approached. “What’s matter, old boy?” “Bad news from home?” “Anything
out of whack?” and kindred interrogatories were fired at him from all
directions.
Some griefs are too poignant for expression. Carefully folding back the
first and last parts of a page, Joe exhibited, without comment, only
this paragraph of its perfumed surface: “I am not feeling as well,
dearest, as when I wrote you at Pasadena. Sallie is coming over
to-morrow and we are going to have our kimonos cut out.”
Reader number one passed it down the line. Silence, that was stifling,
settled over the group. Then, moved by a common impulse, a solemn
procession filed out and lined up before a rosewood counter, in front of
which ran a massive gilt rail. “Martini,” “Black and White High Ball,”
“Wilson,” “Same.” In the land of the high ball a poet once sang:
“Inspiring, bold John Barleycorn!
What dangers thou can make us scorn!
Wi’ tu’penny we fear nae evil;
Wi’ whiskey straight we’d face the divil.”
It was so in this instance. Joe came to first. “Ain’t that ——” (from the
youngest in the bunch). “Say, Joe, the repair bills of you married men
must be something fierce.”
“Oh, come on, boys, let’s go to supper.”
H. K. A.
Mr. Wallace Mistaken.
Editor Trotwood’s:
I have read with much interest your history of that remarkable family of
pacers. If the Hal family of pacers can’t produce world’s
record-breaking trotters, the theory that extreme trotting speed comes
from the pacer, or originated from the pacing gait, must go to the wall.
Mr. Wallace was certainly misinformed when he was told that the dam of
Vermont Black Hawk was a pacer. I hunted up the man who had charge of
her for upwards of eight years, and he assured me that the dam of
Vermont Black Hawk was as square gaited a trotter as he ever saw, and
that she never paced a step during all the time she was owned in the
Twombly family. This man was Mr. Shadrak Seavey, a grandson of Ezekiel
Twombly, and men who knew him personally assured me that no man’s
reputation for strict veracity was superior to that of Mr. Seavey.
Horsemen who knew this mare agreed unanimously with Mr. Seavey in
describing her color, size, conformation and gait.
The man who misled Mr. Wallace got on the track of the wrong mare. He
was the same man (Allen W. Thompson, of Woodstock, Vt.) who strenuously
contended that Vermont Black Hawk was by Paddy, and Ethan Allen 2:25½
was by Adams’ Flying Morgan, in spite of the fact that the stud book of
Sherman Morgan showed that the dam of Vermont Black Hawk was mated with
him May 14, 1832, and I learned from Mr. Seavey that Black Hawk was
foaled about the middle of April, 1833.
The stud service book of Vermont Black Hawk shows that the Holcomb mare,
dam of Ethan Allen, was mated with Black Hawk July 9, 1848. It is a
matter of history that Ethan Allen was foaled June 18, 1849. These facts
were known to Thompson, but because Ethan Allen was bay in color,
Thompson was sure there must have been some mistake. He did not succeed
in winning Mr. Wallace on that point, but touched a responsive chord
when he hit upon the pacing mare as the dam of Vermont Black Hawk.
I read your Monthly Sundays, when, I suppose, I should be at church. If
your publication is as great a success financially as in all other
respects, you will have a bank account when you reach my age that will
enable you to live comfortably the remainder of your days. That such may
be the case is my sincere wish.
Pardon me for the length of this epistle. I won’t do it again. Very
truly yours,
S. W. PARLIN.
Boston, Mass.
As to Football.
