CHAPTER XLII

General Sherman’s army was marching through Georgia.

At daybreak the pillar of cloud went before him, and at night great

bonfires of burning homes lit up their rearward. The strong fled at their

approach, and the weak trembled and prayed.

There was a day when the foragers of the victorious veterans reached the

home of an old couple who lived with their few slaves in the path of the

devourer. They had but returned from the burial of a little baby boy, a

colored baby whose mother was the faithful old cook, Mary Ann, and whose

father was a brother of the _Chronicle’s_ Joe in Charleston. They were

standing under the vine-colored doorway looking at a dense smoke rising

in the direction of a neighbor’s, when a squad of soldiers in blue came

up.

“Old woman, we are hungry. Got anything to eat?”

The best the white-haired grandmother had was set before them, and when

it was gone—more. At last one of them said:

“Madam, you had best hide everything you have, or by this time to-morrow

you will have nothing.”

“Shet up, ol’ Secesh!” said another.

When the men had gone, they dug little holes and hid their few treasures;

a dozen knives and forks and as many spoons, and the old man took his

watch and put it far up the chimney. By the time it was done, blue-coated

soldiers were swarming all over the premises.

“Old man, come out here!”

When he followed some men into the bushes, they made merry with the

grandmother.

“Old woman, where is your silver?”

Silence.

“Where is the silver?”

By this time the smoke-house was on fire and a half dozen bales of cotton

were burning. The negro slaves gathered in terror.

Soon the white-haired man came back, his face purple, his eyes bloodshot,

his step tremulous.

“Give me my watch, Mary.”

“Why, Henry, it is not theirs!”

“Give it. They have choked me nearly to death.”

The old man staggered to his chair. They had taken him to the swamp, and

bending a small sapling over the road, stretched a rope upon it and said:

“Now, old man, tell where you keep your gold.”

“I have no gold, gentlemen.”

“Don’t lie to us. We’ve heard all that before. You might as well tell us

first as last. See that rope, you know what it means.”

“I have told you the truth.” The old man was thin and aged.

“Swing him up, boys.”

He dangled from the end of the rope, and then they let him fall.

“Now, where is the gold?”

He did not understand at first, then he said feebly:

“The gold—oh, yes, the gold—. I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have no gold.”

“Swing him up again.”

The jerk on his neck well-nigh broke it, and the suffocation was almost

too much.

“Will you remember now where it is?”

“The gold—oh, yes, gentlemen,” dazedly, “I’m sorry, but I have no gold.”.

“Swing the damned rebel once more.”

It was really useless, for he was insensible, and when he fell he looked

like a dead man. His withered old hand and his thin gray hair and his

weak aged heart could not stand much. He was totally unconscious.

“We nearly went too far that time, boys.”

When he came to, they were bathing his face in the brook.

“Oh, yes,” he said, involuntarily, “the gold. It is as I have said—only

the watch I told you of at first. I am an old man now and have no use for

gold.”

So they brought him back to the house.

“Old woman, fork out that watch.”

“I will not do it.”

“You will!”

They were coming towards her when the one whom they had called “old

Secesh,” entered, and they stopped.

“Men, for shame! For shame! Don’t dare touch that old woman! The first

man who touches these old people will be shot,” he continued, raising his

gun, and they went sullenly out into the yard.

And when they had gone, they had taken all—the sweet potatoes in the

hills, the corn, bacon, flour, the cows, cooking utensils, anything any

one wanted. And “old Secesh” stayed by the aged woman’s side.

“It is a shame,” he said, apologetically. “If only Grant were our

commander! This isn’t the way he and Lee fight.”

At intervals other soldiers came, and finding all taken, passed on. To

one she looked up reproachfully, and said, as she listened to the groans

of the negroes about their burning cabins.

“And yet you say you are the friends of our negroes?”

“We came to save the Union. Damn the niggers,” was the reply she

received; and then the man continued:

“You think Georgy is havin’ a bad time of it, old woman—jes’ wait till

we git to Ca’liny, we’ll grease her over and burn her up. That’s where

treason begun, an’, by God, that’s where it shall end!”

“Yes, and old Columbia’ll be red, white and blue when we’re done,” chimed

in another.

