the corn has well cuddled itself into
the shoe-heel of the plowman's track, down comes the hoe of
the "coverer" — and then the seeds pass into the portals of the
great unknown; the unknown of burial and of life renewed.
Peeping from the thicket, near at hand, the royal redbird
makes note of what is going on, nor is the thrasher blind to the
progress of the corn-dropper. And seated with calm but watch-
ful dignity on the highest pine in the thicket, is the melancholy
crow, sharpening his appetite with all the anticipated pleasures
of simple larceny.
The mocking bird circles and swoops from tree to tree, and
in his matchless bursts of varied song, no cadence is wanting,
no melody missed.
The hum of the bees is in the air; white butterflies, like
snowflakes, fall down the light and lazily float away.
(7)
8 PROSE MISCELLANIES
The robin lingers about the China trees, and the bluejay,
lifting his plumed frontlet, picks a quarrel with every feathered
acquaintance, and noisily asserts his grievances.
The joree has dived deeper into the thicket, and the festive
sapsucker, he of the scarlet crest, begins to come to the front,
inquisitive as to the location of bugs and worms.
On such a day, such a cloudless, radiant, flower-sweetened
day, the horseman slackens the rein as he rides through lanes
and quiet fields; and he dares to dream that the children of
God once loved each other.
On such a day, one may dream that the time might come
when they would do so again.
Rein in and stop, here on this high hill! Look north, look
east where the sun rises, look south, look west where the sun
sets — on all sides the steady mule, the steady plowman, and the
children dropping corn.
Close the eye a moment and look at the picture fancy paints.
Every field in Georgia is there, every field in the South is there.
And in each, the figures are the same — the steady mule and
the steady man, and the pattering feet of the children dropping
corn.
In these furrows, lies the food of the republic; on these fields,
depend life, and health and happiness.
Halt those children, and see how the cheek of the world would
blanche at the thought of famine !
Paralyze that plowman — and see how national bankruptcy
would shatter every city in the Union.
Dropping corn! A simple thing, you say.
And yet, as those white seeds rattled down to the sod and
hide away for a season, it needs no peculiar strength of fancy
to see a Jacob's ladder crowded with ascending blessings.
Scornfully, the railroad king would glance at these small
teams in each small field; yet check those corndroppers, and
his cars would rot on the road and rust would devour the
engines in the roundhouse. The banker would ride through
those fields thinking only of his hoarded millions, nor would he
ever startle himself with the thought that his millions would
melt away in mist, were those tiny hands never more to be
found dropping corn. The bondhokler, proud in all the security
of the untaxed receiver of other jicople's taxes, would see in
these fields merely the industry from which he gathers tribute;
it would never dawn on his mind, that, without the opening of
those furrows and the hurrying army of children dropping corn,
his bond wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on.
Great is the might of this republic! — great in its schools,
churches, courts, legislatures; great in its towns and cities; great
PROSE MISCELLANIES 9
in its commerce, great in its manufactures, great in its colossal
wealth.
But sweep from under it all these worn and wasted fields,
strike into idleness or death the plowman, his wife and his child,
and what becomes of the gorgeous structure whose foundation is
his field?
Halt the food growers, and what becomes of your gold and
its "intrinsic value"?
How much of your gold can you eat?
How many of your diamonds will answer the need of a loaf?
But enough.
It is time to ride down the hill. The tinkle of the cowbell
follows the sinking sun — both on the way home.
So, with many an unspoken thought, I ride homeward, think-
ing of those who plant the corn.
And hard indeed would be the heart that, knowing what
these people do and bear and suffer, yet would not fashion this
prayer to the favored of the republic: "0 rulers, lawmakers,
soldiers, judges, bankers, merchants, editors, lawyers, doctors,
preachers, bondholders! Be not so unmindful of the toil and
misery of those who feed you!"
The New Year
LEAD us gently, Father Time, as you take us to the portals
/of the New Year.
AVe know not what may be within; and our souls are bur-
dened with fear, as we stand here at the door.
Lost, forever lost, is the Confidence with which we used to
go bounding into the New Year — as revellers hastening to the
feast.
We have met the Unforeseen so often, have mourned where
we thought to have rejoiced, been trampled upon amid the
horrors of panic and defeat, where we had so stoutly fought for
victory and reward, that our hearts are sadly subdued.
We did not seek this awful life-woe. Father Time.
Thrust, from some great outer darkness into the hurly-burly
called Life, we gaze upward at the stars, in helpless ignorance
of what it all may mean; and some irresistible force pushes us,
pushes, us, swiftly, inexorably, onward to another outer dark-
ness that fills us with speechless awe.
Have mercy on us. Father Time. We have been beaten with
many stripes, are covered with many wounds.
God! How we have suffered!
We knew nothing at the beginning, and we know but little
now; and for every lesson we have learned, we have been made
to pay in heart-aches and scalding tears.
Always struggling, often down, always anxious for the mor-
row, often in torture today, we have stumbled forward. Father
Time, still looking for the smooth road and the sunny sky, and
the bright companionship of success and peace.
Shall we never see them. Father Time?
We shudder when we think what vou did to us during the
Old Year, Father Time.
Ah, but you were hard on us — bitter hard. Our little ones
panted for a breath of fresh air. Father Time: and they died
like flies, in noisome, reeking, crowded tenements, because there
was not, in all God's universe — where there's light and air for
every flower that flecks the field — a breath of fresh air for the
little children of the slums.
Ah, it was pitiful, Father Time!
Our feeble ones, young and old, perished miserably of cold
and hunger, in the midst of a land that worships the Good God,
and amid such an accumulation of wealth as was never known
(10)
PROSE MISCELLANIES 11
before since the morning stars looked down upon a newly-made
world. .
Poverty, crime, vice, drunkenness, not, war, lamme, pesti-
lence earthquake, and conflagration have glutted their awful
appetites upon us during the Old Year, Father Time. To what
are you leading us in the New?
Will the heart of the world grow harder and harder, leather
Time? , .,, , .„
Will the greed of human avarice demand still larger sacrince
of human lives?
Will the selfishness of Classes gorge itself still further upon
ravenous conquests, and remorseless exploitation?
Shall the cry of the white slave never reach Heaven, Father
Time? , . ^ , m ■ ,
Shall the song of the angels who hung over the infant Christ,
never throb, a living principle, in man's government of man?
Is the reformer always to be the martyr, Father Time?
Is wrong never to be dethroned?
Oh, Father Time! We tremble as we feel you leading us
toward the door of the New Year. Beyond that portal we cannot
see, and we dread it — as children dread the dark.
Deal gentlv with us in the New Year, Father Time.
Give us strength to bear the cross— for we know that we
must OGcir it
Give us courage for the battle, for we know that we must
figlit it. I 11 J •+
Give us patience to endure, for we know that we shall need it.
Give us charity that thinks no evil, and which will stretch
forth the helpful hand to lift our weaker brother out of the mire,
rather than the cruel scorn which passes him by, or thrusts him
further down.
Give us faith in the right which no defeat can disturb, and
no discouragement undermine.
Give us the love of truth which no temptation can seduce,
and no menace can intimidate.
Give us the fortitude which, through the cloud and the gloom
and the sorrow of apparent failure, can see the distant pinnacles
upon which the everlasting sunlight rests.
Give us the pride which suffers no contamination, no_ com-
promise of self-respect, no wilful desertion of honest conviction.
Give us the purpose that never turns, and the hope that
never dies. And, Father Time, should the New Year, into
which you are taking us, have upon its calendar that day in
which the few that love us shall be bowed down in sackcloth and
aslies, let that day, like all other days, find us on duty— faithful
to the end.
LEAD US GENTLY, FATHER TIME
12)
A Forgotten Scholar
TJ" AVE you ever heard of Hugh Swinton Legare?
His father was one of those Huguenots who left France
because of religious intolerance, and came to America because of
its promise of freedom.
His mother belonged to tlie Scotch family of Swinton, whose
warriors defended the border, and whose names are honored
in the chronicles of Froissart and Walter Scott.
Hugh Swinton Legare was born in Charleston, South Carolina,
January 2, 1797. A large, well-formed child, he grew to be
almost a deformed man, on account of having been vaccinated
for smallpox. Fearing that the disease might attack the boy,
his fond parents delivered him to a doctor, who gave him such a
bad case of artificial smallpox that he never got over it. For
months he was kept flat on his back, his knee joints and elbow
joints terribly inflamed. For eight years his growth was arrested,
and when he did begin to grow to manhood, the growth was
mostly above the waist line.
Therefore, Hugh Swinton Legare had the head, shoulders and
chest of a finely shaped man, while his lower limbs were so
short in comparison that there was no beauty of proportion.
Seated, he seemed a magnificent speciman of manhood;
standing, he had none of the impressiveness of stature which
adds so much to the "imposing presence."
As a boy, his infirmity made him unfit for rough games and
exercises. Naturally, he took to solitude and books.
His father died while Hugh was very young, and to his mother
was left his training and education.
Mary Swinton Legare was one of the noblest women of the
Old South — and when that is said no more can be said. To
make of her bright boy a useful man, became the purpose of her
life; and to her pure teachings, her firm control, her wise
guidance, Hugh Legare was indebted for the splendid honesty of
character, the unselfish devotion to high ideals, that makes a
study of his modest career so beneficial.
After some preliminary schooling, which included a course at
the celebrated Academy of Dr. Moses Wacldell, Hugh Legare
spent four years in Columbia College and graduated with the
highest honors. (December, 1814.)
The next three years, young Legare devoted to a study of
the law; and at the age of twenty-one, he could have com-
menced the practice of his profession, better equipped than
(13)
14 PROSE MISCELLANIES
Benjamin Butler, Daniel Webster, William H. Crawford, Henry
Clay, or George McDuffie.
But young Legare had a scholar's lust for knowledge, and he
went to Europe to complete his education.
In his beautiful letters to his mother, he tells of his studies
in Edinburgh, Scotland; then of his travels and studies on the
Continent.
After two years abroad he returned to Charleston, and two
more years were spent in the study of law. And then he was
admitted to the Bar.
Now, let those young men of the present day who bemoan
the fact that they have no college education, study the fate of
Hugh S. Legare
Fortune gave him ample means to attend schools, ransack
libraries, pursue knowledge, exhaust the sources of information,
both at home and abroad. Nature gave him as' fine an intellect
as ever warmed the heart and whetted the zeal of a teacher.
He could learn and he could remember. He could think, as well
as learn. He was an effective speaker and a magnificent writer.
In a classical controversy he could, and did, make a monkey out
of the famous Englishman, Lord Brougham. His essay on
Demosthenes is one of the finest things in the English language,
and Rufus Choate is said to have never tired of reading it.
His paper on the ''Democracy of Athens" has never been sur-
passed in solid, sterling value, by Macaulay, Carlyle, or anybody
else.
His argument against Nullification is sounder than Webster's,
for it is not built upon a false foundation, as Webster's was.
In short, Hugh Swinton Legare was, perhaps, as able a man,
naturally, as Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, or Crawford; and,
as a scholar, he infinitely surpassed them all. He had read more
books, garnered more knowledge, learned more languages, spent
more time in preparation than any of them.
Academically, he was easily the master of the whole group —
Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, Crawford. That is to say, in
book learning he excelled them all. He probably knew more
than all three of "the Great Trio," with Benton and Crawford
thrown in for good measure.
Why is it, then, that Hugh S. Legare never succeeded in pro-
portion to his natural ability and his mental culture? Why is
it that nearly every schoolboy knows something of Clay, Web-
ster and Callioun, while not one boy in ten thousand will ever
hear of Hugh Legare? Why is it that the speeches and writings
of Clay, Webster and Calhoun are to be found in all the book
catalogues, while the writings and speeches of Legare are the
"rare specimens" of a few libraries?
PROSE MISCELLANIES 15
It is a curious conundrum, antl illustrates what I have long
been saying to the young men — ^namely, that a collegiate educa-
tion is not absolutely necessary to the success of a practical
lawyer.
Abraham Lincoln had almost no sort of an education, yet see
what a success he was as a lawyer.
Ben Butler had only a smattering of collegiate education, yet
he put Rufus Choate to rout, the very first time they clashed.
George McDuffie had no education to compare with Legare's,
vet Legare had no practical success to compare with that of
McDuffie.
Think of these things, young man, and don't be down-hearted
because you are too poor "to go lo college."
Lots of men who were never great, "went to college;" lots
of men who were great, didn't.
So, you see, it's a question of what is in you.
If you haven't got within you the stuff out of which success-
ful men are made, no teacher, no book, no college will ever put
it there.
If you have got the right sort of stuff in you, and will dash
ahead, determined to succeed, as Clay, Jackson and Lincoln did,
you will succeed, just as they did.
Andrew Jackson got a college degree — got it in New Eng-
land at that — but it was after he had become a success as a
lawyer, a merchant, a farmer, a soldier and a politician. He
did not get that college degree until he was President of the
United States. The school advertised itself a little by giving
the great Tennessean a degree which he couldn't read — for it
was in Latin. Old Hickory laughed as they mumbled over the
words of the degree, and remarked that the only Latin he knew
was, E Pluribus Unum.
What was the matter with Hugh Swinton Legare? Why
did not his success measure up to the scale of his preparations?
Because his perfect culture had put him out of touch with the
men among whom he moved. His eminence was an isolation.
Placed above the average of his community by his elaborate
education, he was not in sympathy with the average man, and
the average man was not in sympathy with him.
But it is the average man who gives verdicts and votes; it
is the average man whose shouts of applause make the temporary
fame which rules the court-room and the hustings. To be so
highly educated as to lose touch with the average man, is to be
over-educated. Mr. Legare himself sadly admitted that he
had wasted too much time in i^reparation. He had mingled so
long with scholars and book-worms, had lingered so lovingly
16 PROSE MISCELLANIES
in academies and libraries that he was not fitted for the com-
panionship of the average man, or the hurly-burly of the busy
world.
It became his regret that he had not thrown himself earlier
into the struggle of life, and learned the ways of men by prac-
tical experience.
As suggested by his biographer, he had become too superior
to the commonplace man to exert any influence over that com-
monplace man. He was so uncommon in his perfect culture that
he could not get the benefit of his actual talent among common
men.
Like a man who would put all his money in big bills, he
could not get about the world as well as the man wiio carries
small change.
After he had been a lawyer some years — years in which Mc-
Duffie, Petigru and other less learned lawyers were earning big
fees — Legare was asked by a friend how he was getting along.
"Sir," answered he, "do you ask how I get along? I will
tell you. I have a variety of cases, and, by the bounty of Provi-
dence, sometimes get a fee; but in general, Sir, I practice upon
the old Roman plan; and, like Cicero's, my clients pay me what
they like — that is, often nothing at all."
He served two or three terms as a member of the Legisla-
ture, and his reputation as a man of great powers and attain-
ments spread among those who could best appreciate him.
After awhile he was appointed Attorney-General for the
State of South Carolina. Duty calling him to the Supreme
Court of the United States, he made an argument before that
tribunal which showed what he really was, and which fixed
his status as one of the great lawyers of his time.
He soon afterward accepted an appointment in the diplomatic
service, and i-epresented his Government as Charge d'Affairs at
Brussels. Here he must have enjoyed himself thoroughly, for
he moved in the best society, was treated with the utmost con-
sideration, and had the companionship of scholars, the living
and the dead.
Returning to Charleston (1836), he was elected to Congress,
where he at once made a brilliant record in debate; but he was
thrown out at the next election by a hostile local combination.
Resuming the practice of law, he was now employed in some
really good cases and, I hope, got some good fees. It was time.
He took a prominent j^art in the Presidential campaign of
1840, making speeches in Richmond and New York, which were
considered magnificent.
Next year the original Harrison Cabinet resigned, and Mr.
Legare was appointed Attorney-General of the United States.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 17
Nobody questioned his fitness for this high place, and his
conduct of the business of the office was a success. When Mr.
Webster retired from the State Department, President Tyler
confided to Mr. Legare, ad interim, the care of that department.
Thus Mr. Legare was doing double duty, and his strength
failed under it.
His sister, Mrs. Bryan, to whom he was tenderly attached,
died in July, 1842.
The January following he lost his mother, whom he had
loved to the last with boyish devotion, the mother to whom he
wrote from Europe, in 1819:
"The whole happiness of my life is henceforth to make you
happy."
A noble pledge! and nobly kept.
In 1843 he went with the President to Boston to take part
in the Bunker Hill celebration. Seized by a sudden and violent
illness (June 16), he was unable to attend the ceremonies, and
died on the morning of June 20.
He had never married.
Taken altogether, here was, to me, one of the saddest of
records.
Who could have begun the race of life with better chances
to win it than Hugh Legare?
By birth he belonged to the slave-holding aristocracy, the
alleged ruling class of his State. He had the benefit of the best
education that money could buy. He literally ransacked the
world in his quest of knowledge.
He had a mind of high order to start with, and his industry
in improving it has seldom been surpassed.
His character was without a blemish ; his disposition amiable ;
his manners those of the accomplished gentleman. He neither
drank and gambled, like Henry Clay, nor did he play cards
and get drunk, like Daniel Webster. He had no quarrels and
duels, as McDuffie had; raised no rows at horse races and other
places, as Andrew Jackson did; shot down no enemies in street
fights, as Thomas H. Benton did; beat no Congressman with a
stick, as Sam Houston did; had no feud with a neighbor about
that neighbor's pretty wife, as Jefferson had; and published no
Mrs. Reynolds Confession, as Hamilton thought it necessary
to do.
No! Hugh S. Legare was a "Mother's boy" — a model of
good conduct and of good character; a model student, a good
citizen, elaborately equipped to be a model lawyer, a model
orator, and a model statesman.
Yet he failed.
He failed all along the line. He tried to run a magazine,
18 PROSE MISCELLANIES
The Southern Review, but his articles went over the heads of
the people, and the magazine died of too much learning.
He tried politics, and "practical fellows" tripped him and
passed on ahead.
He tried to be a lawyer, and, so far as knowing the law
was concerned, Webster was not his equal, nor Pinckney his
superior, but Webster and Pinckney had a success at the bar
which painfully dwarfs the career of Legare. He made fine
speeches, but couldn't keep in the swim. A favorite among
scholars, the common people loved him not. He did not under-
stand them, nor they him. The mystic tie of sympathy was not
there.
"I started too late; I lingered over books too long; I should
have plunged into the fight earlier, trusted more to my natural
capacity and less to education. / am over-educated."
Was there ever a mournfuller wail than this?
He took no sweet woman to wife; children came not to sit
upon his knee. Books — and his sisters; books — and his mother;
books — and some forgotten speeches; books — and a few mas-
terful but neglected essays; books — and a few second-rate ap-
pointments to office; books — and a sudden breakdown and death.
It is almost appalling; so much study and so little result;
so much labor and so little done. Such royal liberality in seed-
sowing, and such a beggarly harvest.
Had the handsome, brilliant, sweet-tempered, golden-hearted
Hugh Legare buckled right down to practical affairs, as soon
as he left college, getting used to the ways of folks, wearing
off the wire edge and getting on working terms with the aver-
age man, gaining by actual experience that knowledge of men
and things which cannot be got in any other way; had he got
down off the higii horse and mixed and mingled with the boys;
had he studied Tom, Dick and Harry, and caught the cue; had
he looked upon the marvelous leaves in the great book of Hu-
man Nature and read what is written there; had he made him-
self a man among men, caught the glow of their passions, felt
the warmth of their sympathies, swam in the current of their
energies and their practical purposes, he would have known bet-
ter how to talk to them, how to get votes and verdicts from them,
how to mold their convictions and lead their advance.
Had he got down upon the ground floor with the ])eoplc, as
all Americans who have achieved great practical success, as
lawyers, authors, orators and jiolitical leaders have had to do,
lie might have been as ])owerful with the pen as Horace Greeley;
on the hustings, he might have equalled Clay; in the court-room,
Webster would have met him with the stern joy which warriors
feel in foemen worthy of their steel.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 19
As it is, he is but a memory in the minds of a few.
He went forth into the fields of toil, and came back with
empty arms.
He spoke, and nobody heard.
He wrote, and nobody read.
Upon the sands of time he left no trace.
The brilliant morning of his life led to no midday splendor,
no gorgeous afternoon, no immortal afterglow.
Only the curious student, exploring obscure corners of the
library', and poring over "quaint and curious volumes of for-
gotten lore," will ever learn the strangely melancholy story of
the forgotten scholar, Hugh Swinton Legare.
A Tragedy in a Tree Top
npHE blizzard of 1895, which froze the tea-olive, the banana
shrub and the japonica, came near killing the live-oaks which
had grown from the acorns I brought home from South Georgia
when I was a young lawyer.
She planted them on the sunny side of the chicken house,
and when the tree grew large enough to demand more space,
I pulled down the house. Yes, the inner bark of the live oaks
turned dark that winter, and it took copious waterings next
spring to carry them through the summer.
But in April, 1896, when I came to note the many gaps
which the frost had made in the shrubbery, I missed something
else.
No blue-birds came singing in the apple trees.
The cold had been too much for them. The hollows where
they had made their winter homes had been their sepulchers,
and the April sun carried no warmth to the pitiful little forms
in blue, rigid and decayed.
It was in the spring of 1898 that I was riding along through
the country, some ten miles out from town, when with a thrill
of joy I heard the old familiar notes of the blue-bird.
Sure enough, here were half a dozen of the tribe, chirping
musically in the sunlight.
After that they gradually became more common, and in
1902 they were once more flitting about the orchard and the
cornfield.
Two years ago I watched a pair closely, and found the nest.
Creeping up to the old apple tree, I peeped down into the
hollow, and there, cuddled at the bottom, were four well-feath-
ered youngsters that would soon be ready to fly.
In a few days the entire family of six, the parents and the
four children, were out in the cornfield, all singing together,
flocking together, as companionable as folks, and giving every
evidence of complete enjoyment of life.
Thus the blue-birds made a home with us and multiplied.
But the next winter was very severe. Twice the sleet drove
down from the North and chained the South. Every tree wore
its armor of ice, and when the hoarse wind blew, even the giant
oaks and hickories and pines shivered and bent, while great
'limbs were snapped and hurled to the ground.
It was bitter hard upon the birds.
(20)
PROSE MISCELLANIES 21
So, then, when the warm days of spring came on. She and
I thought we would do something especially good for our feath-
ered friends, and we put up the boxes in the trees, boxes in
which they could nest. In this way the cold rains and chill
winds would not endanger the yoimg birds. Up went the boxes,
and the birds came.
But only two blue-birds — just one pair.
All the others had perished of cold. Great was our delight
when we made certain that this pair had begun to build a nest
in one of our boxes.
I happened to see them first, and told the good news.
"Oh, is7i't that fine!" cried She, clapping her hands, her eyes
a-dance with joy.
"But we must not let them catch us watching them," said
She, "because that might make them leave the nest."
So we were over-cautious, and I kept away from the tree
lest I should alarm the busy home-makers.
From week to week I merely made sure that the birds were
still at work in the box — and that made us content. One day
in April one of these blue-birds sang with a volume which at-
tracted my attention. I had never known one to repeat its simple
little notes so continuously and so loudly.
Usually a blue-bird is subdued; this one was almost bois-
terous.
Something or other — I don't know what — made me uncom-
fortable. I got the vague impression that the bird was in dis-
tress. Yet there was nothing disturbing it. Had it flown back
and forth from the box, or had it hovered about that tree, I should
have suspected the horrible truth.
But the bird was quite a distance from the box, and I could
not dream that such a tragedy had happened as I now know
had happened.
My usual monthly trip to New York occupied ten days, and
on my return I looked for the young blue-birds.
They were not to be seen.
I made inquiries, but none on the place had seen any.
That evening at dusk I saw one of the birds alight on the
shelf of the box and look in upon the nest.
All is well, I thought. But next day I became uneasy. It
was time the young birds were out.
What had happened?
The fear of doing harm to the little family held me back
until nearly nightfall, and then I could stand it no longer. I
must see what was the matter.
"Bring me the step ladder, Steve."
22 PROSE MISCELLANIES
It was a rickety old thing, and Steve had to grip it at the
bottom while I went up.
Reaching the level of the nest I peered in, but the limbs of
the tree shut out the light, and I could see nothing.
"Run and bring me some matches, Steve."
He brought them, and when I struck one of them and looked
in, there was something that looked like fish-scales.
Puzzled and alarmed, I struck another match, and looked
more closely.
There was no sound from within the box and no sign of
life.
What pathetic mystery was this?
"Steve, this looks like the skin of a snake!"
"Law, Boss! Come down from dere and let's wait till
mornin'."
While Steve was working up an excitement from below, I
lit another match, poked about in the box, and became convinced
that no life of any sort was there.
Whatever had been done, was finished.
We wrenched the box from its fastenings in the tree, and
took it out into the open where the light was better.
When the roof had been knocked off, I pulled out the con-
tents of the box and spread them on the ground.
The birds had made an unusually large nest. They had
evidently fallen in love with their house. They had intended
to make it their permanent home.
In the nest were four eggs, looking old and dry and discolored.
And there was the cast-off skin of a snake!
It lay along that empty nest, that blighted home — ghastly
memorial of the tragedy in the tree.
What had occurred?