Editor Trotwood’s:
In college and university circles, during the year 1905, one of the
vital questions receiving its share of attention was, as some one has
aptly phrased it, “Is football to be mended or ended?” This and similar
questions open the subject for discussion, in the progress of which a
number of very caustic criticisms have been leveled at the game by the
presidents of some of our great universities and colleges and members of
their respective faculties. The president of Columbia University, the
first to abolish the game, recently declared that football as now played
is no longer a sport, but a profession, and, like other professions,
demands prolonged training, complete absorption of time and thought, and
is inconsistent, in practice, at least, with the devotion to work which
is the first duty of college and university students. He also calls
attention to the “figure” “gate receipts” cuts in the conduct of the
game, which, says he, “marks the game as in no small degree a commercial
enterprise.” President Wheeler of the University of California, brings
his indictment against the promoters of the modern game for “having
changed the gridiron into a multiplication table,” and otherwise
tampering with it, until to-day “American intercollegiate football has
become a spectacle, and not a sport.” The president of the College of
the City of New York reviews the evolution of football, and makes a
strong plea for a return to the game of earlier times, “when football
was rather primitive; few practice hours, few out-of-town games; no
training table; no excuse from regular university work, and the boys led
a normal student life.” However, whatever may be the opinion of certain
scholastic dignitaries, and however incompetent the “rank outsider” may
be to judge the game, a reasonable survey of the situation reveals the
fact that public opinion, the most powerful factor with which we have to
deal, is now concentrating its forces preparatory to “bucking the
centre” of the game as played, or, with the “flying wedge” of reform,
dash through its lines and destroy the dangerous features of the “mass
play.”
That there should be provision for physical culture in the course of
every educational institution is, of course, universally conceded, but
the question now up for solution is, what character of exercise, or what
system of physical development will come nearer meeting the demand for
such training. The champions of the great American game answer,
“football.” And yet, when we consider the question in the light of all
its pros and cons—and, like all other questions, it has its pros and
cons—its three sides—i. e., your side, the other side, and the inside—we
are led to believe that it specializes athletic sports to such a degree
as to exclude the student body from participation in them. The
systematic development of the physique was first given a pre-eminent
place in the training and discipline of young men by the ancient Greeks,
who sought in this way to perpetuate a hardy and vigorous manhood among
their people. The origin of the Greek games is mythical, yet we know
that they were revived in 776 by the king of Elia and Lycurgus, the
Spartan lawgiver, as a means by which intestine commotions might be
pacified and a pestilence which at that time plagued the people, stayed.
Foot racing, wrestling, leaping, quoit and javelin throwing, and, in
time, chariot racing were the chief sports with which they developed the
physical manhood of the nation. And in this connection, but a moment’s
reflection is required to suggest the benefits derived from such a
variety of sports and diversity of exercise. Contrast the sports of the
Greek game with the exclusive feature of football as played in the
colleges to-day. A college president writes of his institution: “In the
ten years from 1892 to 1902, only seventy-five different men made the
team as players and substitutes out of four thousand or more different
male students during that time in attendance.” But this is an age of
“specialists,” therefore we will let that pass, and there yet remains
the gravest possible objections to the “mass” game. It cannot be denied
with any show of fairness, that its present tendency is to discredit
scholarship and put brains at a discount, while it inflates and
exaggerates the intrinsic value of beef and bone. The primary object of
education is to discipline and develop all the faculties and endowments
of heart and head, while the maxim, “a sound mind in a sound body,” is
by no means to be despised, and yet the hero of the gridiron, the idol
of the college or university, might be a young man of mediocre ability,
or with no brains at all, and with less character than brains. Then,
again, the exaggerated importance which the average student attaches to
the more brutal features of the game creates a false standard of courage
and manhood, and demands ferocious tests that are unfair as the price of
its vindication. False standards of anything in life are, especially to
the young, always perilous, and of nothing is this more than of false
conceptions of what constitutes real courage. For instance, it is a
notorious fact that in the hour of actual battle soldiers who, in “the
piping times of peace,” were renowned fist-fighters and bullies, and
generally looked upon as “bold, bad men,” have, when the thunder of
cannon and the rattle of musketry broke upon their ears, failed to stand
the test of courage, and disgracefully and ignominiously fled, seeking
safety in precipitate flight, while other men, supposed to be physical
cowards, walked calmly and dutifully, and with unwavering step, on
through the storm of grape and shell into the very jaws of death. We are
reminded, in this connection, that the “dunghill” fights splendidly with
his “natural heels,” but it takes a game cock to stand the test of
“steel.” Ought our young men to be educated in an atmosphere in which
such base estimates of true courage and manliness must become the very
breath of their nostrils? Should a young man of culture, courage,
refinement and a high sense of honor be subjected to the humiliation of
being accounted a “cad” by his fellow students because he does not
happen to aspire to “make good” on the team or approve the game? Such a
young man may be a swift runner, a good rider, and a well trained
gymnast, but there is no field for his physical development if he does
not “make good,” and though he be manly, straightforward and proficient
in his work, he has no show with the students with the commonest,
vulgarest and most ill-bred youth imaginable, provided that “darling of
the gods” happens to weigh enough and have enough of the bulldog and
tiger in him. Is it any wonder that the brutality of the game, with all
its barbarisms and degrading tendencies, has at last awakened the
sleeping giant of public opinion, who now threatens to destroy it? And
what complicates the situation more are the revelations that from time
to time have been made, fixing the crime of dishonesty and insincerity
upon some of the faculties of schools and colleges, who have taken
devious and questionable ways and methods to violate their sworn
agreements with rival institutions, and persistently play professionals
as students. But the foxy methods of such schools and colleges have most
naturally tended to disintegrate the student conscience and re-acted
upon their faculties so as to do either one of two things—i. e., cause
the faculty to forfeit the confidence of the better class of students,
or train the student to feel that there is no wrong in dissembling,
cheating or lying where the success of the team is at stake, as well as
the reputation of their college as a leader in athletic sports.