At sunset the aged woman went out into the empty yards and an old negro

mammy was sitting on her porch, her body swaying backward and forward, as

is the custom of the race when in the deepest misery. Occasionally a low

moan and the ringing of hands in silent sorrow. Then seeing her mistress

approaching, she cried out:

“Mistis, what kind of folks is dese here Yankees? Dey won’ eben let de

daid rest in de grabe.”

“Why, Mary Ann, what is it?”

“You know my little John, what was buried yistiddy? Ain’t dey done tuk

him up and lef’ him on de top o’ de groun’ fer de hogs to root?”

The soldiers had seen the fresh earth, and they mistook the new-made

grave for hidden treasures, and “a little dead nigger was not worth

reburying.”

So the black mother rocked and moaned in horror and agony.

And that night by the campfires not far away, a man was warming his hands

and saying:

“Dees tarn rebels down here tink dey haf a hard time in Georgy—jus’

wait till we strike South Ca’liny oncet. We’ll burn ’em up all to oncet

already.”

“Have you heard what Sherman says, Dutchy?” a soldier asked.

“_I_ know what Cheneral Sherman haf say, and I will carry it oud

entirely. Ve vill burn up that Columbia ven de tree rockets goes up

oncet. Ve vill gif dem hell already, dey hadn’t ought ter lef’ de

glorious union,” and he laughed knowingly.

“General Sherman didn’t say that.”

“Ach, mein Gott, don’t I know vat Cheneral Sherman say and tink? Ach, he

ain’t say nothings, aber he think a blicky full. You jus’ vait till we

burn dat Columbia, and Cheneral Sherman vill be dere and von’t say one

word, py tam!”

[Illustration: _To be continued_]

THE RACE PROBLEM

By James H. Branch

The present race problem is cognate to the African slavery problem,

which preceded it in point of time. Slavery was a grievous fault, and

grievously hath the South answered it. Morally, the whole country is

responsible for its introduction.

The slave trade, the most degrading and offensive branch of slavery, was

carried on by New England, they being a maritime people, and the South,

an agricultural section then, bought the negroes as laborers. Then came

the day when it was to shake the foundation stones of the republic.

It was agitated in pulpit and hall; in song and in story. The art of

the novelist, the moving strains of sacred song, and the dagger of the

assassin, were alike employed to arouse interest and zeal in the fate of

the poor, downtrodden negro.

These were the abolitionists whose chief seat was Boston, whose place

of rendezvous was Faneuil Hall, a place made historic by great speeches

and great meetings there in the early days, by the lovers of free

institutions. Plymouth pulpit added its voice, and the days of slavery

were then numbered; but the country was to be baptized with fire, and

with blood, if nothing better. These people were fanatics, and fanaticism

has been defined as “_a popular movement acting without reason or

judgment_, always, however, founded upon some religious or _philanthropic

idea or sentiment_, to give _it character and volume_.”

This bird of dark plumage and portentous croak, winged its way from

Exeter Hall, London, the parent body of the American society meeting

there. Results will forever mark an object lesson for true patriots, and

practical statesmen and sound a note of warning against incorporating

altruistic, philanthropic fads, and the various cults growing out of

idealism into party platforms and making use of such explosive material

to gain political advantage.

Slavery was abolished in the English colonies and elsewhere peacefully,

as would have ultimately happened here; and though it may have been

delayed a half century, nay, even a century, the net moral gain would

have been far greater.

England had slavery also, and the Exeter Hall people, like those of

Faneuil Hall, were fanatics. They exalted the negro and ascribed to him

attributes, qualities and possibilities equal to those of the white

race, and hated his owners and the constitution, government and laws of

this republic as founded by the fathers. To-day many of the triflers

with the stern facts of anthropological and ethnological science, who

distort the truths of history while laboring under the magic spell of

this fanaticism, confound all dark, dusky or colored peoples with the

true negro of Africa. They have credited the ancient civilization of

Egypt to the negro race, when many school boys know that the Egyptians,

the founders of Thebes, of Memphis, the builders of the pyramids, and

the carvers of the Sphinx, were _Coptics_, not negroes. Neither Pharaoh,

Ptolemy nor Cleopatra, the fair sorceress of the Nile, were negroes,

though natives of Africa.