The snake, probably a black tree-climber, had found his way
into the nest, and swallowed the mother bird, and then gone
into quarters there until it had cast off its skin. It had appro-
priated the property after having devoured the owner.
But why had the eggs been left?
I cannot guess, unless it be that they were stale, and that
even a snake dislikes stale eggs.
The supper bell rang, and I went into the house.
As I took my seat at the table, I said heavily:
"The poor little birds!"
Then She knew that there had been a tragedy.
She heard the story, and neitlier of us wanted any supper.
It went below, untasted.
The big yellow moon came soaring over the woods, and
Hickorv Hill was soon in a blaze of silvery light.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 23
But the mocking-bird that was singing so sweetly down in
the meadow seemed ahnost a nuisance, for I couhln't get my
thoughts off the snake and the missing bird.
Ah, if you could see the widower — the surviving bird! It
would touch your heart. He will not return to the tree any
more. He goes further from the house every day.
I know now that when I saw him on the shelf looking in
upon his ruined home, he was paying his last visit.
I know now that when he was singing so stridently that
day in April, the serpent was already in his home and he with-
out a mate.
The last I saw of him was early yesterday morning. The
sun was glorious; birds of every sort were bringing off their
young, and the air thrilled with their songs.
And the blue-bird sang also, but mournfully — and he had
already left my place. He was perched at the top of a tall
tree in the adjoining field.
He sang and sang and sang — calling for his mate, perhaps
— and then a bee-martin struck savagely at the homeless, mate-
less blue-bird, and, with a melancholy chirp, he disappeared in
the remote woods.
In the Mountains
(~\^ this gray pinnacle of rock, I sit enthroned; the clouds
^^ hang their curtains far below, for this is "Mountain Top,"
in the Blue Ridge.
Down the valley, to the east, towers Jefferson's last great
work, the University of Virginia; on the right, the blue haze
makes dim the outline of the giant peaks, which stand guard
over the glories of the Rock-fish Valley; far away to the west,
stretches the Valley of Virginia, with the North Mountains losing
themselves in the skies; and over yonder to the northeast, are
the eternal hills which saw Stonewall Jackson's march to fame.
Is there in the whole world a lovelier view than this? Does
Nature anywhere gather together so many of her treasures within
the range of human eye?
Here is the ever changing play of light and shade as the
clouds rest or move, anchor or sail, collect or scatter, smile or
frown, fleck the heavens with gold or strew the beach of the
horizon with broken waves of foam. Here is the limitless wealth
of field and forest — fields forever green, and forests whose in-
finite variety defies the winter to strip them bare and the sum-
mer to find them stale.
Here are the crystal waters, bursting from the blue slate
rock and dashing with reckless speed down a thousand hidden
waterfalls to the rivers which pierce the plains. A nobleman's
park, after a century of care and cost, is not more grateful to
the eye than these wonderful slopes and natural swards cropped
close by the flocks, trodden smooth by the herds. And if you
will pluck one of each of all the flowers and ferns which Nature's
garden tenders you here, the nobleman will envy j-ou the rich-
ness and the fragrance of the field.
This rock is my throne, and as I gaze upon the soul-lifting
sublimity of the landscape, I feel like crying out, as Goldsmith
did when he looked down from the Alps, "The world, the world
is mine!"
This farm may belong to Jones, that forest to Brown, this
mountain to Smith, that orchard to Tompkins, but the land-
scape is mine, is yours, is anybody's!
He that has eyes to see, let him see.
Down yonder in front of me, looking east, is the Rock-fish
Gap! It was the first passway for pioneers crossing the Blue
Ridge to reach the Allegheny Mountains. For years, this was
(24)
PROSE MISCELLANIES 25
the road the emigrant took going west. See how deeply worn
into the rocky earth is this ancient highway, even on the very
summit of the Gap.
Are you much of a dreamer? Here is the pLace to dream
dreams and see visions.
Fill that time-worn road with the pioneers who made it;
call back the adventurers who once thronged it, and you will
see the banners of civilization flying over the dauntless men in
buckskin who pass upward and outward and onward, from the
valleys of the lower South to found empires in the West. Peo-
ple the Gap with those whose rifle and axe afterwards made the
"winning of the West," and you will see the militant cohorts
of the white man's ambition and daring and ideals go marching
by! Deep, deep is the hard soil, worn by their tireless feet; and
if the Old Road of Ohain marks one epoch of English heroism,
it is as nothing in lasting importance, world-wide significance,
to the Old Road on Mountain Top, trenched out by the west-
ward foot-beat of those who aspired and ventured and endured
—striving to make this Nation the greatest on earth-
Out of Albemarle and up through this Gap, passed George
Rogers Clark on his marvelous march to the Wabash — a march
whose surpassing heroism added four States to the Union and
to civilization.
Through this Gap, and likewise from Albemarle, came Lewis
and Clark on their way to plant our flag upon the Rockies, the
Columbia, and the Pacific.
Greatest of all who toiled up the mountain, passed the Gap
and stopped at the old Tavern, was Jefferson. From Albemarle
he had gone to write the first real defiance to King George; to
break down feudalism in Virginia and foreign tyranny in the
Confederation; to write the statute of religious toleration, and
the Declaration of Independence, to send forth Lewis and Clark
to the unexplored West, and to add a dozen great States to the
Union, in the Louisiana purchase.
In his old age, in his decrepitude, he painfully made his
way from Albemarle to this ruined Tavern on Mountain Top,
and met in conference Madison, Monroe and others of the elcl-
ers in Israel, his purpose being to convince them that his Uni-
versity—the Benjamin of his old age— should be located at
Albemarle.
It was so decided at the conference; and when you go to
Monticello they will show you the spot where the feeble Jef-
ferson, too weak to ride any more, used to sit, glass in hand,
and watch the building of the walls of his great school.
Yes, indeed you can dream dreams at Mountain Top, and
see visions.
Washington, stately and grave, goes by to the Indian wars;
26 PROSE MISCELLANIES
the chiefs who used to stop at Peter Jefferson's for advice, and
to whose pathetic pleas for justice young Thomas used to listen,
passed along this trail to Albemarle; then the day came when
the last Indian warrior stood there, to gaze in despair over the
land he had lost, as the Moorish king looked back upon lost
Granada.
Down yonder, on the green slope, by the scraggy trees and
the group of springs, lie the ruins of the ancient Tavern, and
among them you will mark a large pile of bricks. Sort these
out curiously, and you will find a few which have upon them
the hoof-prints of the dogs which were chasing the deer.
It was in the olden time. The bricks, in the mud state, were
lying spread out in the "yard," the chase went tearing by, the
terror-maddened stag left his tracks on the bricks, and the
hounds left theirs, also.
Here they are, curious mementos; and anothc Keats —
gazing upon those footprints of the deer, which is now a shade;
the pack which chased it, also a shade; and the hunter who
followed the pack, likewise a shade — all gone, save this tablet,
which tells of the lust of pursuit and the agony of flight — could
even match the almost matchless "Ode to a Grecian Urn."
Here, on the ridge commanding the mouth of the pass to
the North, are seven semicircles of earth and rock thrown up
at wide intervals.
What's this? *
When pioneers passed through the gap going out from Vir-
ginia, no redoubts confronted them; only the Indian with his
bow or rifle. Who were they that wanted to come back through
the Gap and were met with guns in the battery?
They were the children of those who had gone fiom the
South to the winning of the West; and, from the conquered
West, they came through the Gap which their fathers had worn
deep in the soil — came to conquer and devastate the South.
Far down there, on the plains at the foot of the mountains,
lies Waynesboro; and, at Waynesboro, Sheridan and Early
fought.
Let your eye range over that wondrous valley; in your
fancy you can fill it with warring armies, dead and dying men,
riderless horses, burning towns, ruined homes. Into many of
those valley cisterns and wells, dead men were flung until the
cistern was full. Many of those gardens over there have trenches
full of soldiers' bones.
And through this famous Gaj) rode and marched the Blue
and the Gray, until that splendid gentleman and soldier. Colonel
C. C. Talliaferro, of Roanoke, carried the flag of })eace from
Lee to Grant, and Appomattox rang the curtain down.
We were sitting on a huge boulder, gazing towards the
PROSE MISCELLANIES 27
Massanutten Mountains, when he said to me, reflectively, look-
ing at the ruins of the old Tavern:
"The last time I was here, was forty-odd years ago. I was
going horseback on a staff duty for ( leneral Lee, to Charlottes-
ville. I rode in at that lower gate yonder, and stopped in front
of the Tavern. I recollect that a number of gentlemen were
sitting on the veranda, drinking mint- juleps. I asked if I could
get something to feed my horse on, and I was told that I couldn't.
There was nothing to feed him on. I had to ride on down to
Afton to get him fed."
After the war, this officer went to school at Lexington; then
he settled in Georgia, became one of my lieutenants in the great
battle for Populism, got enough of that pretty soon, and is
now, like ''the Thane of Cawdor, a prosperous gentleman," who
attends to his own private business, and doesn't care "a conti-
nental d — n" for politics.
Meanwhile, I still dream dreams and see visions; and I
look through and beyond these shadows of the valley, to where
the sunlight catches the far-off tops of the mountains; and
while I know that the distance is too great for me now, and the
climb too much for my strength, yet the course shall be laid
towards it, even though I go alone, and do not reach the heights.
Convalescent
"V/" OU had been a very sick man. For months the elements
of disease had been gathering in your system — you had
vaguely suspected it, and had spoken of it — but had not known
what to do; so you had gone on from week to week, slowly
approaching a crisis. At last some trifling cause, some one-
straw-too-many, had precipitated the inevitable, and had
knocked you over. It might have been a stale "blue point" at
a late dinner, a tainted bit of fish, a salad which angrily re-
sented the wine — it might have been one of a dozen errors in
diet; but, whatever it was, you awoke at midnight to find your-
self in the throes of pain, and with the swiftest possible speed
you stepped down toward the Valley of the Shadow.
Week after week you lay abed, racked with pain. The
frightful cough which shook you almost to the point of ex-
haustion, the shiver of cold and the burning fever, the rheu-
matism which swelled and stiffened every joint — then the lassi-
tude of utter weakness in which you could barely muster strength
to answer necessary questions or to swallow necessary medicine.
It was a toss-up as to whether you would die. You knew
it, and you didn't care.
Of all the phenomena of illness, that surprised you most.
You looked Death in the face, and were not afraid. You sim-
ply didn't care.
Over the mantel was a picture of a schoolboy of twelve
years, — school-book and school-bucket in hand, and a white
wool hat on his head; and in his freckled face the bold, frank,
confident look of robust youth.
During all the years and all the changes, you had cherished
the little picture — a souvenir of days when the world was young
to you, and none of the illusions was lost.
Now that you were so very ill that even She grew pro-
foundly anxious, you looked from the bed, waved a feeble hand
at the little boy over the mantel, and whispered, "You haven't
got much farther to go, little boy."
But for Her, you didn't mind it, at all. She would grieve
— you knew that — and for Her sake you would keep up the
fight; otherwise, it did not at all matter to you whether the
long lane turned or not. For you had reached middle age,
and the illusions were gone. Perhaps yours had been a hard
life — unusually hard. Perhaps, in everything which you had
(28)
PROSE MISCELLANIES 29
undertaken, it had cost you twice as much toil and persistence
to succeed as it had seemed to cost other men.
Perhaps, you had come to realize that you were one of those
men with whom Fortune deals grudgingly, one of those whom
Hope deceives and Success laughs at; one of those who always
has wind and wave against him, and who never by any sort of
chance finds himself in league with Luck.
It may have been that when you were a boy you read too
much, thought more soberly than most boys do, and dreamed
dreams of the future. It may have been the ambition of your
life to work manfully until you could possess a competence and
then, made independent of Poverty, to devote every talent and
energy to the service of your country.
Public life allured you. To be a Tribune of the People,
leading them upward and onward, cheered by their applause,
made happy by the blessings of those whom your life-work
elevated and benefited, seemed to you the noblest task you
could undertake.
To prepare for it, you became a lawyer. In no other pro-
fession could you hope to earn an income so quickly and so
surely. You buried yourself in books. The midnight lamp
never failed to find you at study. Year in and year out, you
worked by day and studied by night.
You began with pitifully small fees. Often you rode all
day, to and from Justices' Courts, to earn the half of five dol-
lars. The entire labor of your first year at the Bar gained you
but two hundred and twelve dollars. You lived in the country,
ate a cold dinner which you had brought to your office with
you, and waited for clients — eager for work.
Year after year passed. So wrapped up were you in study,
labor, anxiety, ambition, that fireside pleasures were almost
unknown to you, and you lost — ah, the sadness of it now! —
the holy joys of home life with your children while they were
still children.
Ten years passed — then three more; and then the goal was
reached. You were safe. You had gained a competence.
Fear of Poverty would trouble you no more.
You closed your office, went before the people, explained the
principles which formed your creed, and asked to be elected as
their Representative in the national councils.
Court-house rings, town cliques, professional wire-pullers
were all against you; but you went into the country precincts,
you spoke to the people in the village streets, at the country
school-grounds, at the crossroad-stores. Wherever fifteen or
twenty would assemble, there you would speak to them.
The politicians laughed at you; but when your opponent
came home from Washington to meet you in debate before the
30
PROSE MISCELLANIES
mass-meetings throughout the district, lo! the people were with
you, and your triumph at the polls was unprecedented in your
State.
Your political party, which in convention after convention
had adopted your platform, suddenly changed front and de-
nounced those principles.
'A PICTURE OF A SCHOOL BOY * *
SCHOOL-DOOK AND SCHOOL-BUCKET
IN HAND."
What were you to do?
You decided that principlcfi were dearer than party, and
you stood by your principles.
The peojilc of your district indorsed you — nine counties out
of eleven giving you overwhelming majorities. In the other
two counties, the swindlers who had charge of the ballot-boxes
simply stuffed them with ballots enough to beat you; and so
the people were robbed of representation.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 31
As to you, the dream of your boyhood was at an end.
The object aimed at, in thirteen years of steady, life-absorb-
ing toil, was forever put beyond your reach.
It was hard, wasn't it?
You tried again, at another election. The result was the
same. Once more you tried. Result, as before. You appealed
to Congress. Both political parties hated you and your creed.
Both voted to bar you out.
You asked for a hearing on the floor of the House. It was
denied you — for the first time in the history of your country.
Then, exhausted and disheartened, you quit the hopeless
contest. Your enemies shouted with great joy, and amid bon-
fires and street parades, you were burned in efligy — a disgraced
and ruined man.
You almost wished that you were dead. How near you
came to losing your reason and your life, in the bitter grief of
that crushing disappointment — She knows — She, only.
Then you shut the world out of your life; buried yourself
to all but the very few; called around you the serene com-
panionship of Great Authors, breathed the atmosphere of the
past; entered into the lives, the hopes, the struggles, the suffer-
ings of the sublime reformers to whose courage and sacrifice
we owe all that makes the world tolerable — all that gives us
liberty of person, of conscience, of speech.
And then, full of the inspiration drawn from the lives of
these grand pioneers of human progress, you reached out for
the long-idle pen, and you wrote.
Ah, how your heart did forget its own troubles, in that work!
You wrote, and wrote, and wrote — many a night till it seemed
that you alone of all the world was awake; the pen all too slow
to follow the burning thought. Many a time, you reeled with
fatigue as you rose from the desk where six hours or eight, of
whose flight you had been unconscious, had sped; many a time,
the page was blotted with tears, and you could not go on.
Always, always, your soul was in the pen, and you wrote no
word that did not come from the heart.
At length the task was finished, and your book (blue-
penciled horribly by a critic who was afterward adjudged a
lunatic) came forth.
What really had you hoped?
Had you dared to believe that the world would be fair to
any book bearing your discredited name?
Had you faintly breathed some pathetic prayer, that the
fierce abuse which had beat upon you as a political leader might
spare your book?
Poor fool, you!
32
PROSE MISCELLANIES
Political hatred, like religious bigotry, never forgets and
never forgives.
The very college professors who had examined your manu-
script for the publishers; and who had, in writing, pronounced
your history "the greatest since Macaulay," caught the conta-
gion of attack; and they assailed you as savagely in the re-
views, as though 3^ou were a cross between Jack Cade and Marat.
Your book was damned — incontinently, successfully, eternally
damned.
THE LOG SCHOOL HOUSE IN SCREVEN CO.. GA.,
WHERE MR. WATSON TAUGHT SCHOOL.
But you nuist needs try again. Perhaps you would liave
better luck next time.
•So once more it was toil at the desk; once more there was
the rapture of composition; once more the long, shining lines
of thought swept before your mental vision, and you were caught
up into and swept away by the ecstacy of creative composition.
Surely the world would be interested this time; sureh^ the
work and the workman would be recognized, appreciated. Not
so. The world had no more of welcome for the second book
than for the first. Yet you tried once more. The third failed
like the second; and a fourth completed the melancholy list.
Then you thought it time to quit, and you quit — swallow-
ing as best you could the bitter pill of failure, and the pangs
of unconditional surrender.
What was left?
Could you try your hand at anything else?
Oh, yes, you could go to work and make more money. And
you did so. It was the only thing you could do. With dis-
PROSE MISCELLANIES 33
gusting facility, you could heap thousand upon thousand. In
the court-house, you could name your own fees; you could
choose your own cases. On the lecture platform, you could
name your own price, and you could earn as much or as little
as you would.
Four or five years passed; and the one thing of which you
had enough was, money.
But the old hunger gnawed at your heart. You were not
happy. You longed to do something worthier of what was best
in your nature. You longed to fight a good fight for justice, for
better laws, for beneficent institutions, for conditions that are
more equitable, for a fairer distribution of the bounties and
blessings of nature and human industry. You scorned the mere
getting of money. You wanted to be useful, to be a power for
good, to be a leader of public opinion, to the end that the best
principles and the best ideals might prevail.
You especially wanted to reach the young; and to lay your
hands gently upon the lines of their thought and conviction, so
that, long after you were gone from earth, you would live, in
the patriotic endeavor of men ivhose efforts for good might be
happier than your own.
So once more you take up the pen.
And it so happens that, in the very midst of this new ambi-
tion and new work, disease strikes j^ou down.
No wonder you grow weary. No wonder you feel indifferent.
The way has been long, and it has been rugged, and at last
you are tired.
You look, just a little contemptuously, in the very face of
Death, and you say in your thought — "I'm sure to be yours
sooner or later; take me now, if you like."
And, to the little boy on the mantel, you lift you eyes and
whisper, with a half-mocking smile, "Not much farther now,
little boy."
Yes; it all depended upon whether the inflammation would
extend. You knew that well enough; and when the nurse ap-
plied hot cloth after hot cloth, hour after hour, for twelve hours,
you knew what it meant. It was a pitched battle between
Death and the nurse.
Well, the nurse won.
The fever and pain stood at bay; the exhausted nurse stag-
gered off to take her rest; and when morning broke, you knew
that you would get well.
Were you glad? Not particularly so. Just what you had
to live for, was not so clear to you as it used to be.
You came back to life without regret, and without enthu-
siasm.
34 PROSE MISCELLANIES
The song of the birds is sweet, but not sweeter than before.
The rustle of the wind in the trees, the breath of the flowers,
the lazy beauty of the distant landscape, the splendor of sum-
mer evening, sunsets, and rising moons — all these are glorious
to you, but not more so than they ever were.
Convalescent? Yes, convalescent. On Her account you are
glad. She would have missed you.
As for the rest of it — the horse is back in the treadmill, and
the dull plodding around the circle goes on as before.
Glimpses Behind the Curtain
(~\P history one may grow tired, but who does not find peren-
^-^nial interest in piquant Memoirs and chatty biographies?
History was ever too stilted to pick up trifles, and yet trifles
are often priceless, for they reveal hidden causes and unlock
the mysteries of events and of character.
History passes along the highway with pageantry, with im-
posing mein, formal stride and orderly procession.
Branching off from this main historical thoroughfare, run
the by-roads, the quiet lanes, the wandering trails of personal
detail, of minor incident, of spicy anecdote, of subordinate epi-
sode that shed vivid sidelights upon that stately narrative which
travels by the highroad.
It may not be true that the course of time turned upon the
length of Cleopatra's nose, or upon the grain of sand in Crom-
well's ureter, as Blaise Paschal surmises; but there can be no
doubt that a very trivial word, or fact, has often the appear-
ance of being a necessary link in the chain of decisive events.
The assassin who sprang upon the wheel of Henry the
Fourth's carriage and thrust a dagger into a fatal spot, cer-
tainly changed the political situation of Europe; and it seems
probable that the train of events which led up to the murder
arose out of the fury of a woman scorned.
The German Empire today is a mighty product of ambi-
tion, ruthless perseverance, and unscrupulous valor; but had not
the sudden death of the great Catherine taken the Russian
armies out of the field, Prussia would perhaps have been parti-
tioned, as Poland was, afterwards.
There was a time when France wavered between Catholi-
cism and Protestantism; and the national faith of the nation
hung upon the decision of one man. The woman who controlled
Francis the First, at this crisis, fixed the destinies of the realm.
And whoever the woman was, she, in turn, was putty in the
hands of a priest.
The Canadian empire was lost to France because Montcalm
could not get supplies. And why could he not get the means
of defense? Because the scarlet woman of a libertine Bourbon
king needed the money. There was not enough in the treasury
for the soldiers and the courtiers, too; and therefore the cour-
tiers, being on the ground, helped themselves, leaving the sol-
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36 PROSE MISCELLANIES
diers to suffer privations and the lack of necessary munitions
of war.
Edward Lacey, of South Carolina, rode eighty miles to warn
the Mountaineer horsemen of the South not to "take the wrong
road; had his horse fallen with him, as he galloped, the warning
might not have been given, and the battle of King's Mountain
not fought. Without that victory, Cornwallis would hardly have
been forced to retreat upon Yorktown.
But our purpose is not so much to show the influence of
small events over large results as to emphasize their signifi-
cance in revealing motive, giving insight into character, and
modifying by personal detail the historical portraits of great
men.
The George Washington of the battle-field, of the council
of war, of the Cabinet, of the parlor, and the public place, is
sufficiently familiar to most Americans; and a grand historical
figure he is; but for my part I could not thoroughly understand
him, or feel that he was human, like the rest of us, if Memoirs
and Biographies had not told us how he "cussed out" Gen. Chas.
Lee on the field of Monmouth, swore at the prankish boy who
was speeding his favorite horse, and broke the gun of the poacher
whom he caught prowling in the Mt. Vernon marsh.
Then when we find him laughing till he cries, as the Brit-
ish officer sang that funny, naughty song, and hear him call
for it to be sung over again, we warm up to him mightily — he
is behaving like a man and not like a demi-god.
Could we ever understand Henry Clay, if we confined our-
selves to historical and partisan biography? What do such
books tell us of the manf Mighty little.
_ A "gentleman gambler" pretty much all of his life, a hard
drinker for many years, profane and over-bearing, from first
to last, yet warm-hearted, gallant, dashing, proud, fearless, and,
withal, a very tricky, selfish, calculating politician, who did his
country a vast deal of harm.
Somebody asked Mrs. Clay if her husband's gambling did
not worry and trouble her.
"Oh, no," said she, "he most alwa^^s wins."
To see Henry Clay in the Senate, is to see personal dignity
personified; go with him to a country dance, and you will hear
him call for a reel, and when the fiddlers do not happen to know
the tune, he will whistle it to them until they learn it.
Stanton in his "Random Recollections" tells this anecdote:
"In the stormy days of John Tyler, while Webster was
Secretary of State, and Rufus Choate was in the Senate, and
Congress was in extra session in the Fall of 1841, the question
PROSE MISCELLANIES 37
of chartering United States bank was shaking the countiy. Mr.
Clay, as chairman of the Finance Committee in the Senate,
was pressing the measure, and Tyler was resisting it. A con-
ference of leading Whig Senators was held. Clay, with lofty
mein, was for waging relentless war on the accidental presi-
dent, who had stepped into the White House over the dead body
of General Harrison. Choate again and again told what Web-
ster thought ought to be done. Clay was restive, and exclaimed,
'Who cares a d — n about what Webster thinks?' "
Henry A. Wise, in his "Seven Decades," gives a graphic de-
scription of the manner in which Clay took the news of his defeat
for the Whig nomination in 1840.
"In the very hour of his defeat he was sitting in a room
at Brown's Hotel, anxiously waiting to hear of his nomination.
He made most singular exhibitions of himself in that moment
of ardent expectancy.
"He was open and exceedingly profane in his denunciation
of the intriguers against his nomination. We had taken two
Whig friends of our district to see him; and after they had
sat some time listening to him, in utter surprise at his remarks,
full of the most impudent, coarse crimination of others, in
words befiitting only a barroom in vulgar broil, of a sudden
he stopped, and turning to the two gentlemen, who were dressed
in black and both strangers to him, he said, 'But, gentlemen, for
aught I know, from your cloth you may be parsons, and shocked
at my words. Let us take a glass of wine!' and rising from his
seat, he walked to a well-loaded side-board, at which, evidently,
he had been imbibing deeply before we entered.
"Thereupon we bowed and took leave. One of the gentle-
men, after retiring, remarked, 'That man can never be my
political idol again;' and from that time to this he has ceased
to admire him. In a short time after that he (Mr. Clay) went
across the avenue to the parlor of his boarding house, where
he awaited the arrival of his two personal friends, on the night
of the nomination at Harrisburg, to bring him the news of the
final proceedings and choice of the Whig Convention.