Such a state of affairs most naturally has aroused the interest of those
who are jealous and zealous for the welfare of the colleges and
universities and individual students, and the tide of public opinion has
gradually been swelling until now it threatens the utter destruction of
the game. But will the students themselves come to the rescue and save
the game while there is yet time, by agreeing to an honest, clean
abolition of the objectionable features of the game? For, in the last
analysis of the situation, it is “up to them.”
WALTER B. CAPERS.
Columbia, Tenn.
Southern Lien Laws.
Editor Trotwood’s:
The lien laws of most of the Southern states should be repealed. They
have served their purpose, and are no longer needed. They are millstones
around the neck of twentieth century progress. To the uninitiated it may
be necessary to explain that these laws make it possible to use as
collateral for a loan things not yet in existence. It is a mortgage on
air, sunshine, rain and prospects. The renter of a small farm goes, say
in January, to a village merchant, states how much land he will plant,
what he expects the total yield will be and the merchant then agrees to
advance him, from time to time, supplies of all kinds—food, clothing,
implements, and so on, up to an agreed upon amount. For this amount the
merchant takes a lien or mortgage upon the prospective crop.
The cotton crop is not planted until April or May, so that a goodly part
of the supplies are consumed before a seed is in the ground.
The wreck and ruin of a four years’ war left little besides the land of
the South, and the enactment of these laws was an expedient adopted to
meet an emergency. The necessity for them has long since passed, leaving
the laws on the statute books. They have not been repealed because
politicians are afraid of the poor man’s vote. They lack that
independence that would do what is best for him over his protest. That
such laws encourage idleness, dependence, thriftlessness and
improvidence among those who most need to practice their opposites is
well illustrated by the following actual occurrence.
One afternoon last August a friend of mine came upon a white renter
sitting on the bank of Saluda river fishing. During the conversation my
friend expressed the hope that the long drought might be broken by a
shower, whereupon the fisherman replied: “Yes, my melon patch needs hit
powerful bad, but I’ve drawed about all I kin git on my cotton patch
anyway, and I don’t care whether a drap falls on hit or not.”
H. K. A.
Laurens, S. C.
=TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY= Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.
TROTWOOD PUBLISHING CO., Nashville, Tenn. Office 150 Fourth Ave.,
North.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
=JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE,=
=Editor-in-Chief.=
=E. E. SWEETLAND= =Business Manager=
GEO. E. McKENNON President
JOHN W. FRY Vice-President
EUGENE ANDERSON Treas.
WOOTEN MOORE Sec’y.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
=TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION=: One Year, $1.00; Single Copy, 10 cents.
Advertising Rates on application.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
NASHVILLE, TENN., MARCH, 1906.
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
With Trotwood
The great new South—does it not make one proud to read the record on a
preceding page.
* * * * *
Trotwood begs to thank personally the hundreds of friends who write him
weekly kind things about the Monthly—not only for encouraging letters,
but the more substantial evidence of their appreciation. No one but he
who is making a life fight for what is best in literature knows how much
come-again such letters put into the man who lives in his den at home
thinking out what he hopes will please and instruct. So do not imagine
you will weary him by writing. He needs them all.