When the Constitution of the United States was framed many of the

delegates to the convention traveled by private conveyance; and as

slavery existed both at the North and South, many of them brought

negro drivers or servants to the meeting place. Slavery was even then

fully established, recognized and protected by a clause inserted in the

Constitution as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State

under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of

any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor,

but shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or

labor may be due.”

This provision was adopted by the convention without opposition, and

this solemn instrument, creating a government among men, which was to

become at once the wonder and admiration of the statesmen of the world,

bore the signatures of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and Madison, but

Senator Sumner, the leading spirit of rabid fanaticism, in the Senate of

the United States, said that it was “a covenant with hell;” and advised

resistance, by force if necessary. Many Northern states enacted “personal

liberty laws” prohibiting the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.

The Republican party was formed upon this new-born craze, and

incorporated these new and strange doctrines into its platform at

Chicago, in June, 1860; and in five months the movement culminated in the

election of Mr. Lincoln to the presidency.

If there is one thing more than another sedulously taught to Southern

youth as a political creed it was that our government was based upon a

_written_ constitution which should be obeyed, upheld and respected; to

do otherwise was treasonable. The South then viewed the situation with

horror and alarm.

Nat Turner, a negro preacher in North Carolina, had, some years before,

fomented a servile insurrection and in the night time the negroes rose

and murdered many white families.

John Brown, a white fanatic from the West, had gone down to Virginia and

incited servile insurrection; and having armed men, made war against

Virginia. He was taken, and after trial for treason, was legally

executed. When his remains crossed the Potomac river, going North, his

casket was covered with flowers, thus testifying that his aborted efforts

in Virginia had many sympathizers. A servile insurrection thenceforth

became a possibility to be thought of. A servile insurrection meant

efforts at midnight assassination. The South is now, as then, desirous of

preserving good order, peace and quiet, between the two races, and the

people of other sections do not realize the situation.

These facts are of interest now only in throwing light upon the view

point of the South, when a new political party triumphed, the leading

principle of which was interference with slavery. Aside from pecuniary

considerations as to the value of the slaves, the effect upon the slaves

themselves of these agitations was a matter of the deepest concern and

the South sought safety and repose in withdrawing from the Union as a

last resort. Its people were divided on the subject and the ordinances

of secession passed by narrow majorities, thus showing that under normal

conditions, the South was strongly attached to the Union.

It is painful to utter views not in accordance with a well founded

hope for the final uplifting of all men, but naught shall be set down

in malice or ill-will to an inferior and weaker race. The white man of

the South has a duty and a burden; and if he has, as has been often

charged, suppressed negro votes and elected legislatures, he has, at

the same time, in ten Southern states, impoverished and ruined by war,

appropriated for negro schools over _one hundred millions of dollars_.

While the South has encouraged the negro in industrial, educational, and

moral training, and produced some fine specimens of the negro race, still

there are millions who are just as they were, and many good observers see

evidences of retrogression in the generation since emancipation.

No prophetic vision can see, no intellect can foretell, what the final

result will be. All sorts of speculations have been indulged, extinction

by absorption, by a gradual dispersion over the states, or, remaining in

the South, a co-equal parallel development of the two races.

A race problem of course implies race antagonisms, and the chief factor

in bringing about race antagonism is not in the bare fact that the

negro vote is Republican, but in the fact that the race, _vote as a

race_, solidly, _en masse_, and _naturally_, in view of the manner of

its emancipation. It is not that white men see in mere party allegiance

a menace to good order, or are intolerant of Republican politics,

especially the _national_ and _economic_ politics of the party, for many

are at heart protectionists; but it is the perpetual _solidarity_ of the

vote of the negro race, voting as a race that sharply accentuates race

attrition. Much has been spoken and written about the _solidarity_ of

the Southern states in voting, and little notice taken of the _cause_,

which is the _solidarity_ of the negro vote. Thus one _solidarity_ begets

another _solidarity_, and the South has not been in a normal condition,

politically, since emancipation.

Is there not a problem in this?