"We went to the depot and got the intelligence of the nomi-
nation of General Harrison and Mr. Tyler, and hastened back
to him with the news. Such an exhibition we never witnessed
before, and we pray never again to witness such an exhibition
of passion, such a storm of desperation and curses. He rose
from his chair, and, walking backwards and forwards rapidly,
lifting his feet like a horse string-halted in both legs, stamped
his steps upon the floor, exclaiming, 'My friends are not worth
the powder and shot it would take to kill them!' He mentioned
38 PROSE MISCELLANIES
the names of several, invoking upon them the most horrid im-
precations, and then, turning to us, approached rapidly, and
stopping before us, with violent gesture and loud voice, said,
'If there were two Henry Clays, one of them would make the
other President of the United States.' "
******
In the "Memoirs of One Hundred Years," Dr. Edward
Everett Hale labors to remove the impression that Daniel Web-
ster got drunk. In the innocence of his noble heart. Dr. Hale
states that he saw much of Webster, and that he never saw
him drunk.
Alas! he did get drunk, nevertheless. And he had little
idea of honor in financial matters; and it was disgraceful for
him to pocket, annually, the pension contributed by those New
England capitalists whose interests he was furthering in Con-
gress. The Senator who would now openly do such a thing
would be ostracised. Senators still receive pay from the spe-
cial interests which they slavishly serve, but the bribery does
not, nowadays, take the form of a yearly pension.
Ben Perley Poore in his ''Reminiscences" relates:
"An amusing account has been given of an after-dinner
speech by Mr. Webster at a gathering of his political friends,
when he had to be prompted by a friend who sat just behind
him, and gave him successively phrases and topics. The speech
proceeded somewhat after this fashion: Prompter: 'Tariff.'
Webster: 'The tariff, gentlemen, is a subject requiring the pro-
found attention of the statesman. American industry, gentle-
men, must be — (nods a little). Prompter: 'National Debt.'
Webster: 'And, gentlemen, there's the national debt — it should
be paid (loud cheers, which rouse the speaker) ; yes, gentlemen,
it should be paid (cheers), and I'll be hanged if it shan't be
(taking out his pocketbook) ; I'll pay it myself. How much
is it?' This last question was asked of a gentleman near him
with drunken seriousness, and, coupled with the recollection of
the well-known impecuniosity of Webster's pocketbook, it ex-
cited roars of laughter, amidst which the orator sank into his
seat and was soon asleep."
******
Perhaps the vainest, most pompous of all our public men
was Thomas H. Benton. His conceit was colossal. In fact, it
was so majestic and overpowering that, as one of his biogra-
phers says, it assumed the proportion of a national institution.
Mr. Roosevelt wrote a "Life" of Benton in 1886, too soon to
make use of this delicious anecdote which Mrs. Clement C.
Clay relates in her charming book, "A Belle of the Fifties,"
published by'D. Appleton & Co., in 1905:
PRO^E MISCELLANIES 39
"A handsome man in ordinary attire, the great old author
and statesman was yet a more striking figure when mounted.
He rode with a stately dignity, quite unlike the pace indulged
in by some other equestrians of that city and day; a day, it
may be said in passing, when equestrianism was common. Mr.
Benton's appearance and the slow gait of his horse impressed
me as powerful and even majestic, and often (as I remarked
to him at dinner one evening) there flashed through my mind,
as I saw him, a remembrance of Byron's Moorish king as he
rode benignly through the streets of Granada. He seemed grati-
fied at my comparison.
" 'I'm glad you approve of my pace,' he said. 'I ride slowly
because I do not wish to be confounded with postboys and mes-
sengers sent in haste for the surgeon. They may gallop if they
will, but not Senators!"
Oh, heavens! What would the Honorable Tom have thought
of a President (Roosevelt) who rushed away from a Cabinet
meeting to gallop, leap the bars, etc., while the camera man made
snapshots at the Presidential horsemanship?
* * * * * *
That brilliant, outrageous scold, John Randolph, of Roan-
oke, is always interesting, but much more so in the Memoirs
than in the histories. Here is the way Ben Perley Poore de-
scribes him:
"He used to enter the Senate Chamber wearing a pair of
silver spurs, carrying a heavy riding whip, and followed by a
favorite hound, which crouched beneath his desk. He wrote,
and occasionally spoke, in riding gloves, and it was his favorite
gesture to point the long index finger of his right hand at his
opponent as he hurled forth tropes and figures of speech at
him. Every ten or fifteen minutes, while he occupied the floor,
he would exclaim in a low tone: 'Tims, more porter!' and the
assistant doorkeeper would hand him a foaming tumbler of
potent malt liquor, which he would hurriedly drink, and then
proceed with his remarks, often thus drinking three or four
quarts in an afternoon. He was not choice in his selection of
epithets, and as Mr. Calhoun took the ground that he did not
have the power to call a Senator to order, the irate Virginian
pronounced President Adams 'a traitor,' Daniel Webster 'a
vile slanderer,' John Holmes 'a dangerous fool,' and Edward
Livingston 'the most contemptible and degraded of beings, whom
no man ought to touch, unless with a pair of tongs.' One day,
while he was speaking with great freedom of abuse of Mr. Web-
ster, then a member of the House, a Senator informed him in
an undertone that Mrs. Webster was in the gallery. He had
not the delicacy to desist, however, until he had fully emptied
40 PROSE MISCELLANIES
the vials of his wrath. Then he set upon Mr. Speaker Taylor,
and after abusing him soundly he turned sarcastically to the
gentleman who informed him of Mrs. Webster's presence, and
asked, 'Is Mrs. Taylor present also?' "
-:f * * * * *
Do you admire Charles Sumner? He was a great scholar,
a great orator, and the histories do him full justice. If you
would see into the nature of the man, you must dip into Col.
Pond's books, "The Eccentricities of Genius":
"Charles Sumner was an aristocrat. He was my father's
ideal. After I had got back from Kansas, and visited my father's
home in Wisconsin, father said to me: 'James, the Honorable
Charles Sumner is going to speak at R — . We must hear him.'
"So we arranged to go. We walked nine miles to hear him
speak. My father never spoke of him without giving him his
title. He had enjoyed that speech immensely. I do not know
whether I did or not. Father occupied a front seat with the
intention of rushing up to the platform and greeting him by
the hand when he was finished, but the Honorable Charles was
too quick for him. He disappeared, got to his hotel, and no-
body saw him.
"Father said: 'James, the Honorable Charles Sumner is
going to Milwaukee tomorrow morning, and we can ride with
him a part of the way.'
"We were on the train early the next morning, and so was
the Honorable Charles Sumner. He was sitting reading in
the drawing-room car.
"Father stepped up and said: 'The Honorable ;Charles
Sumner? I have read all of your speeches. I feel it is the duty
of every American to take you by the hand. This is my son.
He has just returned from the Kansas conflict.'
"Honorable Charles Sumner did not see father nor his son,
but he saw the porter and said: 'Can you get me a place where
I will be undisturbed?'
"Poor father! His heart was almost broken. During his
last twenty-five years he never referred to the Honorable Charles
Sumner."
******
In the enjoyment of Memoirs and Reminiscences you must
not be lulled into the error of indiscriminate credulity. You
must sort and sift and compare authorities, and thus out of much
conflict of testimony arrive at a just conclusion. For example,
take this story which we find in the Reminiscences of Ben Perley
Poore :
"General Grant was very positive in demanding that all
officers of the Confederate army should enjoy their liberty.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 41
Among those of them who had been imprisoned by order of
the Secretary of War was General Clement C. Clay, an ex-
United States Senator from Alabama. He was taken ill in prison
with asthma, and his wife came to Washington to solicit his
release. She went to President Johnson, and he gave her the
necessary order, which she took to Secretary Stanton. Stanton
read the order, and looked her in the face, tore it up without
a word and pitched it into his waste-basket. The lady rose and
retired without speaking; nor did Stanton speak to her. She
was filled with despair. She saw her husband, in whom her
life was wrapped up, dying in prison, and she was unable to
help him.
Soon afterwards she was advised to call on General Grant,
who ascertained by consulting his roster of the Confederate
Army that her husband was a Brigadier-General, then wrote
an order directing his release, under the Appomattox parole on
giving the required bond, and added: 'I shall see that this order
is carried out.' Having signed the order, he gave it to Mrs.
Clay, who the next day presented it to the Secretary of War.
Mr. Stanton read it, then touched his bell, and when an officer
appeared, handed him the order, saying: 'Have this man dis-
charged.' "
That sounds veracious, and the facts stated do faithfully
illustrate the character of the persons concerned. But the story
is not true. If you will read what Mrs. Clay herself says about
it, in "A Belle of the Fifties," you will learn that the order of
President Johnson was respected, and that she herself tele-
graphed the release to Fortress Monroe that night. General
Clay was liberated even previous to the arrival of the formal
order, and General Grant's powerful aid was not invoked at
all. It is true that Stanton did urge the President to have ex-
President Davis and General Clay put to death, and he would
not countersign the order of release, but he did not tear up the
order. ^ ^ » » * #
Does history tell you anything about the manner in which
the great Marlborough stood behind the chair of the petty
Prussian King, acting as a menial, and protesting that the
honor of doing so was too great for him? No; history is too
dignified to notice trifles like that; and yet this adroit flattery
had a mighty influence upon the course of events. The Prus-
sian King was so captivated by the humility of the English
General that he granted the Englishman's plea for the use of
Prussia's fine tfoops in the war against France!
Can you believe that the Duke of Wellington would have
been equally complaisant to gain his point?
Read what Sir F. H. Doyle says in his "Reminiscences:"
42 PROSE MISCELLANIES
"1 recollect hearing from my father an anecdote told him
by the Duke himself, in his own characteristic language, one
day when he was dining at Apsley House. We learn from it,
with what contemptuous indifference this great man pushed aside
all considerations of personal dignity — false personal dignity, as
he thought it — if they stood in the way of his duty to England.
'After the battle of Talavera,' he said, 'I wanted the Spanish
force to make a movement, and called upon Cuesta to take the
necessary steps, but he demurred. He said, by way of answer,
'For the honor of the Spanish crown I cannot attend to the direc-
tions of the British General, unless the British General go upon
his knees and entreat me to follow his advice.' 'Now,' pro-
ceeded the Duke, 'I wanted the thing done, while as to going
down upon my knees I did not care a two-penny d — ^n, so down
I plumped.' "
******
You know all about Martin Luther, don't you? The his-
tories are full of him and his great work, the Reformation,
But if you would know the mental state of Luther, and that
of the leading men of his time, you should read his ''Table
Talk." One or two paragraphs will go far toward showing you
the vast difference between the current beliefs among learned
men of that day, and ours:
"There was at Nieuburg a magician named Wildferer, who,
one day, swallowed a countryman, with his horse and cart. A
few hours afterwards, man, horse, and cart, were all found in
the slough, some miles off. I heard, too, of a seeming monk
who asked a wagoner that was taking some hay to market, how
much he would charge to let him eat his fill of hay? The man
said, a kreutzer, whereupon the monk set to work and had
nearly devoured the whole load, when the wagoner drove him
off."
August 25, 1538, the conversation fell upon witches who
spoil milk, eggs and butter in farmyards. Dr. Luther said:
"I should have compassion on these witches; I would burn all
of them. We read in the old law that the priests threw the first
stone at such malefactors. 'Tis said this stolen butter turns
rancid, and falls to the ground when anyone goes to eat it."
Dr. Luther discoursed at length concerning witchcraft and
charms. He said that his mother had to undergo infinite an-
noyance from one of her neighbors, who was a witch, and wliom
she was fain to conciliate with all sorts of attentions; for this
witch could throw a charm upon children, which made them cry
themselves to death. A pastor having punished her for some
knavery, she cast a spell upon liim by means of some earth
upon which he had walked and which she bewitched. The poor
PROSE MISCELLANIES 43
man hereupon fell sick of a malady which no remedy could
remove, and shortly afterwards died.
******
Of course, you have read Boswell's Johnson, or Macaulay's
famous Essay, but here is an anecdote which illustrates the
learned Doctor and his times so perfectly that it is worth pres-
ervation. It is found in Rae's "Wilkes, Sheridan and Fox."
"The King's early aversion to Fox was intensified after the
latter became the champion of Dissenters. In those days the
intolerance of Churchmen towards their fellow-Protestants, who
conscientiously differed from them in particular opinions, was
alike extraordinary and discreditable. It was glorified in as a
species of loyalty. The forms under which it appeared were
innumerable. This is one witnessed by Lord Eldon during a
visit to Oxford: 'I had a walk in New Inn Hall garden, with
Dr. Johnson, Sir Robert Chambers, and some other gentlemen.
Sir Robert was gathering snails, and throwing them over the
wall into his neighbor's garden. The Doctor reproached him
very roughly, and stated to him that this was unmannerly and
unneighborly. 'Sir,' said Sir Robert, 'my neighbor is a Dis-
senter.' 'Oh,' said the Doctor, 'if so, Chambers, toss away, toss
away, as hard as you can.' "
******
Sometimes when you would like to study a really great
speech — you who see so many in print that are not great —
turn to Henry Grattan's speech on Tithes. Few English ora-
tions equal this and none surpass it in the perfect mastering
of the subject. Grattan was gifted with a higher order of in-
tellect, culture and oratory than any of the Irish tribunes, and
in character he soared above them all. Unselfish, consecrated
to his country, he was altogether a higher type than Curran,
and more heroic than O'Connell.
For many years he was prince of orators in the British Par-
liament, after having been the bright particular star of the
Parliament of Ireland.
This much, the histories will tell you; but if you would
know how it all ended, you must go down the lane to Memoirs.
"The old statesman lingered upon the stage too long, and
one night when he rose in his place and addressed 'Mr. Speaker!'
he rambled in his speech, grew tiresome, and lost the ear of the
House. Members began to cough. In Parliament the tiresome
orator is 'coughed down.'
"As the coughing grew in volume, old Grattan stopped. His
face fell and his voice changed. He said to the Speaker, 'I be-
lieve, sir, they are right,' and sat down."
We find this touching incident in Crabbe Robinson's "Diary."
Not Quite
I^EVER shall this pen, or any other, put into words the full
■'• ^ glory of the message.
No artist's brush ever conveyed to canvass the painter's fair-
est dream.
No chisel ever made perfect in marble the vision as it ap-
peared to the sculptor's brain.
Musician! — were they not beyond the power of your eager
hands to catch and hold — those diviner harmonies that lifted
your soul to the seventh heaven?
Orator! — did tongue or spoken word ever give to the en-
tranced hearer those strains of unuttered eloquence that stirred
your very soul in the solitude of your room in the hush of the
night?
Not quite is the Work equal to the Conception: always there
remains something unattainable.
Strive as we may, something escapes us.
One day a friend of Thorwalsden, dropping into the Sculp-
tor's studio, found him sad. Asked what was the cause of his
melancholy, Thorwalsden replied:
"My genius is gone. Heretofore, when I tried to work out
a Conception, the statue was never up to the Ideal. But now
this statue of Christ, which I have just finished, satisfies me,
and I know that I shall never have another great Conception."
Oh, if it were but possible for one to dwell alivays in those
upper regions of pure thoughts and noble aspirations!
I care nothing for Butler's Analogy, nor any other ponder-
ous book which strives to prove, by external evidence, that there
is a God.
What better proof do I want that somewhere, in some form,
there lives a power which sends thrills of happiness through me
— emotions that shake every fibre of my being, as the breezes
shake the aspen leaves — when I have done a good deed?
Don't try, from without, to convince me that there is a
Supreme Being, of some sort, who will in some mysterious waj''
sift the Right from the Wrong, the True from the False.
There is nothing in the outside order of things that will
make out your case. You are born into the world, as other
animals are; you live or you die, as other animals live or die;
and Nature — remorseless, inscrutable, irresistible monster that
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 45
she is! — takes no more account of the best man on earth than
of the worst.
Nature executes the Law; woe unto you if you violate it!
Nature has no ear for the plea of the weak, no heart to be
touched by human misery.
Nature slays a million human beings with Famine, Pesti-
lence, Earthquakes, Sea-storms, freezing blasts of winter — as
remorselessly as she kills germs, flies and gnats.
Listen :
A few years ago, a little girl lay in the agonies of menin-
gitis at Bellevue Hospital, New York.
The doctor was so keenly anxious about her, so bravely de-
voted to his task of saving her life if he could, that he hung
over her bedside night and day.
At length, the crisis was safely met and the little girl com-
menced her journey back to health.
Overflowing with gratitude and joy, the little thing clasped
her arms about the doctor's neck and kissed him.
And the embrace cost him his life.
For in her impulsive hug, her almost hysterical delight, the
little girl's finger-nail gave the doctor a slight scratch on the
neck.
Blood-poisoning set in, and, as the little girl came back to
light and life, the heroic doctor was on his way down the Valley
of the Shadow of Death.
If Nature had a heart that was softer than granite, would
she ever let a thing like that come to pass?
Such things happen at every tick of the clock.
Nature doesn't care.
Nature draws no distinction between the assassin and his
victim; none between the beggar and the millionaire; none be-
tween the negro rapist and the white girl struggling, frantically
and vainly, to escape a fate worse than death.
Nature looks on, with eyes that see nothing; Nature works
on, with ears that hear nothing.
Therefore, you search in vain the outside world to find your
proofs that a Supreme Being, of Beneficent intent, exists.
If you cannot prove it from within, you are lost.
And if you cannot prove it by that feeling of content, of
joy, of happiness that glows within you after you have said the
Good Word, after you have done the Good Deed — you cannot
prove it at all.
No matter how much Faith you may have, you haven't any
other proof.
Not quite can the painter's art transfer to canvas the beauti-
ful scene which dwells in his mind.
46 PROSE MISCELLANIES
Then, whence came that beauty which is too perfect to be
reproduced by human skill?
Not quite can the great composer put into melodious notes
those harmonies that enrapture his soul.
Then, whence came those harmonies, those celestial airs which
inspired, yet somewhat eluded, the divine genius of Handel and
Beethoven and Schubert and Mozart?
Not quite can the speaker or writer catch and cage, in spoken
or written word, those sublime thoughts which came into his
solitude, when all the outer world was still, and lifted his soul
into a higher, purer, lovelier, diviner world.
Then, whence came those thoughts which carried him to the
mountain top, and bade him look down upon all the world below?
From within comes the conviction that there must be sonie-
where a loftier life that we poor, imperfect creatures can live;
and that somewhere there is perfect Beauty, perfect Melody,
perfect Truth, and perfect Good.
From some better world, must come these better things.
Some day, it may be that the Angel of Beauty, which has
so long inspired the artist, will whisper to him, "Put the brush
away. Turn the canvas to the wall. Come with me." And that
which is best in him will be glad to go.
Some day, it may be that the Spirit of Music, which has
been the companion soul of the composer, will say, "Sister spirit!
Come away." And the twin souls will seek together the world
in which there is no discordant sound.
Some night, the radiant thought that visits me here in my
solitude, may say to me:
"It is finished — Come." And that which is best in me will
be glad to go.
How I Game to Write a Life
of Napoleon
The Hon. John Lawson Burnett of Gadsden, Ala., has for
several terms represented the Seventh District in Congress. He
is a Democrat. _ , , , , .
The month of August, 1907, found Mr. Burnett trav^^mrn
Europe. From London, England, under date of August 20 the
Alabama Congressman wrote a letter to the editor of the Gadsden
Daily Times-News. mi u
After telling of Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam, The Hague,
and Antwerp, Mr. Burnett proceeds as follows:
"From Antwerp we went to Brussels, the beautiful capital
of Belgium, where we stayed a couple of days. Near here the
battle of Waterloo, ivhich sealed the destiny of Napoleon was
fought. This brings up another school boy speech that 1 used
to recite :
" 'There was a sound of revelry by night.
And Belgium's capital was gathered there,' etc.
"This was the ball which luas going on at Brussels when the
battle began which sent Napoleon an exile to St. Helena, and
changed the whole history of Europe. We visited the celebrated
battlefield. A magnificent harvest of wheat was being gathered
in the very fields which were watered by the best blood of Eu-
rope The English have erected an immense monument there,
capped by a large figure of the BHtish lion. This is ascended
by 226 steps. You know I am fat and short-winded, and I started
up, having no idea of going to the top. But the scene was so
inspiring, and the air so exhilarating that I kept on till 1 got
to the top As I stood there and gazed over the ground lohich
once resounded to the tramp of the greatest armies that Europe
ever saw, I could but join in the question asked by Tom Watson
of Georgia, 'What would have happened if Napoleon had won/
"By the way, that reminds me that I went into a book store
in Paris the other day and asked for the best history of Napo-
leon which they had in English, and they handed me Tom Wat-
son's I luas rather proud of this compliment to our distinguished
Southern author, for, although I do not agree with Mr. Watson
in some things, I regard him as one of the best writers m America.
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48 PROSE MISCELLANIES
But this is another digression. I vicked up a few gravels from
Waterloo because I had just received a letter Jrom a young lady
in my district, asking me to bring her a pebble from the ocean
or some other little souvenir of my trip to Europe. So I thought
she might appreciate one of these.
"From Brussels we went to Paris, the most immortal city in
the ivorld. Here I will leave you till next iveek. Your friend,
"JOHN L. BURNETT."
— Extract from published letter of Congressman John L. Bur-
nett, of Gadsden, Alabama. Date August 20, 1907. London,
England.
npHE prolific novelist, F. Marion Crawford, came to Augusta,
Georgia, some years ago, and lectured on the subject, "How
I came to write 'Mr. Isaacs.' " By the audience, it was considered
a mighty poor lecture. Not many present had ever heard of
"Mr. Isaacs," and even these few cared nothing about how
Mr. Crawford came to write the book. The novel, to them,
was just a novel, and it was nothing more. Therefore, when
Mr. Crawford spent an hour regaling the house with an account
of the way in which "Mr. Isaacs" happened to happen, his
hearers were dreadfully bored. Since that time Augusta, Georgia,
has called for lecturers from all quarters of the earth, but she
has never wanted any more of F. Marion Crawford. Once was
a plenty.
It has always seemed to me a striking proof of how a man
can make a huge mistake about his own rating, or the rating of
his books, that so sensible a person as F. Marion Crawford should
have assumed that an average lecture-hall audience would care
two straws about how he came to write "Mr. Isaacs."
If it had been Chales Reade, explaining how he came to write
"The Cloister and the Hearth," that would have made a dif-
erence.
Of course, I ought to take warning by what happened to
F. Marion — but who pays any heed to warnings? Does the
burnt child dread the fire until after he gets blistered? No, in-
deed. Each of us quits playing with edged tools after we get
cut — not before.
The negro who tearfully assured his boss that he had been
"sorry 'bout stealing dem chickens — -eber since I got cotched,"
came much nearer a universal truth than he could have supposed.
So, with reckless disregard of what befell F. Marion Craw-
ford, when he took it into his head that the people of Augusta
would reflect cheerfully over the entrance fee of one dollar apiece
when they were given, in return, a full explanation of how a
PROSE MISCELLANIES
49
novelist came to write a novel — I am going to stumble headlong
into the same mistake; after which I will know better than to
do it again.
The one decided advantage which I have over F. Marion
Crawford, in presuming to tell how one of my books came to
"WHEN HE WROTE PRIZE ESSAYS. WHICH DID NOT TAKE PRIZES,
* * * I WAS IN SYMPATHY WITH HIM."
be written, is that no one has to pay a dollar to read or listen.
It seems to me that there never was a time when Napoleon
was not a part of my life and my thought. Before I knew any-
thing of George Washington, I knew as much of Bonaparte as
the Reverend John S. C. Abbott could tell me. At the time I
first read the bulky volumes of the hero-worshiping author,
the books were almost as heavy as I was; and I knew no better
than to devour that marvelous romance, with all of a boy's eager
delight and unquestioning faith. The Reverend Mr. Abbott
50 PROSE MISCELLANIES
may have staggered the wise, but he did not stagger me. I
believed it all. Had another boy, not appreciably larger than my-
self, scouted the unalloyed goodness of Napoleon, the unsullied
virtue of Josephine, and the unrelieved depravity of Napoleon's
foes, there would have ensued immediately a small but interest-
ing case of assault and battery.
The day when my grandfather gave me the Abbott volumes
was an epoch in my life. I was thrilled with joy and pride.
How easily I could paint the picture of that little incident if
I were an artist. My grandfather — tall, venerable, imposing,
stricken already with palsy, and muttering something to me as
he handed me down the books from the tall, yellow desk, sur-
mounted by book shelves, earnestly muttering and mumbling
words which I tried my best to understand, but could not.
Leaning heavily upon his silver-headed cane, he looked
steadily down at me, apparently repeating time after time what
he wished to say, until I glanced timidly toward my grandmother,
who sat quietly knitting by the fireside; and she came to my
relief by telling me what my grandfather had said. How the
scene all comes back, clear in every detail, though the mists of
forty-one years have gathered about it. I then was only nine
years old, "going on ten."