* * * * *
Trotwood’s is indebted to Miss Julia A. Royster, of Raleigh, N. C., for
the realistic picture of mammy in this issue. The picture of Jake, in
the January number, was also Miss Royster’s, and we have obtained many
more typical Southern pictures by this artist—the truest and most
sympathetic we have yet seen. Miss Royster will supply these and other
Southern pictures, most artistically executed, to those who care for
them.
* * * * *
I wish to compliment Mr. Brownlow on his able article on “Monetary
Relief,” writes Mr. Denison, of Fargo, N. D. “The plan is a perfect
panacea if we could get a guarantee that bank presidents would keep
their fingers out of speculation.” Mr. Brownlow’s plan seems to meet the
approval of all thinking men. By limiting the amount which each bank may
be permitted to use, restricting the large banks to half a million, and
permitting all the small ones to issue to the extent of their capital
stock, Mr. Brownlow’s plan most effectually keeps it out of the hands of
speculators. We believe when Mr. Brownlow’s plan is thoroughly known it
will be the one adopted.
* * * * *
“I think you have struck the right ‘lead’ in your Monthly,” writes Prof.
Sterling C. Bremer, of the Link School, Thomasville, Tenn. “Unless a
Southern magazine is distinctively Southern, it has no right to exist in
the South. If it is going to give us a lot of syndicate, ready-made
goods, it had better go to New York, where the facilities for that kind
of publication are the best. So continue to give us a Trotwood’s
Monthly, and not a feeble imitation of some Northern magazine, and I
think you will be supported.”
Trotwood appreciates the criticism above, from a scholar in one of the
best schools in the South. The more so because we do not claim any
particular credit for making Trotwood’s different. We are picturing
naturally the life around us—its songs, traditions and ideals. We could
make our Monthly twice as large by using syndicate matter. But it will
add nothing to the thought of the Monthly nor to its quality.
Here are some good ones from a little book called “Philosophy of the
Street,” by E. R. Petherick, of Merrill, Wisconsin. There are hundreds
more in the book as good, and that is saying much:
Two people may differ and both be wrong.
Ridicule is a cross-eyed cousin of wit.
Many of us devote too much energy to increasing our wants.
It is always easy to get a front place by facing the other way.
The man who has no secrets from his wife is a widower.
Cunning is the selfish side of wisdom.
It is a good idea to remember that the present is constantly becoming
the past.
There is about as much sense in judging a man by his talk as there would
be in buying a dog by his bark.
Few people know how to be good to themselves.
After a man has received two favors in succession, he begins to consider
them part of his constitutional right.
* * * * *
“It may interest you to know,” writes Prof. Henry C. Cox, of The Froebel
Public School, Chicago, “that on Christmas Eve sixteen hundred and
sixty-seven children of this school sang one of your Christmas poems set
to music.”
It not only interests us, but it makes us exceedingly vain. To live in
the hearts of children! Who would swap them for the sages? And that
reminds us of several bright things of children—neighbors of Trotwood—so
bright that we thought once of sending them to the Ladies’ Home Journal,
an awfully nice female paper published in Philadelphia, but we have
decided they are good enough for Trotwood’s:
Little Octavine had lived upstairs at grandmother’s all her short life
of four summers, and objected often to walking up the steps. Recently
her parents moved to Nashville. Everybody knows what a beautiful Union
Station Nashville has, but what an abominably long flight of steps leads
from the tracks up to the street. Little Octavine slowly and painfully
climbed them, and when she reached the top sighed and said, woefully:
“Mamma, if you had told me Nashville was upstairs I never would have
moved here.”
Little Ethel, aged two, who can barely talk, saw for the first time the
Jersey cow chewing her cud the other day. Ethel watched her long and
eagerly, but the more she yearned the more indifferent the cow chewed
on. Finally she began to cry: “Mamma, make her let me—chew it—awhile!”
Henry’s mother had been operated on for appendicitis. He didn’t know
exactly, but supposed there was an awful rent somewhere. One day he came
in in time to see the nurse giving his mother a glass of water. “Don’t
do that,” he shouted; “don’t do that! Don’t you know it will just run
out of her?”