It is submitted to all fair minded men whether it is not true—that

if any race whatever vote solidly and habitually, as a race, be they

German, Irish, Jew, Negro or Chinese, that it would inevitably produce

race antagonism, in any state in the union. The South had at the close

of the Civil War, its share of the Whig party, who on account of _negro

solidarity_ were driven into _white solidarity_—the Democratic party, and

they and their descendants have remained solidly there, voting solidly

against the solid negro vote. In many parts of the South the negroes

outnumber the whites, and could elect, if their solid vote was counted as

cast, judges, clerks and sheriffs, and in at least three states, state

officials, a state of affairs as much to be desired as a Chinaman mayor

of San Francisco, or governor of California. The negro vote has been in

some way neutralized, or he has not voted the full numerical strength of

the race, else such results must have followed.

The fact is, the negro has been practically disfranchised for thirty-five

years, and the South has grown tired of dishonesty in elections. Thus, by

restricting suffrage, the _causa causans_ is removed.

Under these constitutions a new star of hope for civic virtue and fair

elections has just arisen upon the Southern horizon. Throughout this long

midnight of political darkness hope has been cherished of a brighter

day. The political wanton, or fanatic, only, could seek to disturb,

or obstruct it. The best element of the citizens of Alabama are not

unlike, and are morally and intellectually the equals of citizens of

other states, and they may be trusted to do equal justice to both races.

With the right to vote restricted, and the removal of the fear of negro

majorities, white men can afford to divide and sternly call each other

to account at the ballot box. Two parties are essential in the American

political system, and the best results cannot be obtained without them.

When these new constitutions shall be acquiesced in, or judicially tested

and sustained, _solidarity_ in the South will disappear; and the republic

will rest upon surer foundations. The constitutional guarantees of life,

liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness, with the facilities afforded

him for education, moral and industrial training, are of far more value

to the negro than the political right to vote; which in the present stage

of his progress has served only to make friction between the races. After

a time it may be the part of wisdom to remove present restrictions, and

time alone can point the way.

Intelligent and patriotic negroes will not fail to discern, that when

vast masses of the race no longer vote solidly against their white

neighbors, Southern white men will be more and more disposed to enforce,

in his favor, the rights enumerated. In other words, the race is

restricted in a purely political function, but it is enlarged in every

other direction by that very restriction.

It may require the passing of several generations of negroes to determine

their real capabilities under the uplifting influence of American

institutions, for they have failed sadly in other emancipation countries.

There were 6,000,000 Africans held as slaves on this continent, at the

beginning of the century just closed. Only 883,602 of this number, were

held in the United States; about 2,000,000 by Spain on the continent and

West Indian Islands, about 900,000 by England on the continent and in the

West Indies. The remainder were held by the Portuguese, Dutch, Danes and

Norwegians in their various colonies. Their descendants have all been

emancipated, some for a hundred years, some for only a few years, and

they furnish fields for observing the experiments made with the negro as

a part and parcel of the social, political, and economic affairs of those

countries.

Emancipation occurred in Hayti in 1792, as an incident of the French

Revolution, and the negroes rose and exterminated every man, woman and

child of the white race in the island, with atrocious and revolting

details unrecorded. They then set up a republic, a military despotism

it was, and such it has remained. Splendid sugar and coffee plantations

left untilled, grew up in wild growths, the rich resources of the island

were consumed. For a brief space the orderly habits of the white race

flickered, and then went out in darkness, eclipsed by a saturnalia of

idleness and crime. Negro nature, left to itself, relapsed into barbarism.

“But,” says Froude, the most distinguished modern English historian,

“behind the immorality, behind the religiosity, there lies active and

live, the horrible revival of the West African superstition; the serpent

worship, the child sacrifice, and the cannibalism. There is no room to

doubt it.” A missionary assured me that an instance of it occurred only

a year ago, within his personal knowledge. The facts are notorious. A

full account was published in one of the local newspapers, and the only

result was that the president imprisoned the editor for exposing his

country.[11]

Bishop Kingsley, who visited the island in 1871, says: “The chief center

of this detestable system (Obeahism or Vaudoux worship) is St. Vincent,

where, so I am told by one who knows that island well, some sort of

secret college or school of the diabolic prophets exists.... In Jamaica

I was assured by a non-conformist missionary, who had long lived there,

Obeah is by no means on the decrease, and in Hayti it is probably on

the increase, and taking, at least until the fall and death of Salnave,

shapes which when made public in the civilized world will excite more

than mere disgust. But of Hayti I shall be silent, having heard more of

the state of society in that unhappy place than it is prudent, for the

sake of the few white residents, to tell at present.”[12]

Again he says: “The same missionary told me that in Sierra Leone also,

Obeah and poisoning go hand in hand.” Ibid. p. 345.