Not a man of many books was my grandfather. A slave-
holder of the old Southern regime, his energies had gone out
to practical affairs, and his heart was set upon his broad acres,
well filled barns, his flock, his herds, his big, fat mules, his well
clothed, well fed, well housed, earnestly worked slaves. He had
fought the battle of life in the neighborhood, where his ancestors,
from the earliest Colonial times, had fought it; and he had won
it, even as they had done. Not greatly ambitious, they were
satisfied if they kept "even with the world," and abreast of their
prosperous neighbors; and this meant that they owned good
farms, a comfortable supply of negroes and other chattels, owed
money to nobody and could lend a friend a few hundred dollars
now and then, or lose that much, "without feeling it," on a
horse race, a cock fight, or a friendly game of cards.
In the book called "Bethany," I endeavored to picture this
old plantation life, just as it was. Never on earth did negroes
talk as those elegant colored gentlemen and ladies hold forth
in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or Opie Reed's "My Young Master."
The negro there pictured, bears the same resemblance to the
real negro that the Indian of Cooper's novels bears to the real
Indian. Even Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page
have looked from the very best point of view upon the very
best type of the race, until they have evolved an ethereal slave
who was all kindness, intelligence, fidelity, gratitude, humor, hu-
PROSE MISCELLANIES
51
mility, and pathetic fondness for his white master. No such
negro ever lived. Folks of that type may be plentiful in heaven;
they do not exist on earth.
My grandfather prided himself on the fine appearance of
his slaves. They were treated well, upon the same principle
that the horses were amply fed. It was to his interest to do
it and he did it. None of them was neglected in sickness, or
old age; none was severely whipped; all were made to do a fair
day's work; and all of them were better fed, better clothed and
NAPOLEON
better housed than they have ever been since. The overseer
punished no slave without my grandfather's approval, and that
was rarely given. There was no occasion for barbarity, and
there was none. "Old Marster" was feared, honored and liked
by every negro on the place. In the eyes of them all, he was
a greater man than the President. His word was law. There was
no feverish hurry about that old plantation. The clock did not
tick more regularly on the mantel than did the workmen move
about their tasks. All was steady, all was quiet, all was regular.
Day followed day with respectable monotony; and each found
its task done in order, without haste and without rest. You
might have set your watch by the blowing of the dinner horn
at "Squire Long-Tom Watson's." The very mules knew when
52 PROSE MISCELLANIES
it ought to blow, and had it not blown at the proper time, there
would have been the indignant bray (whicker) of protest which
the faithful creature gives when the time to "take out" arrives,
and no signal from horn or bell is heard.
Through the dim distance between now and then — through
the mists of the forty-one years — I see it all clearly; I hear it
all distinctly. The old farm hangs like a picture on the walls
of the Past, and I see the overseer on his horse, the slaves going
to work, the fat, sleek mules going down the long furrow, the
great oxen drawing the wagon; the Old Marster coming slowly,
leaning on his cane, to enter the buggy for his daily drive to
town. The patter of the feet of the sheep on the leaves under
the big trees is in my ears; and from the meadow by the creek
comes the tinkle of the cowbell. The blue jay is still at his old
tricks in the big oaks, and his yodle comes just in time to re-
move the doubt that it is a hawk that sounded his strident
scream. The pigeons whirl 'twixt me and the sun, as they did
in the olden time; and the song of the mocking-bird misses no
moonlight night of spring. Sir Crow goes flopping along the
distant cornfields, just as he used to do; and the whistle of the
partridge still calls for "Bob White." And when it all comes
back to me, I think that life in the South can never be again
what it was in 1860; and that had the Abolitionists known the
facts, they would have been content to go about Emancipation
in the same spirit that actuated their brethren in England.
The day comes when my grandfather passes away, just after
the Civil War was well over; and he never knew that the old
regime was gone. "Old Marster" was laid out in the parlor, and
the slaves, not knowing that they were free, came up to "the
big house," crept in on tip-toe, took a last look at the pallid
face, and stole away, awe-struck — and talking very low. I was
there and listened in terror to the solemn funeral sermon which
was preached in the parlor; and I crouched close to my father,
not daring to speak to him, for he was in a passion of tears, his
stalwart frame bent, and shaken with sobs.
Then came the day when all the slaves were called up to
"the big house," to be told that they were free. It was not the
first time they had heard of it. The rumor had circulated; the
fact was fairly known; but as yet it had not been formally an-
nounced by "the boss." In a few words, awkwardly enough, no
doubt, my father spoke to the assembled negroes, telling them
that they were free. Whatever they understood it to mean, he
knew well enough what it meant to him. It was a loss of some
sixty thousand dollars, the end of a system in which he had been
reared, and a leap in the dark towards a new order of which
he knew nothing. It was very hard. He had not been responsible
PROSE MISCELLANIES
53
for the institution of slavery which, for political and selfish
reasons, all sections of the Union had once supported, and which,
for political and selfish reasons, had now been swept away, after
four years of ruinous Civil War. He had found it here just as
he had found other institutions, and had considered slavery as
he considered taxes, penitentiaries, government distilleries and
Congressional legislation — things established and not to be ques-
■WHEN HE SNATCHED THE COLORS AT
LODI. » * • AND WON THE
TRIUMPH."
tioned. Being just an average man, my father felt the blow
which swept away his fortune; and his talk to the emancipated
negroes had none of the high-flown sentiment which such an
orator as Gladstone indulged in, after he had pocketed the enorm-
ous sum which England paid him for his father's former slaves.
Emancipation having been announced one day, not a negro
remained on the place the next. The fine old homestead was
deserted. Every house in ''the quarter" was empty. The first
impulse of freedom had carried the last one of the blacks to
town. In a short while they got tired and hungry; some came
54 PROSE MISCELLANIES
back, some settled on other places, and the old place was never
the same again.
Years came and went; the new system and my father never
got on well together. Losses followed losses. Cotton fell in
price with ruinous tumbles. Why? Well, I mustn't go into
that. It would be venturing upon the hot ashes of political dis-
pute. I only dare to mention the fact that the men, who finance
the world were destroying the paper currency by the hundred
millions, and that as the volume of money became less, the price
of cotton became less.
At last came the "Panic of 1873," and when the smoke
cleared from that financial Waterloo, my father was one of
those who was stretched upon the field.
Let the ardently ambitious son struggle ever so hard to hold
his place at college, he could not do it. In a few months the
effort had to be given up. With heavy heart, with suffering
which no one else saw, he turned away from a chosen course,
closed the books, quit the classes, and went forth into the world,
at eighteen, to make his own way. Perhaps he could earn money
by teaching a school, and thus go back to college! So he hoped,
but it could never be done!
A country school teacher, a lawyer of modest beginnings, a
hard worker from my youth up, I had, in 1895, reached middle
life, and was at length able to indulge a life-long fondness for
literature. Besides, I had been thrown out of a political career,
by criminal methods which I was powerless to withstand; and it
was necessary to find some congenial labor which would occupy
the time and divert my thoughts from what I then considered
an overwhelming misfortune.
From the days when I first yielded to the spell of the im-
aginary Napoleon of Abbott, down to the present hour, my
craving for books has led me far and wide, but I have found
no subject which has fascinated me so constantly as that of
Napoleon. My estimate of him was varied, but my interest
never flagged. There is nothing which has been told of him,
good or bad, which does not find my desire to know, as eager
as ever. I will read any reasonable amount of trashy comment
to get a new fact. I can even go patiently through the labyrinth
of lies told by Fouche, Barras, Metternich and Talleyrand, if
I light upon solid ground, now and then. Even such liars as
they are compelled by human infirmity to stumble into the truth
sometimes.
No soldier that followed where the eagles flew ever served
longer under the marvelous leader than I have done. To repel
the slanderer, to refute calumny, to restore distorted facts to
their just relation to the man and the times, to seek the fixed
PR08E MISCELLANIES
55
motive which underlay isolated deeds, to study the trend of
the current of purpose, regardless of the bubbles on the surface,
the whirling eddies, and the crooks and bends in the onward
rush of the stream ; to view the man and his work as a whole ; to
note what the European systems were before he came, and after-
wards; to fathom his ideals, and learn from the unfinished
sketch what was in his mind; to charge up to his account every
fault and vice and crime, and uhen to enter upon the credit
"DESERTED" AT ELBA
side of the ledger the unremitting toil and the magnificent
achievement — this has been my rule in dealing with Napoleon.
Partisans of aristocracy in all countries hated him and lied
about him while he lived. They hate him and lie about him
now. Apparently the ruling caste in Great Britain still con-
sider it necessary to hire pamphleteers and alleged historians
to write against a militant Democrat who did his utmost to lay
the broad, deep foundations of good government, and to build
uponj it a temple of opportunity whose every golden door should
always be open, and from within whose blessed portals should
peal forth the invitation, "Whosoever will, let him come."
56 PRO&E MISCELLANIES
Always Napoleon has had a friend in me. When the rich
boys made fun of him at college, my own little fist would double
up, ready to help him fight. When he wrote prize essays which
did not take prizes, and composed histories which publishers
were afraid to touch — I was in sympathy with the disappointed
author. When he went hungry, in order that his last penny
might be laid out in buying a book, I understood. When he
snatched the colors at Lodi and made the dash for the bridge,
and won the triumph which first put it into his head that he
might take decisive part in public affairs, I intuitively knew
his thought. When he went to Egypt, when he made himself
Consul, when he put away Josephine, when he took the Austrian
wife, when he yearned for a son who might inherit his splendor
and perpetuate his name, when he over-stretched the bow, went
too far, took counsel of his pride, and fell, as Lucifer fell — I
sympathized with him all along, for it was all so human. In
his reverses, I suffered. When his bosom friends deserted him,
when his old schoolmates betrayed him, when those to whom
he had never refused a favor, turned on him and rended him,
I was in grief, even as he was. "Berthier, don't leave me. I
have need of consolation." So pleaded vainly the prostrate
Napoleon at Fontainebleau, beseeching Berthier not to join the
deserters — Berthier, his bosom friend, his pet, the favorite upon
whom had been showered every gift of imperial bounty.
And Waterloo — ah, Waterloo tears me all to pieces, just as
Gettysburg does. The positive suffering which I have to en-
dure in reading of those two calamities to the human race, is
something you could not imagine. I shrink from those two
subjects as a heretic must have shrunk from the torture-cham-
ber. The heretic knew what was in there; and his flesh must
have quivered and his bones ached, as he approached the room
of horrors. Even so, I shun Gettysburg and Waterloo, the two
great calamities of the Nineteenth Century.
As a boy and as a man, my heart was with the captive at
St Helena. When the English Governor nags at him, when
the lion is teased and fretted by the mean and tyrannical keeper,
when they won't forward the books sent to him by friends in
Europe, when they detain the portrait of his boy, when they
open the letters of his mother and sisters and brothers, when they
refuse to allow him to be addressed as "Napoleon," when they
deny him the comforts necessary to his age and infirmities,
when they put such humiliating conditions upon his taking
exercise that his self-respect will not allow him to take it, when
he tried to interest himself in gardening, when he fights all his
battles over again, when he stands out upon the jutting rock
of the cliffs, and gazes silently toward France — France which
PROSE MISCELLANIES
57
will one day bring him home to the lordliest tomb in all this
earth, amid the thunder of cannon and the trickle of a nation's
tears — he never fails to command my profound interest and
admiration.
I felt, as a boy, what I know, as a man, that he was crushed
by the combination of Kings, because of the principles for which
he stood — those principles being of deadly hostility to Absolutism,
Divine Right, and Class-rule.
THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON
And it SO happened that, in my mature manhood, I recurred
to the study which thrilled me in my youth. In the volume
which embodies the result of the reading of a liftetime, I en-
deavored to tell the truth about Napoleon — not as a partisan,
but as a student who has never tired of him, and who considers
him the most terribly attractive figure history presents.
Had I not been cast out of Congress by the ballot-box stuffers;
had the poor, ignorant negroes not been voted against me, ten
and twenty times apiece, by rich, educated white gentlemen;
had dead men and fictitious men not been registered, in order
that bribed voters might vote those names, I might have re-
mained in public life, and might have worked out my well-
considered plan for a grand political alliance of the West and
South against New England class-rule.
But, since the casting out was an accomplished fact, the
58 PROSE MISCELLANIES
necessity Avas upon the Disinherited to do something better than
brooding over the loss of the Estate.
Out of this necessity came first, "The Story of France," and
then the "Napoleon."
So it is that adversity may be good for us, and the diet of
bitter herbs a blessing in disguise.
At Fifty
npHIS is Las Olas — he called it so in the indulgence of that
-*■ fondness for giving pet names to those things which one
especially loves. He had already grown old when he chanced
upon this spot^r-old and rich — and the joyousness of boyhood
had come back to him, and he found pleasure in nature and his
fellowman.
Peace to his memory! he was as golden-hearted a gentle-
man as ever took a wage-earner by the hand, and called him
brother.
After him I came; and after me will come another — and so
runs the world away.
A narrow spur of land, stretching out from inlet to inlet,
forming a ribbon-like island, closed in upon the east by the
Atlantic and on the west by the streams that drain the Ever-
glades — ^such is the place. Ages and ages ago the wash of the
ocean, met by the wash of the rivers, banked up a ridge of
sand; and upon this sand nature, in the long run of the years,
planted a jungle; and in the tangled mazes of the jungle the
deer tramped a trail, the wildcat found a lair, the raccoon
made a home, the cougar crouched for squirrels and the rattle-
snakes multiplied. Water-fowl of all kinds whirled and screamed
as they flew from feeding ground to roosting place; and the
red-bird, the wren and the mocker were never more plentiful
or musical than here.
The ships, in stately procession, pass down from North to
South; over yonder on the distant horizon you can see the smoke,
or the masts, of those that follow the Gulf Stream from the
South to the North. Here, on the one hand, is the great world
and the ocean ; on the other, the inland route — by lake and sound
and river — where traffic flows in safer ways and no storm besets
the sailor.
Sit here on the wall of the boathouse and gaze southward.
A lovelier stretch of water the world does not hold — for the tide
is still on and everything is water. A fringe of forest bounding
the view southward, a thread of brilliant blue marking the spear-
thrust which the ocean makes into the brown bosom of the river,
the tossing foam which shows where the billows from the sea
charge home upon the distant "beach ; and, over all, the mellow
radiance of the sunny afternoon — for the tide is ebbing now, and
the sun is going down.
(59)
60 PROSE MISCELLANIES
All that the ocean could do this time has been done — for-
evermore. The outgoing currents drove back the lake and the
river, mounting over them both, marching mile after mile land-
ward, conquering mile after mile of reluctant ground — but the
invader could go so far and no farther, and he is now sullenly
drawing back into the sea.
Great monsters of the deep followed the invading waters, as
they rolled towards the Everglades, and many a tragedy that
was veiled by the water would make you shudder at its story,
if the victim could speak of its cruel fate — but the monsters
are drifting seaward now, and their battle of life moves to
another field.
If you glance over the island you will see that the air is
white with butterflies. There are countless thousands of them.
They do not fly from flower to flower, some one way and some
another, hovering aimlessly or lighting idly here and there —
as we dwellers of the up-country have been accustomed to see
them do. These butterflies are drifting all in one direction; these
butterflies have no mind to stop; these butterflies neither linger
nor hover nor dawdle; these butterflies go drifting from North
to South, as though they had been called by some mysterious
voice, were fastened to some mysterious purpose, and were the
helpless instruments of some mysterious Fate.
All day long the^ have been flying by, over the jungle, over
the beach, over the lake, over the Sound, over the River —
obeying some unheard order, following some unseen leader, an-
swering some unfathomable design.
I wonder what it will all be like when the last tide has rolled
backward to the sea, and its monsters come forth no more — for
I am fifty years old, and it is the time of the ebbing tide and
the declining sun, with me.
I wonder whether those creations of the mind, which some
of us have thought important, are, after all, as aimless and as
fragile and as ephemeral as these butterflies which go streaming
past, leaving no trace on earth, or sea, or sky — for I am fifty,
and I should like to know whether all this effort of heart and
mind leaves the world brighter and better; or whether we are
just so many butterflies which Yesterady did not know, and
Tomorrow will forget.
There is, at least, this much at Las Olas, and at fifty:
If one needs rest from turmoil and strife, one can have it.
If Hope does not come to us as often as she used to do, Resig-
nation comes oftener, and stays longer. If Disappointment
brings as bitter a cup as she ever did, we have at least learned
that we need not drink every time we are tempted by Desire.
If ambition is as false a traitor as he ever was, we at least know
PROSE MISCELLANIES 61
that Duty is a certain guide. If Fame has mocked us with
treacherous flatteries, she has treated us no worse than she has
treated others; and we can at least quit following and be content
with the approval of the Voice Within.
If the road has been rocky and the march has been marked
with the blood of one's feet, we can at least reflect that the
soldier always finds it so, and that the end of our campaign can-
not be far away.
Thus after all, one learns philosophy at the best of schools
— Actual Life.
Who would be a drone in the hive? Who would be a de-
serter from the fight? Shall trumpets call strong men to the
fields of human effort, and I play dastard? Shall flags float
by, with brave soldiers marching forth to the service of Duty,
and I play the Coward?
Never, by the splendor of God!
Better the march and the struggle, and the heart-break of
failure, than the selfish refusal to try! Better the battle, the
good fight and the defeat, than the craven lurking in the rear.
Of all the worthless, despicable creatures under the sun is
the man who can only eat, sleep, propagate and rot; the venom-
ous coward who hates other men because they have been bold
where he was timid, strong where he was weak, loyal where he
was false.
Of all things contemptible, is the man who follows, with the
hungry eyes of jealous rage and hate, the bigger, loftier men
who marched while he hung back, toiled where he looked on,
fought while he ran away.
Give me the man who will live and die for his ideals, who
will surrender no righteous position without a struggle, who will
perish rather than pollute his soul by apostasy from Right!
Better- — a thousand times better — the tempest and the ship-
wreck with such a creed, than inglorious decay at the wharf,
with any other. Better a Waterloo and a glorious death in the
squares of the Old Guard, than worldly pensions and honors
for base betrayal of cause and country.
So I thought at twenty. So I think at fifty. I have the
scars to show for it. And, like any other soldier of the wars,
I am proud of them.
Let the tide ebb — it must be so ; let the daylight fade, it must
be so — but this much any poor mortal can do, and should do:
.Hold aloft, to the very last, the banner of your creed; fight for
it as long as you can stand; and when you go down, let it be
possible for you to say to those who love you: "Lay a sword on
my coffin; for I, also, was a soldier in the great struggle for hu-
manity."
Eccentricities of Nervous People
"VIT" ASN'T it Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, who said
'* that the mental dullness of a man could be measured by the
amount of noise he could endure without protest? Did he not
practically contend that nobody but a very stupid person could
be insensible to annoyance of dog-barking, cock-crowing, calf-
lowing, piano-thumping, and similar afflictions?
Possibly the old philosopher was feeling out of sorts and
cross, when he went to the extreme above mentioned. Napoleon
could sleep on the battlefield: and surely Napoleon was not a
dull man. Burns composed his best poem during a ride in a
thunder-storm — and in Scotland a thunder-clap makes noise.
Sir Walter Scott wrote his best books while workmen of all kinds
were building him a great, new house; and the sound of hammer
and saw and chisel is generally considered a tribulation.
So it must be, that the suffering from noise does not neces-
sarily imply lofty intellect; nor does the fact that the well-fed
citizen sleeps soundly all night, while his neighbor's dog is im-
partially saluting each star in the heavens with the same monot-
onous yelp, raise any presumption against the integrity of the
mental machine of said somnolent citizen.
It isn't so much a question of brains, as of nerves.
Julius Caesar could not hear a rooster crow, without shudder-
ing; but it isn't every fellow w4io shudders when the rooster
crows, that has the head of a Caesar.
DeQuincy would fall into an agony of pain when the pea-
cock opened up in tuneful numbers; but it isn't every objector
to pea-fowl yells that could write "The Household Wreck," or
"The Flight of a Tartar Tribe."
Carlyle, when in Scotland, fretted and fumed because the
roosters broke upon his meditations; and in London, he com-
plained bitterly of the piano next door; but it isn't every one
who finds fault with pianos and chickens that could produce
"Sartor Resartus" and "The French Revolution."
I have my own idea about a man who is not at all put out
by the long-continued lowing of a calf, or a cow; but I dare
not express that opinion. It would lose me the good-will of
hundreds of people who no more mind the lowing of a cow than
they do the fifteen-minute solo of the factory whistle, or the
practice-lesson of a boy aspiring to a place in the brass band.
The royal stag may be king of a boundless range of forest,
(62)
PRORE MISCELLANIES 63
but he is powerless to escape the vermin that burrow between his
horns — pestering him every day of his life. Looking out upon
the waters of the ocean, you will see the great sword-fish, a ter-
ror of the deep, spring into the air and give himself a convulsive
shake; he is trying to throw off the tiny fish, which are to him
what the barnacles are to a ship.
It is much the same in human life. While Hercules struggles
with the monster, the little crab nibbles his toe. The small things
vex, where the large things would but rouse you to exertion. Many
trifling annoyances, coming at once, or in quick succession, drive
you to a frenzy; when, if they had all been concentrated in one
trouble, your fortitude would have steadied the boat.
DeMorny, the half-brother of the Emperor Louis Napoleon,
was a very great man; he put the stupid Louis Napoleon upon
the throne and kept him there while he lived; yet with all his
power, DeMorny did not know how to escape the nuisance of a
flute-player whose room was in earshot of the Duke's palace.
The first Napoleon detested and dreaded three smaller men
— Fouche, Talleyrand, and Bernadotte; yet, with all continental
Europe at his feet, this greatest of men did not know how to rid
himself of three deadly enemies who were apparently in his
power.
Similarly, afflicted, the English King, Henry the Second, cried
out in a burst of impotent rage, "Will nobody deliver me of this
pestiferous Monk?" — and three zealous courtiers went straight-
way to the church and slew the Monk with their swords; where-
upon Thomas Becket, the factious Monk, becomes "Saint
Thomas of Canterbury"; and the proud King goes penitentially
to the tomb and gets upon his knees, lays bare his royal back,
and is retributively scourged by surviving monks.
So it seems that, in striving to get free from little aggrava-
tions, we may easily run into big troubles.
The antlered stag may roam ever so fast and far, but the
parasite still burrows into his head. The sword-fish may spring
ever so often and so high, but, in spite of all his convulsive
shakes, some of the tiny fish will hang on.
So with us, the small vexations are inseparable from life;
and perhaps if we could remove this one, and that one, and the
other one, we might become intolerably exacting; and we might
complain, as the spoiled Grecian did, when a crumpled leaf, on
his couch of roses, broke the complete sweetness of his rest.
Nothing so soon unbalances a man as a perpetual annoy-
ance, which nags at him every day of his life. The irritation
will become a serious inroad upon the comfort to which he is
entitled in his home.
The raindrop wears away the rock; and many a man who
64 PROSE MISCELLANIES
ought to have gone joyously to take his place in the march and
the battle of important effort, has been worn into peevish, in-
active discontent by the constant drip of trivial aggravations.
That mysterious Wallenstein, of the Thirty Years' War, who
was almost a match for "the Great Adolphus" himself, was un-
ruffled while cannon boomed and swords clashed, but he could
not bear the rattle of a spur, dragging at the heels of the wearer.
Nor could he endure the barking of dogs. To have peace in his
home, in Prague, he bought all the surrounding property.
The philosopher Kant moved away from a pleasant home,
to escape the nuisance of a crowing cock on the adjoining place.
Rather than have his life worried out of him by pin-pricks
and flea-bites, it is better that each of us should do in our small
way what Wallenstein found it necessary to do. If we cannot
buy a place big enough to afford a quiet center for our study or
work, we can do what Immanuel Kant did — move out and let
the chicken crow to the fellow who doesn't mind it.
Why should a man waste his strength in struggles where the
game isn't worth the candle? As we grow in wisdom, we hus-
band our resources for nobler purpose.
Consider the case of Daniel Webster and the rooster, at the
Country Fair.
Who was grander than Daniel Webster, on a great subject
and a great occasion? No man that ever lived. Yet when he
attended the County Fair and got up to make a hum-drum
speech, the big rooster in one of the coops began to crow- — ^think-
ing about the prize, maybe— and the "god-like Daniel" gave up
the unequal contest. No speech from Webster that day.
To rise in the Senate and hurl Jovian thunderbolts at Hayne
or Calhoun, was worth his while; but to speak at a County Fair,
against a noisy and self-assertive rooster! — no wonder Webster
gave it up, and sat down.
Dream Children
T ONG ago, Charles Lamb wrote an essay on "Dream Chil-
^-^ dren." He had known what it was to be tenderly attached
to a good woman, whom he could not wed. Always poor, bur-
dened ^vith the duty of caring for a sister who was more or less
insane, the gentle recluse went his way, in mournful resignation,
leaving his lady-love to become the wife of another, and more
fortunate, man. But Lamb never escaped "the quiet sense of
something lost." Affectionate in disposition, upright and pure
in character, the domestic circle would have been to Charles
Lamb an Eden of endless bliss. So it was that, in his later years,
he brooded over what "might have been"; called around his knee
the children of his fancy; and upon these, the ethereal creations
of his brain, bestowed the caresses which actual children never
came to enjoy.
In the imagination of Lamb, the dream children are those
that are longed for; or those that should have come and did not.