* * * * *
In reading some of the business letters on file in Trotwood’s the other
day I came across a letter and its answer that made me catch my breath.
When I reached the P. S. I had the same laugh that you will have—and as
a laugh is always worth money, I am passing it on to Trotwood’s readers.
The letter is from our friend, F. D. Hoogstraat, Ravenna, Mich., who,
after saying many kind things about us and enclosing check for five
subscribers to Trotwood’s, ends with the following friendly bit of fun:
“I was out your way forty-odd years ago, and I killed as many of you as
you did of me, and I feel now that every thing is square and even
between us.”
I turned over the carbon copy containing the business manager’s reply,
and this is what I read toward the latter part of the letter: “We will
be glad to have you come this way again, and we’ll promise to give you a
‘warm reception,’ but not the kind we gave you before. The same Johnnies
who tried to kill you forty years ago with bullets will try it again
with kindness and moonshine whisky. They will charge you with a
handshake instead of a bayonet and will put you in the best bed instead
of a prison. The people of the South look forward and not backward, and
have long ago forgotten and forgiven.
“Yours truly,
E. E. SWEETLAND,
“Bus. Man. Trotwood’s Monthly.
“P. S.—The niggers you were fighting us for about forty years ago are
still here. You may have them now without a fight.”
Business Department
Here is a sample letter received; and we get them every day, and above
all we are glad to get them and very grateful for them: “I have been
taking TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY for the past five months and I want to say to
you that I never invested a dollar in my life that I thought I got as
much enjoyment out of as I have the one I sent you for TROTWOOD’S
MONTHLY. I hope all who take it are as well pleased as myself. Frank
Harrington, Eau Claire, Wis.”
* * * * *
Here is another from Mr. F. L. Wacholz, cashier of the First National
Bank, Forest City, Iowa: “I find TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY to be one of the
most interesting magazines that I have read in recent years. The
contents are suitable for any man, woman or child to read with pleasure
and profit.”
* * * * *
If you are “from Missouri” read this one: “Tell your agent in Prattville
that I will refund the money to any one subscribing to TROTWOOD’S
MONTHLY if they are not satisfied with it. McQueen Smith, Prattville,
Ala.”
Mr. Smith can refund if called on, for he had 1,200 acres of cotton in
one field last year.
* * * * *
If you feel inclined to help us along—if you think we deserve help—you
can do us a great favor by asking your friends to send for a sample
copy, or send us their names and we will send the sample copy.
* * * * *
We have received several letters within the past month from northern
subscribers asking for information in regard to the South. We are always
glad to give any information within our power, and will endeavor to
stick just as close to facts as information in our possession will
enable us.
* * * * *
Advertisers when spending money for advertising space want to know where
their inquiries come from. If you will always mention that you saw the
advertisement in TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY we will appreciate it. We protect
you by running nothing but clean and reliable advertising.
* * * * *
“Strictly sound and guaranteed” sounds good in an ad., and the Bay Colt
advertised by P. O. Box 786, Columbus, O., is to be sold with that
understanding.
* * * * *
D. D. Streeter, of Kalamazoo, still offers Thespian for sale, but the
price has been raised. It sometimes pays to buy quick.
* * * * *
The Horse Exchange Co., of Vevay, Ind., can fill the bill if you will
tell them what you want.
* * * * *
Dr. Hopkins, of Fort Branch, Ind., offers something worth the money. In
fact The Home of Bert Onward has some very attractive bargains—not the
marked-down kind, but horses worth the money.
* * * * *
If you know of anybody looking for a thorough and practical man to
manage their farm, you might call their attention to the ad. of J. H. G.
in this issue. We happen to have a personal acquaintance with this
gentleman, and if you are from Missouri, he can “show you.”
* * * * *
If you have a stallion to trade for a splendid pacing mare, read the ad.
from Mr. Dunlap, Clarksville, Ark.
* * * * *
C. R. Kilbury, Plain City, Ohio, offers a stallion that seems to have
plenty of backing in his pedigree, and it will pay you to read his ad.
* * * * *
Ideal Stock Farm, at East Aurora, N. Y., have two offers in this issue,
and Mr. Bradburn, the Superintendent, makes it a point to stick to FACTS
in his ads.
* * * * *