Sir Spencer St. John, for twelve years the British Minister to Hayti,

later Minister to Mexico, in a work entitled “Hayti, the Black Republic,”

pp. 196-204, gives at length the horrible details of these practices,

as brought out in a legal trial by the evidence, to which trial he was

an eye witness. Several persons were charged with, and convicted of,

cannibalism. A child being the victim, was first offered as a sacrifice,

to propitiate the serpent. “In treating of the black,” says Sir Spencer,

“and the mulatto, as they appeared to me during my residence among

them, I fear that I shall be considered by some to judge harshly. Such,

however, is not my intention. Brought up under Sir James Brook, whose

enlarged sympathies could endure no prejudice of race or color, I do

not remember ever to have felt any repugnance to my fellow creatures

on account of difference of complexion. I have dwelt about thirty-five

years among colored people of various races, and am sensible of no

prejudice against them” (pp. 8 and 9). “All who know me know that I

had no prejudice of color, and if I place the Haytian in general in an

unenviable light, it is from a strong conviction that it is necessary

to describe the people as they are, and not as one would wish them to

be. The most difficult chapter to write was that on Vaudoux worship and

cannibalism. I have endeavored to paint it in the least sombre colors,

and none who know the country will think that I have exaggerated; in

fact, had I listened to the testimony of many experienced residents

I should have described rites at which dozens of human victims were

sacrificed at a time. Everything I have related has been founded on

evidence collected in Hayti, from Haytian official documents, from

trustworthy officers of the Haytian government, my foreign colleagues,

and from respectable residents, principally, however, from Haytian

sources.”

Sir Spencer St. John is an Englishman, a gentleman, and in no way

concerned with the race problem under discussion. His testimony should

stimulate honest inquiry among conservative thinkers, and should sober

fanaticism. While the negro of the Southern states has not fallen to the

level of the Haytian, there is abundant proof in the history of every

country where emancipation has taken place, that the negro race in every

instance, when left to guide itself, and the prop of the white man’s rule

withdrawn, has retrograded—reverted to the original type.

Retrogression, decay, vice and Voodoism are the same in Jamaica as in

Hayti, modified now for the better, since it has been changed from a

responsible colony, as classified in the British Colonial system, to a

crown colony, and the elective franchise withdrawn from the negroes. The

crown colonies are governed directly by the home government.

Emancipation began there in 1838 and was accomplished through the

agitations of Exeter Hall. Jamaica is one of the most fertile spots on

the earth’s surface; and tilled under the direction of Englishmen, it was

a garden spot, producing vast quantities of coffee and sugar, yielding

a large revenue to the government. Indolence followed emancipation, and

the once beautiful plantations became waste places. Poverty and want

prevailed, revenues failed, and the parliament appointed committees to

investigate. The evidence taken showed that the negroes had quit work,

the plantations had grown up in bush, and they had squatted in the

forests and along the streams. The Exeter Hall Society made many excuses

and explanations, and all failing to account for the negro’s degeneracy,

they finally urged that he be given the right to vote, in order to

encourage him; and under the tireless exertions of these fanatics,

parliament enacted a universal suffrage law, with a proviso that the

voter should own some real estate, but without specifying the amount. The

land had been abandoned and had little value, and the Exeter Hall Society

bought a tract of about 1,200 acres, and gave it in small parcels to the

negroes until 50,000 of them were qualified to vote under the law, which

was not passed anticipating such a result.

The negroes then had a majority over the whites, and speedily took charge

of the government of the island, and nearly all white men left their

property and the country. “That Jamaica,” says a British official, “was a

land of wealth, rivaling the East in its means of riches—nay, excelling

it as a market for capital, as a place in which money might be turned;

and that it now is a spot on the earth almost more poverty stricken than

any other, so much is known to almost all men.”