But these are not the only ones that might be called "Dream
Children."
Charles Dickens was referring to the other class, in "Little
Dorritt," when Mr. Meagles, who had lost one of his daughters
in her childhood, speaks of the dead child, as growing up by the
side of her surviving sister.
Yes, the children which should have come and did not, are
Dream Babies, but so, also, are those which should have stayed
with us, after they came — and did not.
These seemed to die, and to the world they are dead — forever
lost. A narrow ridge in the church-yard, a tablet, with a name
and date — that is all. But, to the grief-racked parents, the child
is not altogether dead. In that Dreamland which is as much
a part of us as the visible world itself, the child lives! it comes
back to us now and then; reminds us of every little word and
caress; and wrings our hearts, once more, with infinite pain.
In "Little Dorritt," Charles Dickens fancies that the dead
child grows apace with its sister, becoming taller as she grows
taller, older as she grows older.
It is not so at all. The great novelist, whose soul sympa-
thized with every living creature, made one of his few mistakes,
in dealing with the Dream Children.
They do not change. Time halted at their grave: no more
could he take, or give. What they were, the day they died, they
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66 PRO&E MISCELLANIES
remain. Children they were, when Death hushed their lips and
froze their little hands, — children they are, in Dreamland.
The tracks that were all about the yard, on the dreadful day
when sickness seized her, were still there when you came back
from the funeral,^ — the tracks of a child at play: and while the
merciful wind and rain and the passing of other feet, soon hid
these tiny footprints, the tracks that she would now make if she
could leave the borders of Dreamland, would still fit the little
shoes that are laid away.
You sometimes hear her voice, some time when the day is
done, and the Spirit of Silence has locked a slumbering world;
and the voice is that which you heard when she climbed upon
your knee, and laid one hand to one cheek, saying, "This side.
Mama's," lending the other to your kiss.
No, they do not grow up, along with the surviving children,
— no, indeed! Carved upon memory by the stern hand of Grief,
their little figures are as immortally young, as the marble chil-
dren following the motionless procession upon a Grecian frieze.
You do not place her, in your fancy, beside the young people
in the ball-room, or on the tennis ground, or even in the school.
No: she is too young to be there. She would not be in her proper
place. Nor is she apt to join the other children, even of her own
age, in the morning, or at mid-day.
No: she comes in the quiet, melancholy afternoon, when the
shadows are growing longer, when the hurly-burly of the day is
done. Then, if there should be any little children playing about
in the yard, or lingering on the lawn, she will come.
You will see her with playmates of her own age; you may
fancy her voice mingling with theirs: once more, comes the
holiest and sweetest of all melodies, her laughter of the years
gone by.
Your other children grow up, pass out of the home, are
swallowed up in the great big world. But the Dream Children
never leave you.
There is a plaintive Scotch song whose burden is the sweet-
heart's answer to her pleading lover,
"I must not leave the old folks yet, we'd better bide a wee."
But the Dream Children are yet more inseparable from the
home and parental love: they abide with you evermore.
To the living we sometimes feel like saying, "Oh that we
could keep you just as you are, — always a child, always inno-
cent, always free from care and sin and suffering."
The Dream Children are so — they only. They never pass be-
yond the place where sleep soothes every disappointment, cures
every wound, hushes every sob, dries every tear.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 67
Eternally young, eternally pure, she is yours yet, — a child,
as she was the day you closed her eyes.
Upon every Christmas Eve, she comes into the stillness of
the library; and she hangs her little stocking up in the fireplace
just as she used to do. The other children learned the secret
of Santa Claus long ago; and they quit hanging up their stock-
ings on Christmas Eve. But she never learned the secret: she
will never learn it, now; and in Dreamland she still loves Santa
Claus. So it is— she comes softly into the library, every Christ-
mas Eve, and hangs up the little stocking, just as she did in
those days when you did not know how much soul-anguish quiv-
ered in the voice that was heard in Ramah.
In you and in me, the conflict goes on, forever, between
the evil spirit and the good. Today the Evil Genius takes pos-
session of us, and we sin. Then the good angel gains the upper
hand, and we repent bitterly what we did yesterday- — and we
do good tomorrow. When the Angel of our better self is with
us, the sunshine is brighter, the song of the bird is sweeter, the
faces of friends reflect our happiness, the home circle glows with
joyous animation, and our souls expand to embrace all mankind.
When the Evil Genius comes, it is another world that we
are in; and we are different beings. The malign Pontiff of the
invisible papacy has put all nature and all nations under a
blighting Interdict.
Joy flees, laughter dies away, the East wind blows; the
clouds are leaden and low; we have no friends; home yields no
happiness; life is not worth living.
Who has not experienced this? Happy the man who has
not. But thrice happy the man who, being the victim of such
a curse, will try, and try, and try again, to break the spell of
this tremendous Excommunication.
And the Dream Children?
They also dare not cross the dead-line of the Interdict. On
the dreadful day of Excommunication, they also avoid us. In
the death-struggles of fierce and ruthless passions, they have no
place. They can only come when the Evil One has been thrown
out. But when the spell has passed, when the heavens smile
again, then the Lost One comes; then she sits upon the knee
again; then her head nestles against the breast again; and once
more is heard the old-time music of her voice, as she puts a
little hand to one of her cheeks, and says, "This side, Mama's."
The other you may kiss — as you yield to the infantile imperial-
ism, which reserves a realm sacred to her mother.
The Oddities of the Great
TS IT a fact, that men of genius are more apt to be eccentric
-'- than average mortals who are not so gifted? Or is it that
nobody cares to notice the peculiarities of the obscure, while
a hero-worshiping world fastens greedy eyes upon the small-
est detail which illustrates the manner of man that a genius
happens to be?
The grouchy old Thomas Carlyle declared, most unreason-
ably, that Harriet Martinau's description of Daniel Webster's
manner of lounging before the fireplace, with his hands in his
pockets, was worth more than all the books which that indus-
trious blue-stocking had written, on history, biography, political
economy, and what-not.
The surly sneer is undeserved, of course, but it illuminates
the human appetite for details about great men. Carlyle put
upon paper his own impression of Webster, after having been
in "the great expounder's" company, and a most masterly por-
traiture it is — "Steam engine in breeches," and so forth.
If you thought it worth your while to make a study of the
comparatively unimportant individual who owns the adjoin-
ing farm, or who keeps the fruit store, or who presides over
the Justice's Court, or who represents the railroad at the ticket-
window, or who assigns your room at the hotel, or who takes
your fare on the cars, you would probably find him just as full
of a sense of individuality as any of the Great: and his daily
life, his home habits, his little personal peculiarities, are just as
marked as were those of the more conspicuous mortals who pos-
sessed genius.
Nevertheless, we are not going to pester ourselves to gather
facts concerning the queerness, the eccentricity, the meanness,
and odd freaks of intellect which characterize the anonymous
Toms, Dicks and Harrys: what we do want to know, is the whole
story, every detail, concerning the lofty men who dominate our
hero-worshiping souls.
Did Jones, who owns the adjoining farm, cut a large hole
in the door of the house for the use of the cat, and a small one
for the kitten? We don't know, and we don't care. But if Sir
Isaac Newton does a thing like that, — behold the bug in amber!
Literature will tell the tale, to the remotest posterity .
Suppose a miscellaneous city dude hires a horse and buggy,
takes his gum-chewing Mary Lou to ride, and is confronted with
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 69
an emergency which requires that he unharness the horse, —
and he doesn't know how. The fact does not even attract the
attention of the rural correspondent of the country paper, as
does the largest turnip, the earliest watermelon, and the goings
and comings of the local John Henrys and Susan Anns.
But how different it is with Coleridge and Wordsworth!
Those mighty monarchs of the realms of rhyme come driving
home, find the hired man absent from the post of duty, and
fatuously undertake to strip the gear off, all by themselves.
The poets progress famously until they try to remove the collar.
In those days the collar did not buckle and unbuckle, as now.
It was a continuous ring of leather. The two poets could not
get it over the horse's head. In vain they pulled and pushed.
No go. They then fell back to get a good view of the horse.
Was he sick? had his head swollen since the collar was put on?
Manifestly something unusual had happened. It was the same
collar and the same horse; yet, the collar, which had gone over
the horse's head, was too small to come off.
The two poets gravely and anxiously discussed the matter,
and made another earnest effort to remove the collar. Nothing
doing. Happily the servant-girl caught sight of the puzzled
philosophers, and went to the rescue. Turning the big end of
the collar upward, she passed it over the horse's head, and sailed
off triumphantly, full of pride and the exultant sense of super-
iority. In her eyes the men who didn't have sense enough to
unharness a horse, were mighty sorry creatures, even though they
had written "The Ancient Mariner," and "The Excursion."
The visitor who found Shelley climbing a picket-fence, every
time he left or entered the yard of the Italian villa he had rented
— the owner having left the gate locked — was vastly amused at
the poet's simplicity.
"Why don't you break the lock, and use the gateway?"
asked the sagacious visitor.
"Bless my soul, I never thought of that!" said Shelley, im-
mensely relieved at the idea of not having to climb the picket
fence again.
Can you doubt that the visitor went away pluming himself
upon his advantage over the radiant intellect of whose marvelous
fruitage are the "Adonais," the "Cloud," and the "Ode to the
Nightingale"?
If Shakespeare had any peculiarities, we don't know it: he
is so rounded-out, symmetrical, and perfectly healthy as to be
almost impersonal. So I would speak of Goethe, were it not
for his cold brutalities to the women whom he fascinated.
But, with these two exceptions, it is almost impossible to
name a single literary genius whose eccentricities were not con-
70 PUOSE MISCELLANIES
spicuous. You will dispute this, and remind me that Sir Walter
Scott's was a heart of gold, his mind eminently sane and free
of the morbid. But you would be wrong — terribly wrong. Deep
down in the soul of Sir Walter, there was that unmanliness which
crouches and cringes. It is a hard thing to say of him who wrote
the "Young Lochinvar," "Marmion," and the battle-song in
"The Lady of the Lake," but it is a true saying. Had Sir Walter
treasured, as a sacred heirloom, some cups which had touched
the lips of William Wallace, or of Robert Bruce, or of that mag-
nificent brute, Richard the Lion-hearted, we could understand
him, and respect him for it; but when we see him catch up and
put in his pocket, to carry home and keep as a holy relic, a glass
whose wine had been guzzled by George the Fourth, that most
putrid of all putrid Kings, a gust of scorn and contempt sweeps
over us. Why? We see the crouching of the courtier to the office
of King. We see that, after all, Sir Walter's was the soul of
the lackey. The cringing to power and wealth and militarism,
saturates all his books. A Tory to the very bottom of his heart,
he hates a rebel, as constituted authority always does. Upon
the Dissenter, in religion and in politics, he empties the phials
of his uttermost derision, — doing his level best to make him ludi-
crous and despicable. "Submit yourselves to those in power;
bend your necks to Kings and Popes; believe that every wrong
is right, if you found it established when you came into the
world" — that is the message of Sir Walter's books, and it has
done enormous harm.
The oddities of Carlyle would of themselves fill a lengthy
chapter. The crowing rooster bothered him grievously; the
lowing cow was not his favorite music; the dog that sat in one
place and barked 1,000,000 times found no favor in his sight;
and the piano banger next door sometimes got notes, which were
not on her scale. Poor old philosopher, telling all mankind how
to live, and be good and happy, and raving like a madman most
of the time, himself. Discovering after marriage that he had no
business marrying, he humanly went to work to make both him-
self and the unfortunate wife wretched. Caught in a similar
predicament, John Ruskin gave his wife away — to the painter
Millais, who had made her, and a fine lot of children ideally
happy.
Apparently, no other man sought to win Mrs. Carlyle, and
she was left to the life which caused her to say, in the anguish
of her hungry, tortured soul, "I feel as if I were the keeper of
a private madhouse."
Lamartine says, "Genius bears within itself a principle of
destruction, of death, of madness."
This is unquestionably true — a very terrible fact. Such men
PROSE MISCELLANIES 71
as Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Alfieri, Dante, Swift, Tennyson,
Poe, Lander, were assuredly nonsane, if judged by ordinary
standards. There was an unbalance of faculties, a lack of mental
symmetry and poise.
What a motley procession it is — that of the great men of
English literature! There is burly, surly, overbearing Doctor
Johnson, with his drawing-room amenities — such as "I perceive.
Sir, that you are a vile Whig!" and his catching hold of the
hands of one of the company, to prevent gesticulation during the
conversation; and his stopping in the street to pick up orange-
peel, for some mysterious, undiscoverable purpose; and his touch-
ing the lamp-post regularly, as he walked along; and his swal-
lowing, without a wink, the absurd story about the Cocklane
Ghost, and his compiling a dictionary, in which he scornfully de-
fines a pension as "the bribe taken by a traitor for the betrayal
of his country," and then accepting a pension for himself.
There is poor Chattertcn, starving in his garret; and Henry
Fielding reeling toward home after midnight, drunk as a lord.
There is Dr. Smollett, poor as a church mouse, writing master-
pieces of realistic fiction, that have delighted millions and made
fortunes for publishers and book-sellers.
There is the Satanic figure of Dean Swift, hating the whole
human race, venting his impotent rage in torrents of bitter ob-
scenities — incidentally breaking the hearts of the only two fel-
low-beings that ever loved him.
There is Pope, the little cripple, who is so bright and so
ready to sting; who has to be sewed up in a sack every morn-
ing, and put to bed like a child at night; and who threatens to
spite the unappreciative age in which he lives by writing no more
poetry.
There is Oliver Goldsmith, the sweetest spirit that ever
touched the chords of human feeling; and there is Sheridan, who,
when arrested one night for maudlin drunkenness, and asked his
name, answered thickly, "Wilberforce" — that being the eminently
respectable name of England's pioneer Prohibitionist.
Yes, and here is her ladyship, Mary Wortly Montague, high-
born dame of brilliant wit, known as the introducer into Europe
of the extremely dubious vaccination practice; and whose high
breeding once manifested itself in a rather famous repartee.
Some daring person having ventured to remark to the Lady
Mary that her hands were dirty, that courageous patrician re-
torted, daintily, "You ought to see my feet!"
And there is Southey, tearing along the road of that haggard
existence of his, composing monumental epics, which nobody
reads, and throwing off a few lyrics, and one biography, which
are classics, and immortal.
72 PROSE MISCELLANIES
And let us sigh for Keats, the sensitive. Did he really creep
to bed, turn his face to the wall, and grieve himself to death,
because an immensely inferior man had made fun of his poems?
I hope not. His work has so wondrous a quality, it is painful
to believe that he was so structurally weak. How much finer
Byron was, when the same Quarterly Review ridiculed his ridic-
ulous early poems. Instead of going to bed, my Lord Byron
gulps down a few bumpers of wine, seizes his gray goose quill,
and goes after the whole tribe of English and Scotch reviewers,
putting some of them to bed. In fact, Byron hadn't written a
line that was worth while until then. The lash of the reviewer
aroused him.
Much of what the poets write is unintelligible. Perhaps
they, themselves, understood it, but that is doubtful. Don't you
get the idea that Goethe lost his way in the latter part of Faust?
Does Coleridge always make his meaning knowable? Are you
quite sure that Poe and Browning knew what they were trying
to say, all the time?
We live in a land where Walt Whitman has many warm
admirers. Let me close by quoting a few lines from the inspired
Walt. The devotees will doubtless unravel the poet's meaning;
but a lunacy commission would be justified in hesitating, a long
while, before deciding that such writing is not evidence of mental
aberration:
"Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch
or am touched from;
The scent of these armpits, ar.oma finer than prayer:
This head more than churches. Bibles and all creeds.
If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread
of my own body, or any part of it."
Bubbles on the Stream
np HE day is drowsy: insects by the million make their sub-
-*■ duced, silvery music in the fallow field: louder sounds have,
somehow, gone into the distance: infinite quietude falls upon
nature, and upon you.
Intensely green is our much-scorned but marvelously beauti-
ful, short-leaf pine, luxuriant of plumage, endless in variety and
grace of symmetry; and against its serried ranks of unbroken
green stands the yellowing poplar, and the sweet-gum turning
to bronze. Notice how the vine of the poison-oak wreaths its
scarlet ribbons through the maple and the pine; see it run, like
streams of blood, down the tree.
You drink in the scene, as a Bacchanal would sip the nectar
of the gods; and then you stroll down to the creek, and rest
on the rock, by the little cascade.
You fall to watching the bubbles.
The surface is covered with them, always; but no combina-
tion, however cunningly arranged, can remain so.
Not for an instant.
The bubbles form, the bubbles break, the bubbles re-form,
and again they break. Always, there are the bubbles, but never
there, to stay, are the bubbles at which you gaze. Always com-
ing, they are always going; always combining, they as quickly
dissolve.
Bubbles of Yesterday- — where are they? Bubbles of Tomor-
row — what will they be?
The stream is eternal, like the hills: bubbles come, bubbles
go, but the stream sings the old, old Song of the Brook.
Is there any symbol of life more complete, more striking,
than we have here in these bubbles on the stream?
Consider the family — can its relations be made to endure?
It is different today from what it was yesterday — different in
its own members, different in its touch with the outer world.
Even your own little household, is a group of bubbles on the
ever-running stream of life.
Where are those who sat around the hearth in the years gone
by?
Where will tomorrow leave those who sit around it now?
The stream will flow on, to its appointed purpose in the un-
fathomable plan of the Master; but the bubbles — ah, they come
and they go.
73)
74
PRO^E MISCELLANIES
Even as we clasp the hand, it is cold. Even as we kiss the
cheek, it fades.
Then consider that larger circle — your friends. See the bub-
bles change. Yesterday your enemies were your friends: To-
morrow your friends will be your enemies. No tie can fasten
these human hearts of ours. Gratitude is a dream. Loyalty is
the unattainable. Under the feet of Selfishness, of Envy, of
THE STREAM ETERNAL AS THE HILLS
Jealousy, the ennobling affections are trampled with remorseless
tread. No fair Italia, of kind offices and gentle words, can stay
the ruthless march of Attila and the Huns. So it is that the
circle of friends is just as a larger group of bubbles on the pool,
ever changing, never staying, ever combining, now falling away,
now coming together again. Alas, the heart-break of it!
Then look again, and contemplate the larger stream of town-
life, of State-life, of national relationship, of world-wide alliances.
What are these but vaster collections of bubbles on the
stream?
You hear people say, "Politics make strange bed-fellows."
PROSE MISCELLANIES 75
It means that the bubbles have changed. They had tu. It
is the law of nature.
In the commercial world, in the domain of religion, in all
industrial callings — everywhere we look, we see the l)ubbles
breaking, and the bubbles forming. Nothing endures. Each
great nation is not only composed of ever-changing bubbles —
each a scene of perpetual breakings up and re-alignments — but
the family of nations is never the same, for a single year. They
change their attitude toward each other while you look. Friendly
today, any two of the Powers may be at war tomorrow.
Poor mortals that we arc! Each bubble of us fondly believes
that he has come to stay.
And we never can bring ourselves to realize that, in the
immeasurable dimensions of the Universe, we are no more than
bubbles on the stream.
"Down and out!" laughs the cold stream, as it hurries away
with the breaking bubbles.
"Down and out!" is what the epitaph means, whether writ-
ten on the monument which defies Time, or briefly traced in the
memory of the few who knew when the bubble disappeared.
A Rose on the Snow
"p\ ID you ever snatch a day from the dusty world of strife,
■■-^ and carry it with you to the great, silent woods of Indian
Summer?
Did you ever take by the hand the sweet, patient wife who
loves you so, and say unto her, "Sweetheart, will you walk with
me today?"
If you never have, then a rich old glass of the nectar of the
gods stands neglected within your reach — nectar as free to the
peasant as to the King.
Very quietly we went, we two, my sweetheart and I, taking
our way along the path, then across the falling leaves — saying
little.
The sounds of travel on the road were left far behind, and
we were alone, she and I, in the majestic forest.
How gorgeous it was ! The dress-parade of nature was never
more brilliant, nor more alluring. The red Sugarberry put its
battle-flag on every summit. The golden Maple walked hand in
hand with the Red Elm; and, underneath, crowded the Dog-
wood and the Sassafrass in serried skirmish-line.
Saul-like, towered the Pine, over blazing yellow Hickory,
over purple heads of Oaks.
And the falling leaves — how they drifted, dazzling snow-
flakes of rainbow hue from the skies that held no cloud- — drifting,
here against a rock; drifting, yonder against a bank; falling
straight, or falling aslant — but falling, falling, and making upon
the ground a carpet, deep and soft and matchless.
We walked upon it very slowly, looking about us and paus-
ing to listen now and then. A squirrel was gathering nuts, just
above us. How silly it w^as of him to break away, leaping fran-
tically from limb to limb to reach his cozy home! He was in
no danger, for we had no cruelty in our hearts that day — surely
none, that day. ^
The sap-sucker and the yellow-hammer were busy on decay-
ing limbs, and the tattoo which they beat with their long bills
rang metalically down the woods.
A covey of partridges, sunning themselves, got almost un-
der our feet before, with a great flutter, they rose and whirled
away — my sweetheart clapping her little hands with pleasure
as they went
Over ledge after ledge of rocks between two steep hills, heav-
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 77
ily wooded, dashed a little stream, from the spring, far up the
slope.
Was ever music sweeter? We said we did not think so; and
as we noted the record of the water-path on the rocks, and
counted how long, how very long, that little stream must have
been cleaving its way down to the gray rocks whereon we sat,
we caught some idea how old, how very old, it all was; and I
wondered if a Red Man had stood there, beside the dusky damsel
he loved; and which furrow on the granite the slender rill was
running in, when Helen of Troy was young, and when chained
thousands, beneath a tyrant's lash, were hewing the stone for
the Pyramids.
No wonder that in this idle dreaming my sweetheart got
away from me, unnoted, and went further down the glen. She
soon called me to see her feed the fishes — silver-sided fishes by
the score, which came to her scattered crumbs almost as if they
knew her.
And so we strolled from rock to rock, and tree to tree —
each more splendidly aglow with the colors of Indian Summer
than the other.
It was all quiet — very grand, very lovely, very saddening.
Boisterous laughter in these regal woods had been sacrilege.
Light thoughts, beneath those falling leaves, had been criminal.
In the sound of these speeding waters over the old gray rocks,
bad passions hid themselves, and kindness was in the mind
and in the heart.
The rude, busy world seemed far away — and forgotten. Its
cares, its toils, its strife, its aspirations were all behind and away.
We were alone, my wife and I, and our thoughts like our
hands, were joined together. We did not speak overmuch. There
was no need.
What need had I to tell her how my thoughts had gone back
to the time when a nameless, homeless suitor found grace in
her sight?
There was no need. She knew — she well knew.
What need for her to say that amid all shortcomings, I had
given her the knowledge of fervent loyalty, of unbounded de-
votion which never wearied in its utterance, or its proofs?
There was no need; I knew it well.
What need of either to speak of these things?
None.
And ah, what need was there for us to speak of that which
always makes the lip tremble and the very soul cry out, in
boundless grief.
There was no need. I knew that the tiny footsteps of one
who shall never walk again, followed her all along those woods.
78 PROSE MISCELLANIES
I knew that the clear, joyous little voice sang in every song of
the water. I knew that down every glade of the murmuring
trees, there came the whispered question to her as to me, "Shall
she ever be ours again?"
And I had only to look into her sad face to know, that the
question was not answered unto her any more than it was unto
me.
And so I took her hand and led her from the woods — kissing
her queenly lips many a time, and bearing her up the steeps
with my arm.
As we went to our home, the long red lances of sunlight
fell over the brown fields and the evening came in upon us, radi-
ant and warm.
When the moon silvered the treetops that night, it looked
into many a happy home, I trust, but into none had it followed
man or woman who had more deeply drank from the splendors
of the day.
Oh, friend and brother, leave your plow some day; leave
your mill some day ; leave your bank some day ; leave your office
some day, and in God's magnificent forest, commune with Him
and with yourself — your past, your present, and your future.
Your life must be a bleak snowdrift indeed, if such a day
does not lay a rose upon it.
Reverie and Suggestion
/CHRISTMAS is in the air. You cun feel it in tiic night-
^-^ time, when you hear the chickens wierdly crow, as they do
not at any other season.
You can feel it in the daytime, as you note the loosening of
the close-fitting harness of business and social form; as you
listen to the ring of the small voices of the children, who step
more briskly down the street and cluster in more hilarious
groups; as you see the tendency of Man to throw off the light
costume of restraint and civilization, and to let slip, once more,
the lustful inclination of the original savage.
Yes, there's a feeling of Christmas in the air. What sort of
a feeling does that put into your heart, my brother? Does it
melt you to think of the dim years when you were a bright little
boy, and when you tip-toed into the parlor at daybreak, to see
what Santa Claus had put into your stocking?
Long before the sun thought of getting up, you were up —
you and your little sister — -and into the half-dark parlor you
went, almost in fear as well as in hope, for the white stockings
hanging stiffly there in the fireplace seemed the least bit ghostly.
In that gray dawn, how happy you were to empty the stock-
ing and find that, by some mysterious chance, Santa Claus had
brought you just what you wanted. Since then, has purer joy
ever filled your soul? Has life given you sweeter moments?
No; the exquisite enjoyment of that early morning is some-
thing that Providence never gave to you, again.
Do you remember the vague pain that smote you when you
had grown large enough to be told that there was no such Be-
nevolent Friend of all the little children, as Santa Claus?
What was the next great event and happiness of your life?
It was when the sweetheart to whom you had been awk-
wardly, timidly, making love, let you "cut out" all the other
boys, and walk home with her.
Weren't you proud? And wasn't she pretty?
Those clear, pure eyes; those rosy cheeks; those smiling lips;
that wealth of glossy hair; those pearly teeth — heavens! how
you worshiped her.
Would you have swapped places with a King that day, when
she first accepted your invitation to a buggy ride?
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80 PROSE MISCELLANIES
When she came close to you and pinned the hyacinth or the
violet to your coat-lapel, your heart beat pit-a-pat, and you
held your breath till the dainty boutonniere was fixed.
And when you had worn the flower till it was wilted, you
reverently laid it away in some book — ^didn't you? And you
have them yet — nor is there gold enough in all the world to buy
those faded flowers!
After ever so long a time, as you thought — ages, it seemed
to your impatience — she said, "Yes"- — and let you kiss her.
Wasn't that a glorious night?
You walked on air as you went back to your home, didn't
you?
You were in such a state of happy exhilaration that you
couldn't sleep.
Are you ashamed to admit that deep down in your heart
was a tender thankfulness to the God who had blessed you with
the love of so good a woman?
Ah, well — you were married to her, and you two began the
upward struggle together.
How hard the climb of the hill! What labor there was;
what disappointments; what days of bleak despondency; what
nights of black despair.
In that terrible climb of the hill, did you neglect your wife?
Did you fail of that tender consideration which was her due?
Did you sometimes bring your clouded face and sour mind
to the fireside, and morosely impose your own sufferings upon
her?
Were those sweet lips made to tremble in mute pain? Those
fond eyes to shed secret tears?
Happy the husband who can say, "I never did. Wretch that
I am — / can not."
After a while, children came to you. Then were renewed
delights of Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning. To settle
upon what should be bought for the children's stockings; to
smuggle these selections into the house; to watch the little ones
hang up their stockings; to hear their guesses and speculations
as to what Santa Claus would bring; to listen to the naive, "I
hope Santa Claus will bring me" so and so; and then after they
had cuddled down and were sound asleep — do you remember
how you and your wife went back into the room where the
stockings hung? There was pleasure in it — and yet, there was
sadness, too.
It was late in the night when you were acting Santa Claus
for the little ones, and it was a time for sober thoughts.
Would next Christmas Eve find all the stockings hung?
Would three merry voices mingle in the hubbub over the
PROSE MISCELLANIES 81
gifts of Santa Claus, and would three happy little faces shine
as they came running to you, with: "See what Santa Claus
brought me?"
Or, upon next Christmas Eve, would you be sitting alone by
the dying fire, racked with a pain that would never, never lose
its power to torture — because upon this Christmas Eve there
were but twof
The years pass, pass, pass — and now you arc on the Western
slope of the hill. The wife who climbed the hill with you is still
at your side. No matter who else failed you, she did not. No
matter who else found fault with you, she never did. If she ever
spoke to you unkindly, and served you reluctantly, or fell short
of perfect wifely devotion, you did not realize it.
How can you reward your noble wife? Will you not prove
to her that you appreciate her? Will you not bring to her that
splendid loyalty, which a proud woman prizes more highly than
a miser prizes gold?
In word, in thought, in deed, will you not be as true to her,
as she has been to you?
Will you not prove by unfailing tenderness with which you
minister to her happiness, now, the depth of your remorse for
your shortcomings in those early years?
Will you not call back the spirit of the days of your court-
ship, and be as proud of her kiss, just as happy to take her to
your arms, as on that glorious night when she promised to be
yours, and yielded her queenly lips to your kiss?
But perhaps you are of another sort. Perhaps you think
all this silly. Maybe the softening touch of Christmas-time
softens nothing in you. I pray God it may not be so.
For your sake, as well as your wife's, listen: The only hu-
man being that you can count on to stand by you, in spite of "the
world, the flesh, and the devil," is your wife.
Children will grow up and pass onward — out of your life and
into one of their own. Relatives and friends may go with you
a long way, but they will not go all the way. Your wife will.
In all the universe, you can't be sure of any one but her.
Then make the most of her. Are her cheeks faded? Kiss her
on the lips, and then see the roses blossom once more on that
pallid face.
Have her eyes been swollen and dim with tears? Put your
arms about her, and tell her you love her just as much as you
ever did.
Then watch the light of joy kindle those eyes, until they
sparkle as brightly as in the days of youth.
Ah, it is so easy to make a woman happy, if the right man
82
PRO&E MISCELLANIES
wants to do it. And the right man to make your wife liappy, is
you.
Think of the nights you were sick unto death, and she
nursed you; think of the fearful agonies of the birth-hour, when
she brought your children into the world; think of the long-
drawn years in which she has daily done the drudgery of a slave,
'REVERIE'
PROSE MISCELLANIES 83
think how she has had to bear the Cross of your troubles, as
well as her own; think what she has had to go through with
in rearing your children; think of iier cramped, dull and monot-
onous life at home, while you were mingling with the bustling
crowds of the outside world.
Think of all this, brother, and allow much for the jaded,
faded wife. Go to her and warm your own heart, as well as
hers, by talking to her, in the old, old way of lovers.
Court her again, as you courted her when you sought her
hand.
Tell her that she is just as pretty as ever. This may pos-
sibly not be the truth ; but, if a lie at all, it will be the whitest
one you ever told. The Recording Angel may feel in duty bound
to charge it upon the debit side of your account, but as he washes
it out afterwards with a tear, he will enter an item to your
credit on the other side of the ledger, and he will write it in
letters of gold.
As It Is, and as It May Be
T WAS very tired, for the work I had been doing was hard;
and now that the room grew warm and the long task was
finished, I fell asleep.
No one in the house had been awake but me, while I had
for many hours gone over the dreary record of the poor, the
patient poor, the suffering poor — God's unprovided poor. The
hours had stolen by, like slippered monks, and it was far into
the night when the heaviness fell upon my eyes, and I was asleep.
Many a whirling fiction passed through my heated fancy
before there was order in my Dream, but after a while all was
clear — cruelly, shockingly clear.
A universe unfolded, spreading out like a map. Every
grade and class and condition of human life was before me, at
once — with no mist before my eyes and no distance to confuse
the outline.
What I saw was this: A magnificent world of land and
sea; of river and lake and forest and fertile field, mountains
seamed with hidden wealth; valleys rich with grain.
To this world its Maker had given the name of "A home for
the human family."
But the human family had grown very large. Its foot-
prints were thick upon every stretch of solid ground, and its
vessels moved upon all the waters of all the seas.
But the earth was no longer a family-home, and men were
no longer brothers. With furious enmity, they hated each other.
They worshiped God, but none of them regarded His law.
They cried Peace, and loosed the war dogs. They rose from
prayer, and went to rifle-practice.
Churches flourished — so did crime. Schools flourished — so
did ignorance. Charities flourished — and paupers died in the
streets. I wondered what it all meant.
There was land enough for all. They said that God had
made it for all. But the few had taken possession of it, and
the many had no homes. There was food enough for all: but
the few had seized it, and the many had not enough to eat.
I tried to discover how the human family kept itself alive.
I found it was by Work.
There were many kinds of work. Some labored to produce
food: some labored to produce clothing. Some labored to make
houses, others to make deadly weapons, only. Some labored to
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 85
teach the i)eople the law of God; others to expound and enforce
the laws which men had made for themselves. Others still
labored (or pretended to labor) to make just laws, by which
God's will should be done in the affairs of men.
In my dream, I saw clearly a most singular thing—those
whose work was most important to the world, were paid less
for their labor than anybody else. Those who merely amused
the world, got higher wages than those who fed and clothed it.
Those who played and danced, got higher pay than the man
who built the house they played and danced in. Those who
labored to amuse the idle, drew enormous salaries and were
the pets of the powerful; while those who kept the powerful
clothed and fed, lacked food and clothing for themselves.
In my dream, the cause of this cruel state of things became
clearer. Those who had made the law had so cunningly done
it, that the strong man was master of the weak. The strong
man became the ruler, and out of the weak man's own pro-
duce, gave him whatever he chose. This made the strong man
stronger, and the weak man weaker.
I thought I heard a great heart-breaking cry go up from
those poor producers of wealth, but their task-masters heard
it not-^so deaf are they who will not hear.
I thought that, now and then, these workers and producers
grew furious against their oppressors, and rose in revolt. But
they were put down again — some shot and some imprisoned.
I thought that, now and then, Leaders sprung up among
those suffering people and promised to go to the Great House
of Council, where the laivs were made, and to change these bad .
laws into good ones. But either such Leaders were too few,
or the strong men would take those Leaders aside into some
safe and secret place, and, by some unknown charms and per-
suasions, entice those Leaders into forgetfulness of the miseries
of the People.
So passed the first day of my dream — the Dream of Today
— of the world as it is.
Like a vanishing landscape, I saw the great Palaces of the
Rich, and the wretched huts of the poor; the fine raiment of
the one, and the rags of the other; the well-spread tables of the
one, and the cold hearth and empty dish of the other. The
factories went whirling into space— but through the windows
I could see the pale, thin features of the children who toiled
there. The mine opened one brief moment, and I could see
the pitiful serf of the Coal King. The garret sped by, and it
made the tears come, to see the shivering needle woman sew-
ing there. The streets swam by, filled with their squalor, their
hunger, their ceaseless vice and crime and suffering — and
86 PRO&E MISCELLANIES
Christianity spoke in these streets through the mouth of the
Policeman, and what she said to the ragged outcast was:
"Move on"; what she said to the starving child was, "Move on."
And it strangely got into my Dream, somehow, that the
cause of all the sorrow was that the Order of the world was a
mistake— a, dreadful misunderstanding. The unnatural had
become the rule. A feverish haste had taken possession of
mankind; and the race was madly run for things which men
really did not need. One man rushed because another rushed,
cheated because others cheated, hoarded because others hoarded
— was cruel because he thought the same measure would be
meted out to him, were situations reversed.
But the troubled nightmare passed, and I fell into the
Dream of Tomorrow — a gorgeous Dream, a Spirit-lifting Dream
— of the world as it may be. I seemed to look upon the same
world, but it was filled with harmony, and bathed in light.
The great rush and worry had passed away. The fever
and the pain were gone. The vast machinery of production
moved like the stars, "never resting, but never hasting." There
was room for all, and food for all. The Earth was dedicated
anew as a Home for God's Children — its products their food.
Religion burst out from the cold churches, and abode in the
lives of men — that high Religion which loves mercy, does good
and seeks the Right.
Law was no longer frittered away among wrangling advo-
cates and stupid Judges. She took her feroad principles into
the walks of life, and did justice, between man and man.
Technicality no longer manacled Truth, and a Judgment was
no longer the trophy of the trickiest, or strongest lawyer.
The Rulers of the People no longer scorned them, nor de-
frauded them with cunning laws and sharp practices. The
People themselves now ruled, and the worker was no longer a
dependent. Special Privilege had been slain, and Opportunity
was free for all.
There were no outcasts — for all had homes. There were
no beggars, for there was work and fair wages for all. None
had much more than they needed; none had much less.
There was little crime, for its cause had been diminshed.
There was brotherhood among men, for the motive for
rivalry and hatred had been taken away.
War had ceased. The killing of men had become horrible,
whether singly or by thousands. A Murderer was detested,
whether he slew with a knife or a sword, with a i)istol or with
a Maxim.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 87
The hum of peaceful industry was in the air. Tlic melody
of innocent laughter was in the streets. The song of the con-
tented Reaper was in the field. Music was supreme — it was the
melody of healthy, happy life.
*******
Why was Tomorrow so much brighter and better than To-
day? This question seemed to come to me in my dream.
And from somewhere, this reply seemed to be borne:
"Because the mistake of yesterday had been found and cor-
rected. Because Injustice had been driven out of the Laws;
because favoritism in legislation had ceased; because the pro-
ducer of wealth had secured fair treatment; because the cun-
ning laws of the Task-master were all dead; because there were
a few brave men all over the world who had solemnly sworn,
before God, that the old false order of things should die.''
*******
Out of the dim Past seemed to come voices:
One said: "I gave my life to pleasure. Wine was good,
and women were good, and mirth was good. But youth passed
— age came, and my heart was empty and sad."
Another voice said: "I gave my life to war. Cities I sacked,
enemies I crushed; laurels have I won and worn. But the sword
rusted in my hand. The spiders weave 'twixt me and the sun.
And in my ears, as I grow old, is the cry of the widow and the
orphan."
"Another voice said: "/ gave my life to my fellow-man.
I pitied his misfortune. I championed his cause. T loved the
friendless. I hated wrong, ancl fought tyranny wherever I
found it. The work has been hard: the way has been sown with
thorns. But now, as the evening comes, I fold my arms in con-
tentment and fear not at all the approaching shades. The
Master's touch is on my head, and I hear Him say, 'Inasmuch
as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me.' "
Thus passed my dream. And I awoke, heavy of heart; for
I knew Today was as I had dreampt, and that Tomoirow might
never come; that the World as it is, and the World as it may
be, are as far apart as the real from the ideal.
The Song of the Bar-Room
A LIVE, let us live. Where is Yesterday? Lost forever.
'^^ Where's Tomorrow? It may never come. Today is here.
Within its fleeting hours, runs the only certainty that you'll
ever know. Come! eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow vou
die!
The chains of Self-restraint are galling — throw them off!
The burden of Duty is grievous — fling it down! The cross of
Responsibility is crushing — let another bear it!
Live for yourself: live for the Now: live for the lust of living.
Drink! and forget dull Care. Drink! and ease the heart-
ache. Drink! and drown the passion for the unattainable.
See how men are drawn to me! My lights blaze a brilliant
welcome: I am never too hot, nor too cold. Mirrored Vanity
smirks in my gilded reflectors; and no one is ill at ease, in my
Free-for-all Club. No shrewish wife can tongue-lash you, here;
no peevish child annoy you with its cries. Leave to them the
ugliness of your haggard home, and come unto me for comfort.
Theirs, the cold and the gloom and the lonely vigil — yours, the
warmth and glow and social joy.
Clink your glasses, men! Drink, again, "Here's hoping."
'Tis well to toast her here, where begins the trail to the grave
of Hope. Be jolly; let the place ring with laughter: relate
the newest story — the story that matches the nude pictures on
the wall.
What's that? A dispute, angry oaths, a violent quarrel, the
crash of overturned chairs, the gleam of steel, the flash of guns,
the stream of life-blood, the groans of dying men?
Oh, well, it might have happened, anywhere. The hearts
of mothers and fathers, I wrench with pain: the souls of wives,
I darken in woe. I smite the mansion, and there are wounds
that gold cannot salve: the hut I invade, and poverty sinks into
deeper pits.
I sow and I till, and I reap where I sow, and my harvest
— is what?
Men so brutalized that all of humanity is lost, save the phj^-
sical shape — men reeking with moral filth, stony of heart, bestial
in vice — men who hear the name of God with a wrathful stare,
or a burst of scornful mirth; men who listen to the death-rattle
of any victim of their greed or their lusts, without a sign of pity.
And the women, too! How can I fitly sing of the Woman
(88)
PROSE MISCELLANIES 89
of my harvest-time? Did you ever hear her huigh? It must
be the favorite music of the damned. Did you ever hear her
ribald talk? The very sewers might shrink at bearing it away.
Have you ever heard her libidinous songs? Did you ever watch
her eyes — those defiant, mocking, hopeless, shameless eyes?
What warriors have I not vanquished? What statesmen have
I not laid low? How many a Burns and Poe have I not dragged
down from ethereal heights? How many a Sidney Carton h.ave
I not made to weep for a wasted life? How many times have
I caused the ermine to be drawn through the mud?
Strong am I — irresistibly strong.
Samson-like, I strain at the foundations of character; and
they come toppling down, in irremediable ruin. I am the can-
cer, beautiful to behold, and eating my remorseless way into
the vitals of the world. I am the pestilence, stalking my victims
to the cottage door and to the palace gate. No respecter of
persons, I gloat over richly-garbed victims no more than over'
the man of the blouse.
The Church, I empty it: the Jail, I fill it: the Gallov/s, I
feed it. From me and my blazing lights, run straight the dark
roads to the slums, the prisons, to the bread-lines, to the mad-
house, to the Potter's Field.
I undo the work of the School. I cut the ground from under
Law and Order. I'm the seed-bed of Poverty, Vice and Crime.
I'm the Leper who buys toleration, and who has not to cry
"Unclean!" I'm the Licensed ally-of-Sin. I buy from the State,
the right to lay dynamite under its foundations. For a price,
they give me the power to nullify the work of law-makers, mag-
istrates and rulers. For a handful of gold, I am granted Letters-
of-marque, to sail every human sea and prey upon its life-boats.
Huge battleships they build, casing them triply with hard-
ened steel; and huge guns they mount on these floating ram-
parts, until a file of Dreadnaughts line the coast — for what?
To be ready for perils that may never come. But I give them
a pitiful purse; and, in return, they issue to me the lawful
rights to unmask my batteries on every square; and my guns
play upon humanity, every day and every night, of every year.
And were my Destroyers spread out upon the Sea, they would
cover the face thereof.
Around that grief-bowed woman, / threw the weeds of widow-
hood — but I paid for the chance to do it; and they who took my
money knew that I uiould do it.
To the lips of that desolate child, / brought the wail of the
orphan — but I bought the right to do it; and they who sold me
the right, knew luhat would come of it.
Yes! I inflamed the murderer: I maddened the suicide: I
90
PROSE MISCELLANIES
made a brute of the husband: I made a diabolical hag out of
the once beautiful girl: I made a criminal out of the once prom-
ising boy: I replaced sobriety and comfort, })y drunkenness and
THE SOULS OF WIVES, I DARKEN IN WOE
PROSE MISCELLANIES 91
pauperism — but don't blame Me: blame those from whom I
pui'chascd the legal right to do it.
No Roman Emperor ever dragged at his chariot wheels,
on the day of his Triumph, such multitudes of captives as grace
my train. Tamerlane's marches of devastation were as naught
beside my steady advance over the conquered millions. The
Csesars and the Attilas come and go — comets whose advents
mean death and destruction, for a season: but I go on forever,
and I take my ghastly toll from all tJiat come to mill.
In civilization's ocean, I am the builder of the coral reef on
which the ship goes down: of its citadel, I'm the traitor who
lets the enemy in: of its progress, I'm the fetter and the clog:
of its heaven, I'm the hell.
The Vulture
TLT AS it ever occurred to you that the law of compensation is
•^■^ illustrated perfectly, in the case of the obscure, ungainly
buzzard?
Think of it a moment. He has no enemies: envy, jealousy,
unreasoning prejudice, aim no poisoned shafts at him: no other
bird wants his job, and he himself is contented with it.
True, he has no friends, but he doesn't appear to need any.
He is perfectly independent — and he knows that, as long as
Death endures, he will have enough to eat. As to wearing-
apparel, his remain on the free list. He bothers nobody's busi-
ness, and nobody bothers his. Of all creation, he enjoys the
exclusive luxury of being left alone.
Look upward into the heavens above you, some sunny day
of summer — away up yonder, almost out of sight, there is the
buzzard, circling slowly, steadily, serenely around; the only un-
concerned living creature that your eyes can perceive.
The other birds are all uneasy about something. They all
have enemies. The law of their lives is, eternal vigilance. They
dare not feed, or bathe, or fly, or perch, without scanning nar-
rowly the surroundings, in which may lurk the snake, the hawk,
the cat. They live in constant fear: they start at every sound.
Their foes are legion; and after a harassing day of continual
peril and narrow escapes, the owl, or coon, or 'possum, or rat
may clutch them where they roost, at night.
Not so the vulture. He hasn't a care, or a fear on liis mind.
He sails composedly through the cerulean sea, loftily secure.
-X- ***** *
There are the beasts of the field — they all have their ene-
mies, their anxieties, their conflicts. Lion assails lion, tiger rends
tiger, serpents battle with serpents, the great stolid ox shivers
with fright, when he sees the glittering eyes of the snake in the
grass; torturing swarms of insects pursue to madness the help-
less quadrupeds: the hog devours the kid and the lamb; and
the wolf, the bear, the fox and the man devour the hog.
Throughout animated nature, the strife is incessant. Nature's
law — inexorable and universal and unchangeable — makes the
weak the food of the strong, makes the stomach an insatiable
sepulchre, sends the resistless roots of life deep down into the
fertile soil of Death.
Not so the buzzard. Nothing feeds on him — he feeds upon
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 93
everything. He doesn't have to work for a living, nor stalk his
prey, nor swoop hawk-like for his dinner of quail, or his supper of
spring chicken. He doesn't have to crawl on his belly and ser-
])entine his way over meadow and fallowfield, on the hunt for
mice, or bird-eggs, or young rabbits, or nestlings.
No, indeed. Others provide his food. Sailing peacefully,
evenly, without visible beat of wing, floating with no apparent
effort, circling in fixed orbit, as though he were himself some
black-sheep member of the distant constellations — the vulture
bides his time. He isn't worried about anything. Where his
next meal will come from is a matter of no disquieting anxieties.
He knoius that it will come — and he sails, round and round, in
a fathomless, shoreless, radiant sea.
Consider the ocean and they that dwell within it: can you
find security and peace and rest? From the tiniest mullet to
the monsters of the deep, there is war — unending, merciless war.
Never will you put your eyes upon the fish that isn't nervous,
watchful, in dread of the enemy. Never will you find one that
isn't afraid. Everlasting caution, eternal effort, ceaseless ac-
tivity — is the price he pays to live. In those treacherous depths,
what battles rage, what massacres take place, what ferocities
of attack and pursuit, what agonies of flight, or defense there
are! What anguish of futile effort to escape there is, when the
squadron of sharks encompass the whale, or pursue the dreaded
swordfish; and what a ghastly combat that is when the sharks
fight over the prey, and wounded sharks are beset by sharks !
And that which we see among the birds of the air, the beasts
of the field, the fishes of the sea, is faithfully duplicated in the
life of man. There is no peace anywhere, nor rest, nor security,
nor freedom from care and fear. The rivalries of business, the
inroads of disease, the enmities which luxuriate along the path,
the dread of tomorrow, the terrors of the unknown regions that
lie beyond the dim river — ah, who is free from thrall?
Worn out by the battle and the march, the straggler may
fall by the wayside, crawl into a corner and seek rest. He will
not find it. Nobody has ever found it. Those who are per-
fectly sure that they're saved, leave their mansion in the New
Jerusalem vacant, just as long as possible. Human saints who
tell us, most positively, that they will walk the golden streets
and harp with angels, stick to our dirt-roads with piteous tenacity
and reveal a singular preference for the mundane phonograph and
piano.
No, brethren! Let us deal honestly by one another, and
make the confession that's good for the soul. We are a lot of
cowards. We could hardly be anything else. From the cradle
to the grave, we are surrounded by hobgoblins, imaginary terrors
94 PROSE MISCELLANIES
and real dangers. A part of our childish training consisted
of elaborate efforts to undermine our native good sense. Civil-
ized creatures that we are — we frighten our own children, de-
stroy their self-confidence, sap their inherent strength of mind
and character, feed them on Booger-man stories, poisoning the
very fountains of thought with fictions and superstitions — and
the marvel is, not that so many are permanently enfeebled or
enslaved, but that anybody ever emancipates himself. So in-
grained becomes the fear of the dark and the mysterious, that
the bravest of men will quake in uncontrollable panic if, at night,
he hears sounds that are different from anything he ever heard
before — sounds that he cannot connect with any ordinary oc-
currence. He immediately imagines some nameless horror, and
his hair stands on end. He isn't afraid of any human being, he
isn't afraid to die, but he is afraid of that unearthly sound, be-
cause it has aroused the slumbering cowardice that was injected
into him by ghost stories when he was a child!
So it happens, that while most people who have been sick,
and who have gradually weakened, are not afraid to die — let
sudden death confront anybody, saint or sinner, and you will
see that the grimiest log cabin is passionately preferred to the
best of those mansions in the skies.
Yes, we are all cowards; if not afraid of one thing, we are
of something else; and much of it is due to the wretched sys-
tem of dealing with the child.
And so, when I seek a picture of repose, I look upward and
gaze upon the buzzard, peacefully engaged in drawing invisible
circles in the upper air. The hubbub in the marts of trade are
nothing to him. The fierce rivalries of men affect him not. Is
the world at peace? His rations will not be cut off, or shortened.
Are the nations at war? So much the better for him. Is it a
year of bountiful harvests? He will not go unfed. Does famine
smite the people? It has no terrors for him.
The storm comes up from far away, and thunderclouds ob-
scure the sun; he either rides with the gale as if he loved it,
or soars above the tumult, and lets it pass below.
Some day you will hear a rush of sound, the volume start-
lingly strong, and you will look up in surprise— it is the buzzard
having his fun, apparently, by taking a headlong dive into space.
So then this unclean, unsociable, isolated bird actually possesses
a sense of enjoyment, in addition to his unlimited fund of solemn
self-conceit.
Poor old weather-beaten mariner of the skies! Tireless
swimmer of the invisible waves! Lone sentry of the trackless
beat! You are not pretty, and you probably smell bad, and
PROSE MISCELLANIES 95
you eat in a way that we despise — although we daily devour
dead things ourselves — you have never had a ivrite-up by one
who appreciates your advantages and sympathized with' your
limitations.
Well, you've got one, at last, such as it is.
The Wine Cup
I
T IS a warrior whom no victory can satisfy, no ruin satiate.
It pauses at no Rubicon to consider, pitches no tents at
night-fall, goes into no quarters for winter. It conquers amid
the burning plains of the South, where the phalanx of Alexander
halted in mutiny. It conquers amid the snowdrifts of the North,
where the Grand Army of Napoleon found its winding sheet. Its
monuments are in every burial ground. Its badges of triumph
are the weeds which mourners wear. Its song of victory is the
wail that w^as heard in Ramah: "Rachel crying for her chil-
dren, and weeping because they are not."
It never buries the hatchet; its temple of Janus never closes
its doors. No dove of peace ever carries its message; in its
hand is never the olive branch. It sends no flag of truce, and
receives none; its wounded are left where they fall, and its dead
bury their dead. Every citadel that it storms, it devastates;
and in every charge which it makes, its cry is, "No Quarter."
Those who fall before its onset, die deaths of shame; and
they go down to dishonored graves to which love can bring no
willing tribute of flowers, and over which pride can rear no
enduring monument. To its prisoners it grants no exchange,
holds them to no ransom, but clutches them fast, in a captivity
that is worse than death, and which ends only at the grave.
The sword is mighty, and its bloody traces reach across
time, from Nineveh to Gravelotte, from Marathon to Gettys-
burg. Yet mightier is its brother, the wine-cup. I say "brother,"
and history says "brother." Castor and Pollux never fought
together in more fraternal harmony. David and Jonathan never
joined in more generous rivalry. Hand in hand, they have come
down the centuries, and upon every scene of carnage, like vulture
and shadow, they have met and feasted.
Yea: a pair of giants, but the greater is the wine-cup. The
sword has a scabbard, and is sheathed; has a conscience, and
becomes glutted with havoc; has pity, and gives quarter to the
vanquished. The wine-cup has no scabbard and no conscience,
its appetite is a cancer which grows as you feed it; to pity, it
is deaf; to suffering, it is blind.
The sword is the Lieutenant of Death; but the wine-cup is
his Captain; and if ever they come home to him from their
wars, bringing their trophies, boasting of their achievements,
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 97
I can imagine that Death, their master, will meet them with
garlands and song, as the maidens of Judca met Saul and David.
But as he numbers the victims of each, his pa^an will be: "The
sword is my Saul, who has slain his thousands; but the wine-
cup is my David, who has slain his tens of thousands."
Toward the Light
TyHEN SIR WALTER SCOTT was lying on his death-
^^ bed, he was very calm and resigned; he had always been
a kind-hearted man; had always been a gentle man, — and so,
when he came to die, he was not afraid. He had worked won-
ders in his way. The tireless hand, pushing the pen, which, in
his youth, a neighbor had seen through the window that morn-
ing in Edinburgh, had written on, and written on, until the books
had grown into a library, and all the world was reading — even
as it does today.
He had toiled much, enjoyed much, suffered much, — and
the last time that the old literateur had gone to the polls, he
had been hooted by his neighbors, his vote having been antag-
onistic to theirs.
Then he went back to Abbotsford, sorrowing; and soon after-
wards laid him down to die.
His son-in-law, Lockhart, an author of world-wide fame
himself, was a different sort of man. Bitter and cynical, he had
slight capacity for friendship ; appeared to take a delight in
giving poisoned wounds; had numberless feuds, and no recon-
ciliations; had few intimates and few friends; and faced, witli
inflexibility and scorn, a host of enemies.
As the misanthropic Lockhart leaned over the death-bed,
the dying Scott said to him:
"Be a GOOD man, my dear; he a GOOD man. It is the
only thing that can give you comjort, when you come to lie here."
Not riches, not place and power, not fame, not great deeds
of any sort, — only the good works, they alone can soften the
pillow for the dying head-
Sent into this terribly complex life, by the unknown and
unknowable, we are cursed by the universal sin, and must strug-
gle, if we reach the light. Something within us tells us that it
is better to do right, better to be honest and true, better to resist
evil than to embrace it.
We can not help the occasional fall, — we are just human,
with hearts that are desperately wicked. But we must not stay
down. That's the pomt,— TF^ MUST NOT STAY DOWN.
When I was a young man, twenty years old, I entered my
first political fight, a petty local affair. With all the hot zeal
of inexperienced youth, I worked for victory. Our side got the
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 99
worst whipping you ever saw. Awfully cut up about it, I was
sitting on the sidewalk, filled with despair, believing that I was
ruined. An older man, seeing my distress and sympathizing
with it, said to me:
"Rise, and come again!"
Immediately the load was lightened, and the. fit of blues
soon passed away.
Ever since then, that word of encouragement has never ceased
to be a benefit to me. After every one of my many defeats and
falls, there would come the momentary collapse. "What's the
use? Fate is against you. You are attempting the impossible.
You don't amount to a row of pins, anyway. Tender your sword.
You are down and out."
So whispers the evil spirit, and it almost gets me sometimes
— but not quite.
Always I hear the words of George McCord (dead these
many years ago), "Don't give way to it. RISE, AND COME
AGAIN." So I brush the dust off, bandage the wounds, and
go at it again.
When I come to face my Father, I want to be able to say
to Him:
"Father, take pity on me — it was You who made me just
what I was. With all my raging passions and disfiguring im-
perfections, You sent me into the wicked world, where there
was so much that I could not understand. I know that I've
sinned, deeply and repeatedly, but, oh, my Father! I did try
to please You. Often guilty of wrongdoing, I strove ever to
get right, and stay right. I've done the very best I could —
to be a just man, a high-minded man, a pure man, a good man."
If, at the end of the chapter, I can still say that, — as I can
up to now, — I won't be the least bit afraid of Him. I know, in
my inmost soul, that He will forgive me the sins that I could
not help committing, and that He will not doom me with His
eternal, implacable frown.
The Country Wife
{An effort loas being made to s.ecure an appropriation of $10,-
000 jor the purpose of senditig city women to improve the wives
of country folk.)
A S TO asking the aid of the Georgia Legislature to make
better wives and mothers of the country women of this
State: I have rarely known a subject more difficult to discuss
patiently within the bounds of moderation. There are thou-
sands of devoted and absolutely admirable wives and mothers
in our cities, in our towns, and in our villages, and it gives me
pleasure and pride to testify to the fact; but if you ask me to
carry you to the home of the true wife and the true mother,
one who loses herself entirely in the existence of her husband
and children, one who is the first to rise in the morning, and
the last to retire at night, one who is, always at her post of duty,
and the one who carries upon her shoulders the burdens of
both husband and children, one who is keeper of the household
and the good angel of it, utterly unselfish, happy in making
others happy, with no thought of seeing her name in the papers,
no thought of fashionable pleasure, perfectly content in quiet
home life, in which she does nobody harm and everybody much
good, taking as many thorns as she can from the pathway of
her husband and strewing it with as many roses as possible,
strengthening him by her inspiration as he goes forward to fight
the battles of life, smoothing the pillow upon which he rests
his tired head when he comes home, tenderly rearing the boys
and girls who will in turn go away from the door some day for
the last time — the boy to become a good soldier in life's con-
tinuous warfare, and the girl to become some ardent suitor's
wife and to be to him what her mother has been to her father;
and who, when all toils are done and her strength is departing,
will sit calmly in the doorway, watching the setting sun, with a
serene smile upon her face, and never a fear in her heart — ask
me to find where this woman lives, where this type is to be found,
and I will make a bee-line for the country.
100)
The Path of Glory
TN SIR WILLIAM FRASER'S book, "Disraeli and His Day,"
we find this passage:
"Like men who have a real knowledge and ai)i)re('iation of
true poetry, Disraeli was a great admirer of (iray. He said
to me with great fervour, 'Byron visited Greece; he walked on
Olympus; he drank from Castalia; there was everything to in-
spire him. Gray never was in Greece in his life; yet he wrote
finer lines than Byron:
" 'Woods that wave o'er Delphi's steeiK
Isles that crown the Aegean deep;
Fields that cool Illyssus laves,
Or where Mseander's amber waves
In lingering labyrinths creep.'
"He pronounced the last line very slowly.
"On another occasion, I asked him which he athnircd most
of the stanzas of 'Gray's Elegy.' He replied, 'That will recjuire
a good deal of thinking.' He added, 'You have made up your
mind?' 'Yes.'
"The boast of Heraldry; the pomp of Power
And all that Beauty, all that wealth e'er gave.
Await alike the inevitable hour:
The paths of Glory lead but to the Grave."
I have often heard this stanza from Gray's "Elegy in a
Country Churchyard," used for the purpose of discouraging ambi-
tion, in my judgment, the poet had no such intention. He
meant merely to give expression to that thought which the
Romans had in mind when they ])laced in the chariot of the con-
queror, on the day of his triumph, an attendant whose duty it
was to repeat from time to time in the ear of the victor, "But
remember that you are mortal." The same thought was in the
mind of the Orientals, who dragged a mummy case through the
banquet hall where revelers were feasting.
Properly understood, there is in all this no discouragement
to honorable ambition. True, the paths of glory lead but to the
grave, but whither leads any other i)ath? The law-giver, after
all his toil and all the splendor of the civic crown, sinks to the
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102 PRO&E MISCELLANIES
dust; but equally so does the thoughtless, aimless boor, who
had no care beyond his pig-stey.
The warrior, after the battles have been fought and won,
after the dash of onset, the thrill of contest, the hot wine of
triumph, sleeps coldly and alone; but equally dismal is the fate
of the coward cur who wounded himself with an imaginary
bullet, shirked the fight, and lived, the scorn of mankind.
There was once an Indian Chief, celebrated in the mountains
of North Georgia. Some one asked him the way to his home.
The red man haughtily answered, "I go home along the moun-
tain tops."
To each one of us comes the hour when we meet
"The shadow cloaked from head to foot,
Who bears the key of all tlie creeds."
To me, it seems far more noble, far more inspiring, to have the
inevitable meeting somewhere in the pathway that leads us home
along the mountain tops.
Is It Worth the Price?
T^HE WORLD is full of young men who are panting to throw
-*■ off the restraints of youth and enter into the battle of
life. In every class-room, there is at least one boy who nurses
the profound belief that he is "the coming man," and that he
will open a new chapter in the book of human achievement.
In the Court-house he will win eases which Toombs, or Ben
Butler, or Daniel Webster, would have lost.
In medicine, he will cure where Pasteur, or Koch, or Battey
would have killed.
In science, he will make Humboldt and Spencer and Huxley
and Darwin appear pigmies.
As an Orator, he will spell-bind, where Phillips or Prentiss
would have put to sleep. As a Statesman, he will begin where
Gladstone left off. As a Warrior, the first "round" in his lad-
der of glory will be an Austerlitz or a Jena.
When I was at college, this "Coming Man," was in every
class. In fact, there were two or three of him in every class.
And, of course, I was one of him, myself.
That was long ago, — so long ago that when I met one of
"the coming men" of these college days a few weeks since, I
found him as gray and as subdued as a still, drizzly day in
October. He was traveling about, selling a new edition of an
excellent Cookbook.
This feverish, desperate contest for Fame and Wealth and
Position — is the reward worth the labor?
Is there any "reward" at all, in the success achieved, which
brightens the home, gladdens the heart, and fills the soul's de-
sire with satisfaction?
In the hub-bub talk about you, which the world calls Fame,
how many of the talkers are men whose good oi")inion is of
actual value? And how many of these worthiest of people are
citizens whose good opinion is so indispensable to you, that you
would work your legs off and your heart out to get it?
What is that good opinion going to do for you, that you
should turn your days into days of drudgery and your nights
into sleepless vigils of anxious thought? What are you going
to get out of it, that repays you for the health and the peace
and the happiness it costs?
Napoleon believed that Fame was the only immortality. He
had no belief in the soul.
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104 PROSE MrSCELLANIES
Yet, after toiling so hard over his books that he stunted his
growth; after reaching supreme power by such a career of blood,
hypocrisy, selfishness, genius, labor, lies and good luck, as the
world never saw before; after carrying his triumphant eagles
from Cairo to Moscow, he had the mortification to learn that
there were people living, even in France, who had never heard
of him. .
Where there is one man in the world today who has any
clear idea as to who Napoleon was, there are forty thousand
who do not. Once upon a time a very prominent burgher of
the town where I live, — a man of eminent respectability and
intelligence, — closed a harangue I had been making to him on
the subject of Napoleon's greatness, by asking me, with the
utmost seriousness, if Napoleon was dead.
What was there in the splendid fame he won, which made it
easy for Henry Grady to give up his young life?
What is there in it that Bill Nye should work himself to
death — killing himself to supply the public with fun?
Where is the recompense which repays to the slave of am-
bition for the loss of the sunny days in the fields, the myriad
voices of the autumn woods, and the leisure hours at the fire-
side of a happy home?
Shall there be no rest for weary feet, in this mad race for
Fame and Wealth and Position? Shall there be no furlough
from this all-devouring army?
Shall there never come a time when the rainy day is mine,
and the long, sweet hours in the quiet library?
Shall the fever of pursuit so entirely enslave us that there
shall be no hour which belongs to friendship, none belonging
to solitude and reflection, none, to memory, and to the sacred
teachings of Regret?
A great man once said to me, 'We are not judged by char-
acter, but by reputation."
Just so: and perhaps that's the very reason why it is worth
while to stress the fact that the reputation is not worth the
price we pay for it — for surely the real value of the mari is his
character, and not his reputation.
Get all the fame that flows from a good life. Such fame is
as healthy as the light that pours from a star — as unfeverish
as the breath of a rose, or the song of a bird. Such a fame is
but the halo that follows sterling worth.
Get all the money you honestly can. You owe it to your-
self and those who depend on you to bring the vessel into port,
if you can — safe from the storm.
The man who says he loves being poor, is a liar, and he takes
you for a fool — else he wouldn't tell you so.
PROSE MISCELLANIES 105
Win Position in life, if you feci that Duty calls for you there.
No man should undcr-rate the importance of Fame, of Wealth,
or of Position: — but the man who pays his health and his happi-
ness and his life for them, pays too much.
The Late
"DEADER, did you ever run over the pages of a magazine,
scanning items of news, dipping into heated controversies,
pausing at the love-stories, as a humming bird would at a
flower, and suddenly find yourself at the last page, where the
editor chronicles the list of "The Late?"
Who are "The Late?" They are the men who have acted
their part, and have left the stage. They are the dead. Last
month, they were full of life — working, quarrelling, loving,
hating, scheming, dreaming, planning for indefinite futures, as
though all Time was theirs. They read the Magazine last month,
just as you are doing this month. They scanned the news,
dipped into the discussions, laughed at the jokes, lingered with
the lovers, and sighed over the chronicles of "The Late." Then
they closed the book — and now their life-books are closed;
and THEY join the lists of "The Late," which you and I are, this
month, to read and to sigh over.
How sad it all is.
Last month here was a scholar, delving deep into the hidden
lore of granite rocks, of dust laden manuscripts, of ruined tem-
ples, of monumental inscriptions leading back into hoary ages
of the Past, — and now his nerveless hands are crossed, and his
eager feet hurry no longer after knowledge. Last month he was
a palpitating actuality, all ablaze with hope and purpose: this
month he heads the list of "The Late."
On the other hand, there was an author, one who had long
been suitor to fame: one who had toiled and fought grim pov-
erty and cold neglect. Year after year, he had struggled up-
ward to the light — falling back again with many a sickening dis-
appointment.
But at last, as the silver threads began to streak his head,
a sudden sun-burst of Fame was his. The storm lifted, and
the haven was there. The wilderness ended, and the labor of
travel was over. Poverty fled, and golden ducats rained. Neg-
lect vanished and the world crowded upon him with plaudits,
with the eager offerings of universal Fame.
All this was last month. Your whole heart went out to the
storm-tossed mariner who had so joyfully made port. Your
hands clapi:)ed in unison with all the others for the brave sol-
dier who had at last won his fight.
This was last month.
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PROSE MISCELLANIES 107
Where is the author now? Dead. You will read his name
in the list of "The Late." His Fame still rings around the
world, but, alas! his ears are too dull to hear. You may hand
him ever so many crowns of laurel, ever so many wreaths of
flowers; his closed eyes cannot see, his frozen hands cannot hold.
Yonder, again, was the statesman, the politician, if you like.
Last month, what a robust figure was his! How he bustled, how
he shoved, how he aspired, how he intrigued! With what im-
mense vitality did he strive to lift his voice above other voices,
his head above other heads! What schemes did fill his busy
brain! Throughout all the walks of life there was not a man
more active, more resolute, more full of pluck and ambition.
He clashed against his foes with a force that made the arena
ring. He would shiver a spear with any challenger who struck
his shield. Ardently he sought honors, fiercely he combatted
opposition, tirelessly he served friends — hoping that they would
serve him, in turn.
That was last month. All eyes followed him as he gallant-
ly rode down the lists, armed, from golden spear to plume-
dressed helm, seeking in honorable strife to bear away the prize,
and live a space in the huzzas of brave men, in the smiles of
lovely women .
That was last month, and now, it is all over. Death struck
him as he rode. The lance fell from his hand, his good steed
gallops on, riderless. The brave Knight will seek the prize no
more. His name appears on the list of "The Late."
And so it all goes: — sad, heart-breakingly sad. And it can-
not be helped. We have trodden down the dead of last month:
the living will tread us down, next month.
Preach peace as much as you will, and preach love and char-
ity. May their kingdom come. May they rule the world. They
do not rule it now.
However much we wish to disbelieve it, the race is mostly
to the swift, the battle to the strong.
The strong nation oppresses the weaker nation; the strong
man, the weaker man.
You hold your place in life, as in a battle-field. You hold
it by being able to hold it. When your strength fails, you retreat.
Bismarck grows old — and is forced ofT the stage: Glad-
stone decays, and the reins spurn his palsied hands.
I look over the list of "The Late," and I read the name of
one I knew. Was he my foe? Was there enmity between us?
Alas, how pale and worthless the feud now aj^pears. My
passion is all gone. His white hand seems to wave me a flag
of truce. Death obliterates his faults (if indeed, they were his
faults and not my prejudices), and I recall whatever was manly
108 PROSE MISCELLANIES
and strong and admirable in him. I review our differences,
mourn over the estrangement, and grieve that malice ever arose
between us. The way so short, the time for joy so brief, human
ills of the inevitable sort so numerous, that it seems to me now a
supreme pity that we wilfully added to the thorns which beset
the journey.
Was "The Late" my friend? Was the dead man one who
had loved me, sympathized with me, stood by my side in some
hour of danger, come to my relief, when I was friendless, poor,
and down-hearted?
Then indeed what terrible words are these, "The Late." I
cannot see them through the mist of tears. I see only the white
face of my friend. I think only of those folded hands, that
loyal heart which beats no more.
Reader, some day our names will go into the columns of
"The Late." The list is there, and our names will be written into
the blank, after a while.
To us it will not matter at all what the world may think,
or may say, when it reads our names in the list. We will be
at rest then — so far as the world is concerned. Love cannot reach
us — nor malice, thank God! Misconstruction, envy, hatred, can
hurt us no more. It matters not what the world will say, except
in so far as the world speaks the Truth !
While we lived, the False may have worked us enormous
harm. It can never harm us again. The True will reign supreme.
While we lived, we found lies to be much more terrible things
than the Sunday-school books (and others) had prepared us
to believe. We found that lies had power to damn, so far as the
world was concerned. We found that the people were ignorant,
credulous, easily duped, and falsely led. We found that a lie,
repeated every day, became practically the truth. We found that
the public scarcely knew the whole truth about anything, and
that the people were designedly kept weltering in lies, and half-
truths (which were more deceptive than lies) in order that the
"powers that be" could continue to misrule. We found that the
world had become so wedded by custom to this system, that it
was hardly possible to tell the people the whole truth upon any
subject whatever.
But all the while you felt that a lie was a despicable thing —
a thing preordained to death and damnation. Deep down in
your soul, you felt that there was finally no hope of your landing
your feet on the eternal rocks, unless you fought lies, and
championed Truth.
Did you do it? — That is the question which then assumes
terrible importance.
Can it be truly said that you loved Truth and Right, Justice
PROSE MISCELLANIES 109
and Mercy? Can it be truly said that your heart turned always
to humanity, and strove ever for better things? Can it be said
that Duty, as you understood it, was your gospel, from first to
last, through good report and evil, through cloudy days and fair?
Or, did you bend and twist, here and there, first one way and
then the other, true to nobody, true to no conception of right,
fawning upon wrong to get a part of the fruits thereof, adding
your voice to the clamor of Ignorance and Superstition, and Pre-
judice, and Evil, in order that you might be one of a dominant
majority? Did you lay down your manhood at the feet of
Error, knowing it to be Error, and join in the carnival of Wrong,
simply because the greater numbers were on that side?
Did you put your soul into bondage knowing that it was a
Falsehood you obeyed?
These, and these only, will be the vital questions, when we
shall have left "the quick" and joined "the dead."
God pity us all!
And may Truth, the handmaiden of the Most High, claim us
as votaries, in that dread dav when we shall have been added
to the hosts of "The Late."
The Old Packet Boat by the James
'X^ HE train was slowing down for Lynchburg; passengers were
-*• rising from their seats, getting ready to leave the cars;
my companion leaned over me and pointed to a distant object
on the far bank of the James, and said: "See that old boat up
there under the trees? General Jackson's body was carried in
that from Lynchburg to Lexington."
In the swift view of it which I got, as the train carried us on,
it appeared to be a low, irregular hut, squatting there discon-
solately, dilapidated and forlorn.
And that was the hearse which bore toward its last resting
place, "at Lexington, in the Valley of Virginia," the corpse of one
of the greatest soldiers the world has known.
The instantaneous photograph of the old boat, which that
fleeting glimpse of it made on my mind, will never fade. For it
fired the long train of memory, and the whole of "Stonewall"
Jackson's phenomenal career seemed to form the background of
the mental picture of the old boat.
His early life of poverty, orphanage and disease; his indomit-
able determination to get on; his record at West Point, where
his angularity and industry were his most noticeable traits of
character: then his services in the Mexican war, where he was
somewhat of a rollicking officer, brave as his sword, full of dash,
but also full of fun. Quartered in the "Halls of the Montezumas,"
he threw himself into the social pleasures which followed so soon
upon the close of the fighting. No officer in the army was fonder
of the society of the beautiful Mexican ladies ; and in order that
he might the better enjoy their company, he mastered the Spanish
tongue. Then came the service in the Seminole war, in which
there were no laurels to be gained.
Professor in the Virginia Military Institute, Jackson was
regarded as an oddity, and nothing more. The boys played
all sorts of pranks off on him, and the Faculty held him as an
almost negligible quantity. Because he was so strict, angular,
and rigid, Jackson was not popular with the gay young fellows
who came there to loiter their way through to graduation. At
school he had been nicknamed "Fool Tom Jackson"; and now
that he was a teacher of boys, the same tendency to provoke
ridicule clung to him. On the drill ground the pieces of artillery,
in default of horses, were drawn by the students: to tease and
annoy Jackson, these artillery teams would pretend to get fright-
(110)
PROSE MISCELLANIES
111
ened, during the maneuvers, and would "run away" with the
cannon.
When I was at Lexington a few years ago, a member of the
Faculty who was attached to the College at the time Jackson
was a teacher there, told me, as an evidence of Jackson's self-
control, that on one occasion, when a student who nursed a
grudge against the strict Professor, threw a brick-bat at him.
THE OLD PACKET BOAT BY THE JAMES
from behind, as he was taking his walk in the grounds, Jackson
did not so much as turn his head.
This gentleman also told me that the Faculty of the Insti-
tute were considering the matter of dispensing with the chair
filled by Jackson, when the Civil War broke out, and the angu-
lar Professor was called to the field.
They showed me the very commonplace house which was
Jackson's home in Lexington, and it aroused in me emotions
which no palace on this earth would stir: — a very modest house,
with an ugly location, — for its front wall is flush with the side-
walk, — standing on a side street, near the centre of a town which
occupies a site of great natural beauty.
And that was the "Garden of Brienne" of Stonewall Jack-
son! The place where he buried himself in study, standing at his
desk, without book or paper, concentrating his thought intensely
upon all that he had reac^ during the study-hours of the day.
Then, when the clock struck nine — not before it began to strike,
•and not until the ninth stroke had sent its record-voice to the
past, — did the rigid student throw off the shackles of discipline,
112 PROSE MISCELLANIES
and begin to romp with the children, on the floor, or mingle in the
light and familiar conversation of the household.
For the odd Professor, whom nobody understood, but who was
thoroughly respected by every sober-minded person that knew
him, had somehow or other won the heart of a beautiful young
woman, had made her his wife, and was now a beloved member
of her family.
Margaret J. Preston is known to almost every one who
reads, but her sister Eleanor is remembered by the few, only, who
know that it was she whose loveliness of person and character
completely subdued the shy and complex character of the Pro-
fessor, converted him to her own religious faith, gave him the
first inclination toward becoming devout, and by her untimely
death, after one year of domestic happiness, gave him a sorrow
that darkened the remainder of his life.
To me, ''Stonewall" Jackson seems to belong to the class of
Havelock and "Chinese" Gordon. Like those great soldiers, he
was a religious fanatic. Like them, he was a mystic. Had he
been made Commander-in-Chief, in some war fought for the
sake of religion, he would probably have developed into the
Greatest of Great Captains. As it was, I see in Jackson, as in
Lee, a curious occasional apathy. Somehow^, I get the idea that,
while both were absolutely loyal to the Southern Confederacy,
unselfish and unsparing of themselves in the service, neither
Jackson nor Robert E. Lee had that supreme confidence, that
whole-hearted passion of purpose, which is so essential to success.
Both Jackson and Lee were at their best when repelling
invasion. The presence of Northern troops in the Valley,
aroused all the lion in Stonewall Jackson, and he put forth the
terrible energy which made that campaign immortal. The ap-
proach of the Northern hosts upon Richmond had a similar effect
upon General Lee; he rose to the crisis and was the Great Cap-
tain — some say the greatest of all the soldiers produced by the
Anglo-Saxon race. But once the supreme danger to native land
had passed, neither Lee nor Jackson pressed their advantages
home, with the ruthless purpose of destroying the enemy, as each
would have done, had they been fighting any other people save
their own flesh and blood.
The blundering, disastrous pursuit of McClellan, as he fell back
to the James, after the fighting around Richmond, shows this.
The Southern army would have been immensely better off had it
simply kcjit in sight of the enemy, comjielling him to continue the
retreat by threatening his flank and his base of supplies. In fact.
Gen. E. P. Alexander, in his most valuable book of Reminiscences,
PROSE MISCELLANIEIS
113
describes the conduct of Stonewall Jackson, during the retreat
of McClellan, in a way that leaves no doubt of the great com-
mander's lack of mental energy during the pursuit.
The gentlemanly manner in which General Lee conducted his
operations each time that he invaded the enemy's country, proves
my analysis to be correct. Think of Wellington, or Blucher, or
Napoleon, or Marlborough, scolding his troops, furiously, for
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE
taking apples from the orchards of the foe, or for making a camp-
fire out of his fence-rails!
An old soldier, who now lives at Sugar Valley, Georgia,
l)ublished a letter in my paper, in which he told how General
Lee, in high wrath, called him a ''thief," a "disgrace to the army,"
and other "hard names," because the soldier, hungry and tired,
had taken some fruit from an orchard, and was trying to satisfy
his hunger with it. This was during the invasion of Pennsylvania.
It was the highest degree creditable to Robert E. Lee that
he would order one of his men to "put that rail back on that
fence," — but is that the spirit which wins, in war? It ought to
be, I grant you, — but is it? There used to be much of that noble
spirit in the days of Chivalry, and in the days when the French
officers were supposed to say to the foe, "Gentlemen of the
English Guard, we never fire first."
114 PROSE MISCELLANIES
But whatever remains of that spirit were left in Europe, the
era of Napoleon swept awa}'; and ever since he scandalized the
decorous Austrian officers, by fighting them in any way that
meant most damage to them, — rules or no rules, — ^the practice
has been the reverse of chivalrous. The ruthlessness of Grant,
Sherman, Sheridan, and Rosecrans, was most ungentlemanly, —
but most effective.
Had our West Point generals waged war upon the North
with the same destructive fury, the result of the conflict might
have been different.
* * * % * *
And the old boat crouches on the bank of the river, slowly
settling down into ruin. Thirsty, feverish, money-loving Com-
mercialism hurries by, giving the lonely derelict a merely casual
glance. And yet the sight of it calls up so much to those who
knew the past.
I close my eyes and hear again the peal of thunder and see
the distant lightning, as Stonewall Jackson crashes against the
Union flank at Chancellorsville. I hear the "ten thousand whip-
poorwills" of whom Gen. Jeb Stuart spoke afterwards; I see the
Confederates struggle forward in the dense scrub woods; the
Federals scatter in confusion and Howard's Corps is annihilated;
the rapid advance of Jackson's men has broken their own forma-
tion and there is a perilous confusion; the enemy, in a desperate
attempt at salvation, plants a battery and shells the turnpike;
a momentary halt is made by the Confederates, and Jackson,
caught up in the concentration of a great purpose, rides too far,
too far to the front; Mdth all his might he is pushing around
to the enemy's rear, to cut him off from the United States ford,
and take his entire army prisoners, or destroy it!
Alas, he rides too far into the darkness,^ — no picket line pro-
tects him from the enemy and he comes within their musket
range, is fired upon, gallops back toward his own men — who have
orders to fire on cavalry and who do not know that Stonewall
has ridden beyond them — is fired upon by liis men and is carried,
here and yonder, by his frenzied horse, is at length lifted from
the saddle to the ground, where he lies beneath a tremendous
cannonade of the enemy, with a drawn face, white with pain,
turned up to the moon.
"My God! it's General Jackson!" cried a soldier, march-
ing by: and in a few days the heartbroken wail rang tiirough-
out the South, "My God; Stonewall Jackson is dead."
*******
Whether Gen. Jackson assumed that a picket line had been
thrown out in front, or whether his act in riding forward was
PROSE MISCELLANIES
116
incident to his absorption in his great purpose, can never be
known. During the days of patient suffering wliich preceded
his death— the death of a resigned, undoubtmg Christian— he
made no effort to account for what had occurred. A pathetic
detail however, is that those who saw him just after he was
shot relate that his expression was one of utter astonishment^
But 'the iron lips closed down and he said nothing. Nothing.^
Nothing about the calamity that had befallen /im.
But when Gen. Pender expressed a doubt of being able to
hold his advance, an exposed and temporarily unsupported
position, Jackson's order came, prompt, stern, emphatic:
-'l*^\^^^^
"STONEWALL" JACKSON
"You must hold your ground, General Pender! You must
hold your ground, Sir!" , , •+! .;„
Faint with loss of blood, unable to stand, racked with pain,
the soldierly instinct and heroic spirit were masters to the end:
"Hold your ground!"
At the first Manassas, Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson
would not give ground to the enemy, was immovable and con-
fident, when the wrecks of broken brigades were all arounj
him, and so won the title by which his people prefer to call
him. It was fitting that his last order on the field of battle
should have been just what it was: "You must hold your ground,
Sir!"
116 PROSE MISCELLANIES
•Gen. Pender was a brave officer, and Gen. Lee's official report
of Chancellorsville makes mention of the conspicuous gallantry
displayed by him, in the battle on the day after Jackson's fall.
* «• * * * i<- «
There never was a sublimer funeral given to any National
hero than the South gave her ideal soldier, Stonewall Jackson.
Not only was he mourned by the weeping thousands who fol-
lowed his body to Richmond, but it is a literal fact that in
every city and town throughout the Confederacy, there were
outbursts of grief that betokened a universal sorrow. Even
now, there is no subject — none whatever — that moves the aver-
age Southern man more quickly and more profoundly than that
of Jackson, — his purity, his consecration, his sublime unselfish-
ness, his beautiful and grand simplicity, his profound and un-
obstrusive piety, his dramatic and tragic fall in the hour of
glorious victory, his fortitude in suffering, his touching sub-
mission to the will of God.
I turn to the Diarv kept by Margaret J. Preston. The date
is May 5th, (1863).
Here is the entry:
"Today brings news of a terrible battle — but no particulars;
only that Gen. Frank Paxton is killed, Jackson and A. P. Hill
wounded."
"May 7th: Another day of awful suspense. Not a solitary
letter or person has come from the army to Lexington; only a
telegram from Governor Letcher, announcing that Captain Green-
lee Davidson is killed; his body and Paxton's are expected to-
morrow. What fearful times we live in!"
"Friday, 8th: Today we hear that Gen. Jackson's arm is
amputated and that he is wounded in the right hand. How
singular that it should have been done through mistake by a
volley from his own men. It happened at midnight Saturday."
"May 10th, Sabbath: This afternoon Dr. White attempted
to hold service; but just as he was beginning, the mail arrived,
and so great was the excitement, and so intense the desire for
news, that he was obliged to dismiss the congregation. We
only hear of one more death among the Lexington boys, young
Imboden. Several wounded; this is much better than we had
dared to hope."
"May 12th, Tuesday: Last night I sat at his desk writing a
letter to General Jackson, urging him to come up and stay with
us, as soon as his wound would permit him to move. / ivent
downstairs this morning, with the letter in my hand, and was
met by the overwhelmincj news that JACKSON WAS DEAD!"
PROSE MISCELLANIES 117
"A telegram had been sent to Col. Smith by a courier from
Staunton. Doubt was soon thrown upon this by the arrival of
someone from Richmond, who said he had left when the tele-
gram did and there was no such rumor in Richmond. So, be-
tween alternate hope and fear, the day passed. It was saddened
by the bringing home of General Paxton's remams, and by his
funeral At five this evening the startling confirmation comes—
Jackson is indeed dead ! My heart overflows with sorrow. The
grief in this community is intense ; everybody is in tears. What
a release from his weary two years' warfare. To be released
into the blessedness and 'peace of heaven! . . . How fearfid
the loss to the Confederacv! The people made an idol of him
and God has rebuked them. No more ready soul has ascended
to the throne than was his. Never have I seen a human being
as thoroughlv governed bv dutv. He lived only to please God;
his dailv life was a daily^ffering up of himself. All his letters
to Mr. P. and to me since the war began, have breathed the spirit
of a saint. In his last letter to me, he spoke of our precious
Ellie, and the blessedness of being with her in heaven. And
now 'he has joined her, and together they unite in ascribing
praises to Him who has redeemed them by His blood. Oh, the
havoc death is making! The beautiful sky and the rich, per-
fumed air seemed darkened by oppressive sorrow. Who thinks
or speaks of victory? The word is scarcely ever heard. Alas!
Alas! When is the end to be?"
"May 15th, Friday: General Jackson was buried today,
amid the flowing tears of a vast concourse of people. By a
strange coincidence, two cavalry companies happened to be pass-
ing through Lexington from the West, just at the hour of the
ceremonies; they stopped, procured mourning for their colors
and joined the procession. . . . The exercises were very ap-
propriate; a touching voluntary was sung with subdued, sobbing
voices; a prayer from Dr. Ramsey of most melting tenderness ;
very true and discriminating remarks from Dr. White, and a
beautiful prayer from W. F. J. . The coffin was draped
in the first Confederate flag ever made, and presented by Pres
Davis to Mrs. Jackson; it was draped around the coffin and
on it was laid multitudes of wreaths and flowers which had been
piled upon it all along the sad journey to Richmond and thence
to Lexington. The grave, too, was heaped with flowers.^ And
now it is all over, and the hero is left 'alone in his glory.' Not
many better men have lived and died. His body-servant said
to me, T never knew a piouser gentleman.' Sincerer mourning
was never manifested for anyone, I do think. . . . The dear
little child is so like her father; she is a sweet thing, and will
be a blessing, I trust, to the heart-wrung mother."
118 PROSE MISCELLANIES
In his "End of an Era," John S. Wise writes:
"It was a bitter, bitter day of mourning for all of us when
the corps was marched down to the canal terminus, to meet all
that was mortal of Stonewall Jackson. We had heard the name
of every officer who attended the remains.
"With reversed arms and muffled drums we bore him back to
the Institute and placed him in the section-room in which he had
taught. There the body lay in state until the following day.
The lilacs and early spring flowers were just blooming. The
number of people who came to view him for the last time was
immense; men and women wept over his bier as if his death was
a personal affliction; then I saw that the Presbyterians could
weep like other folks. The flowers piled about the coffin hid
it and its remains from view. I shall ever count it a great
privilege that I was one of the guards, who through the silence
of the night, and when the crowds had departed, stood watch
and ward alone with the remains of the great 'Stonewall.'
"Next day, we buried him with a pomp of woe, the cadets
his escort of honor: with minute-guns, and tolling bells and most
impressive ceremonies, we bore him to his rest. But those cere-
monies were to me far less impressive than walking post in that
bare section-room, in the still hours of night, reflecting that
there lay all that was left of one whose name still thrilled the
world.
"The burial of Stonewall Jackson made a deep impression
upon the corps of cadets. It had been our custom, when things
seemed to be going amiss in the army, to say, 'Wait until "Old
Jack" gets there; he will straighten matters out.' We felt that
the loss was irreparable. The cold face on which we had looked,
taught us lessons which have been dropped from the curriculum
in these tame days of peace.
"Many a cadet resolved that he would delay no longer in
offering his services to his country, and, although the end of the
session was near at hand, several refused to remain longer, and
resigned at once."
An Incident in the Life of
Epenetus Alexis Steed
PPENETUS ALEXIS STEED: June 6, 1829 — November 9, 1885.
^ Minister and Teacher: Graduate (Second Honor) Mercer Uni-
versity, 1851: Chair of Ancient Languages, Mississippi College at
Clinton; Pastor of Thomson Baptist Church, Sweetwater, Greenwood
and Pine Grove: Chair of Latin, Mercer University, 1872-1885.
Sir Walter Scott used to say that he had never met any man
from whom he could not learn something. No matter how
ignorant the humblest citizen may appear to be, the chances arc
that he knows a few things which you do not know; and if you
will "draw him out," you will add to your knowledge.
The Virginia negro who happened to pass along the road
while the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States was puzzling his brains over the problem of mending his
broken sulky-shaft, knew exactly the one thing which John
Marshall then needed to know.
The great lawyer was at his wit's end, helpless and wretched
How could he mend that broken shaft, and continue his journey?
He did not know, and he turned to the negro for instruction.
With an air of superiority which was not offensive at that
particular moment, the negro drew his pocket knife, stepped into
the bushes, cut a sapling, whittled a brace, and spliced the broken
shaft.
When the Chief Justice expressed his wonder, admiration and
pleasure, the negro calmly accepted the tribute to his talent —
and walked off, remarking: "Some folks has got sense, and some
ain't got none."
*******
That anecdote is a hundred years old, but it's a right good
little story. A school-teacher, whom I loved very dearly, told
it to me, when I was a lad. He was the only man I ever knew
who had it in him to be a great man, and who refused to strive
for great things, because, as he said, "It isn't worth the trouble."
He was naturally as great an orator as Blaine or Ben Hill.
But after one of his magnificent displays of oratory, he would
sink back into jolly indolence, and pursue the even tenor of
his way, teaching school. "It is not worth while. Let the other
fellow toil and struggle for fame and for office: I don't care.
They are not worth the price."
(119)
120
PROSE MISCELLANIES
Few knew what was in this obscure teaclier; but those few
knew him to be a giant. Once, at our College Commencement,
(Mercer University, 1880), the speaker who had been invited
to make the regular address was the crack orator of the State.
He was considered a marvel of eloquence. Well, he came and
he delivered his message; and it was all very chaste and ele-
gant and superb. Indeed, a fine speech. He sat down amid
EPENETUS ALEXIS STEED
loud applause. Everybody satisfied. Then the obscure genius
to whom I have referred rose to talk. By some chance, the
Faculty had given him a place on the program.
I looked at my old school-teacher, as he waddled quietly
to the front. I saw that his face was pale, and his eyes blazing.
I felt that the presence and the speech of the celebrated orator
had aroused the indolent giant. I know he would carry that
crowd by storm — would rise, rise into the very azure of elo-
quence, and hover above us, like an eagle in the air.
And he did.
Men and women, boys and girls, laughed and cheered and
PROSE MISCELLANIES
121
cried, and hung breathless on his every word, as no crowd ever
does unless a born orator gets hold of it. Actually, I got to
feeling sorry for the celebrity who had made the set speech. He
sat there looking like a cheap piece of neglected toywork of last
Christmas.
The faces of the leading people, after my old teacher had
sat down, were a study. The expression seemed to say, "Who
would have thought it was in him?"
SEATED, ON LEFT, PROF. E. A. STEED, THOS. W.
STEED AT RIGHT. STANDING: JAMES
HAMILTON ON RIGHT; L. CARLTON
SMITH. ON LEFT
I did not applaud: No. But I looked at my old teacher,
through a mist of happy tears; and my lips quivered, uncon-
trollably: he saw it; and I think he was deeply pleased.
We talked of it, later, in our chummy way ; and we laughed
over the surprise he had given everybody. I never saw him.
again.
122 PROSE MISCELLANIES
I don't think he ever made another speech.
The brilHant eyes will blaze no more. The merry smile faded,
long ago. That great head, fit to bear a crown, lies low, for all
the years to come.
He left no lasting memorial to his genius. Only, as through
a glass, darkly, you may see him in a book called "Bethany,"
written by one in whom he, the unambitious, kindled the spark
of an ambition that will never die.
Fortitude
Do not become discouraged ! Don't lose heart.
You may not be able to see the harvest where you have
patiently sown the seed, but be assured of this: No seed is
lost.
The truthful word manfully spoken, the earnest effort hon-
estly made, the noble creed consistently held, — these are things
which do not perish; they live on and move the world and mold
the destinies of men, long after you are dust.
Leave cowardice to the cowards ; leave servility to the slaves.
Be a man — proud, though in homespun; free, though in a hut.
Own your own soul !
Dare to listen to your own heartbeat. Between you and
God's sunlight, let no shadow of fear fall.
What is there to live for, if you are never to think, never
to speak, never to act, save as the echo of some master! Better
the death of the brave than the long misery of the mental serf.
Not always is it easy to know the right, — very often is the
road rough. Human praise can be won by shorter routes. Hon-
ors and riches are not always its rewards. Pleasanter days
and calmer nights may be yours, if you float smoothly down the
tide of policy, — steering deftly by the rules of the expedient.
But has life nothing loftier than this? Is there no divine
voice within you that calls for better things? Is there no great
pulse-beat of duty within you, — no flame of the warrior spirit,
when insolent wrong flings its gage of battle at your feet?
Are you willing that the Right shall call for aid, and you
give no succor; that Truth shall plead for help, and you bear
no witness?
Is the sacred torch of Liberty — passed on from hand to hand,
down the ages in which brave men dared to keep it lit — to
find you unwilling to hold it aloft?
Shall the temple of civic freedom, reared by the great men
who are gone, stand vacant, — calling mutely, calling vainly for
votaries at the shrine?
Was it all a mockery, — this long struggle your forefathers
made for Justice? Is it an idle tale — this story of the heroism
with which the rights of the people were slowly won?
Not so — not so! Levity may slight, and ignorance may dis-
regard the blessed heir-looms of human endeavor, of patriotic
purpose, of high-minded self-sacrifice, — but they are there, and,
(123)
124 PROSE MISCELLANIES
like the signal fires of the highlands, they call heroic hearts to
duty!
You may have desponded, but you must not despair. You
may have stumbled, but you must not fall. You will rouse
yourself, and press forward. You will do your duty — for that
is your religion.
If Wrong triumphs, it shall not claim you as a partner in the
crime.
If the light dies out in the homes of the people, the curse
of the unhappy shall not blast your name.
You shall be a man, — loyal, fearless, independent, ready for
work, and loyal to the last, to the creed which your heart aj)-
proves.
Men, like these, — and no others, — won every treasure in the
storehouse of liberty, every jewel in the crown of good govern-
ment, every thread in the golden tissue of religious and political
freedom.
Men like these, — and no other, — are going to keep alive the
sacred fires our fathers kindled, are going to stamp out the
foul heresies that imperil our rights, are going to fight to the
death those who would turn back the march of human happiness,
and are going to re-dedicate this government to the principles
upon which it was founded!
Stand firm and fear not.
Brave men who are nothing more than brave, rush into the
combat, get worsted and quit.
Brave men, who are something more than brave, take no
defeat as final.
FINIS.
THE STORY o/' FRANCE
(IN TWO VOLUMES)
BY THOS. E. WATSON
(New Edition)
The Standard History of France — Chosen by the
French Scholars as Such
PRICE $6.00, DELIVERED
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
Thomson, Georgia
NAPOLEON
BY THOS. E. WATSON
Regarded by Critics and Scholars as One of the Best
Histories of the Man of Destiny
PRICE $3.50, DELIVERED
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
THOMSON, GEORGIA
I
LIFE AND TIMES
OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON
(NEW EDITION)
BY THOS. E. WATSON
In the Life of Jefferson you will learn what Demo-
cratic principles are, and you will learn much history
to the credit of the South and West, left out by New
England writers.
PRICE $3.50, DELIVERED
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
THOMSON, GEORGIA
House of Hapsburg
BY THOS. E. WATSON
A Historical Book giving a true History of the
House, which caused the upheaval in Europe that led
to the World's War.
Paper Cover — -Well Printed — Illustrated
PRICE 50c, POSTPAID
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
THOMSON, GEORGIA
HANDBOOK
OF
Politics and Economics
BY THOS. E. WATSON
"Political and Economic Handbook" contains 475 pages
printed well on excellent book paper being in size 6x9 and
covered with a stiff paper cover. The frontispiece is a strik-
ing photograph of the author. His preface reads:
In order that Editors. Speakers, Lecturers and Voters might
have in the convenient storehouse of one volume all the
scattered information contained in man.v: and in order that
thej' might have a brief statement of the line of argument
which we adopt upon all essential issues. I have written this
book. I have tried to fill it to the brim with facts — important
facts, undisputed facts. I have tried to make it an armory
from which reformers can draw every weapon of offense and
defense." Thos. E. Watson, Thomson, Ga., November 1st,
1915.
We list below a few of tJie questions discussed by the author
to give you some idea of the trend of the book.
"Planting of Democracy in Virginia ; Slavery ; Religion ;
The Two Political Schools of Hamilton and Jefferson: The
Monroe Doctrine ; A Complete Discussion of the Money
Question; The Panics of 1893 and 1907; Railroads and Public
Lands; Pet Banks; Special Privilege; A Chapter on Social-
ism; The Federal Judiciary'; the Greenback Party; A Great
Crime in High Finance; Party Platforms; The Roman
Catholic Church in American Politics; Looking Backward;
About the Peoples Party; Watson's Speech, etc.
Order Now
PRICE. $1.50 DELIVERED
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
THOMSON, GEORGIA
Watson's Magazine
Before Mr. Watson's death he had bound one vol-
ume of Watson's Jeffersonian Magazmes consisting
of the last six issues of 1907. This volume contains
sketches on Robert Toombs, The Greatest of Women,
Orthodox Socialism, Dream Children, The Negro
Question, The ]\Iost Original Poem, How I Came to
Write Napoleon, As It Is and As It May Be, Bubbles
On The Stream., etc. When our limited supply is ex-
hausted these magazines will become an unpurchas-
able raritv.
$1.00, DELIVERED
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
Thomson, Georgia
A Book About the Socialists
and About Socialism
In this work, ]Mr. Watson takes up, one by one, each
of the propositions of Karl Marx, and discusses them
fully and fairly.
He also analyses the great book of Herr Bebel, the
world-leader of Socialism, ''Woman Under Social-
ism."
Mr. Watson cites standard historical works to prove
that Bebel, ^Nlarx and other Socialist leaders are al-
together wrong about,
The Origin of Prosperity,
The Rise of the Marital Relation,
The Cause of the Inequality of Wealth, etc.
Mr. Watson demonstrates that Socialism — as taught
by :\Iarx, Bebel, LaSalle, Engel, etc.— would anni-
hilate
Individuality and personal liberty.
Home-life as we know it,
The White Man's supremacy over the inferior races.
The Marital relation, with its protection to women,
and finally
Religion of All Kinds.
Air. Watson proves that SPECIAL PRIVILEGE
intrenched in law and in government, is now, and al-
ways has been, the Great Enemy of the Human race.
PRICE, $1.00 DELIVERED
THE TOM WATSON BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
THOMSON, GEORGIA
The WATSONIAN
DEDICATED
To the Ideals Espoused
By
THOMAS E. WATSON
In an effort to build a monument to the late Senator
Thomas E. Watson in the form of a monthly magazine
we offer you "The Watsonian."
Its policy always will be to advocate Jeffersonian
and Watsonian principles; "equal rights to all — special
privileges to none; "fight for America and Americans
against un-American subjects."
$1.00 a Year
The WATSONIAN
THOMSON, GEORGIA.
J"
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V
SENATOR WATSON, like all great authors,
soared aloft, eagle-like, into the higher and
purer air, and saw visions not seen by the
great mass of humanity. He wrote vividly
what he saw. Those reading his masterful works
see the pictures which he has drawn and marvel
at the almost superhuman knowledge and vision
of the artist who drew them. He indeed was one
of the very greatest historians of all time. As a
literary genius he ranks with the most noted. As
an orator he thrilled his hearers with an eloquence
which was sublime. He is physically dead, but his
works and his life are a part of that which is
immortal.
He had lived, loved, and wrote in the purest
and highest ecstasies of thought which touch the
mystic realms of the great unknown. It was a
beautiful peaceful night when the earth is closest
to heaven. In the silent hush which comes just
before the dawn he reached out and grasped the
hand of the Father and stepped across the narrow
chasm which divides life from eternity, and heard
from the Father of us all the plaudit —
Well done, thou good and faithful servant,
enter thou into the joys ot thy Lord.
—From House Memorial Services to Thos. E. Watson.
Representative Lankford of Georgia
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