The little island of Barbadoes contained 160,000 negroes and about 300

white men, and as there was no waste land for the negroes to squat

upon, and the white men took care that they obtained no land so as to

qualify, that island has remained a highly cultivated, prosperous and

happy country. These last named islands furnish striking contrasts,

and the islands of Jamaica and Hayti are irrefragable proofs that

unrestricted negro suffrage and negro government bring desolation and

ruin to both races; and there is no instance to the contrary in all of

the emancipation colonies, including the Hispano-American colonies.

San Domingo, once a Spanish colony, and in which emancipation had

taken place, is naturally the most fertile of these islands, and was

abandoned by Spain. During General Grant’s term of office, a commission

was sent there to examine this island and its resources, with a view of

appropriating it, and establishing a negro state, by emigration from

the United States. Senator Sumner, the leading exponent of abolition,

defeated its ratification in the Senate, well knowing the negro’s

incapacity for self-government.

Out of the vast mass of evidence the limits of this paper will not permit

more than a few opinions additional, from travelers and men of science,

in each instance wholly disinterested in American politics, being natives

and residents of other countries.

David Page, of Edinburgh, F. N. S. & C., says: “However much mistaken

philanthropy may argue to the contrary, there can be but little doubt

that the Ethiopian, or black man of Africa, is inferior both to Mongol

and Malay, and still more to the Caucasian. He has had possession of the

African Continent with all its variety of situation, climate and produce,

from time immemorial, and yet has no arts save the rudest, no literature,

no science, no temples, no ships, no cities, no moral code; in most

instances no idea even of a Supreme Being; nothing in fine, that removes

him beyond the desires and necessities of animal existence.[13]”

Professor Page then quotes the English traveler, Sir Samuel Baker, and

says: “Notwithstanding all this and a thousand times more (he refers to

the Andamaner and the native of Australia) there are some who still

argue about the equality of the human race, and talk high sounding

generalizations regarding the unity and brotherhood of men. As well

might they contend for equality of brothers of the same family, or equal

capacity among the men and families of a nation. As in the physical

world there are suns, systems, and satellites, so in the vital and

intellectual, there are higher and lower, races born to command and lead,

and others as certainly destined to obey and follow.

“It is not because one race has risen under favorable circumstances, and

another retrograded or remained stationary under conditions of an adverse

nature, but because of aboriginal differences and capabilities, which no

circumstances can efface nor appliances counteract.

“Brotherhood there may be and ought to be, as far as the inherent

instincts of race toward race will permit; and these instincts are not

to be disregarded with impunity; but as to unity, if by unity is meant

oneness of power and tendency, it is an assertion that all history and

present experience must deny. It is a mere phrase that may please the

unthinking ear, but it is not a fact that can satisfy the reason.[14]”

Captain Richard Burton, geographer, explorer, ethnical psychologist, a

shrewd and sagacious observer, says: “The study of psychology in Eastern

Africa is the study of man’s rudimental mind; when subject to the agency

of material nature, he neither progresses nor retrogrades.

“He would appear rather a degeneracy from the civilized man than a savage

rising to the first step, were it not for his apparent incapacity for

improvement. He has not the ring of the true metal. There is no rich

nature as in the New Zealander for education to cultivate. He seems to

belong to one of those childish races, which, never rising to man’s

estate, fall like worn out links from the great chain of animated nature.

He unites the incapacity of infancy with the unpliancy of age. For

centuries he has been in direct intercourse with the most advanced people

of the Eastern Coast (Arabs), still he has stopped short at the threshold

of progress; he shows no sign of development; no higher or varied orders

of intellect are called into being.[15]”

“I have,” says Du Chaillu, “been struck with the steady decrease of the

population even during the short time I have been in Africa, on the

coast and in the interior, but before I account for it, let me raise

my voice in defense of the white man who has been accused of being the

cause of it. Wherever he settles, the aborigines are said to disappear.

I admit that such is the case; but the decrease of the population had

already taken place before the white man came; the white man noticed, but

could not stop it. The decrease of African population is due to several

causes—witchcraft taking away more lives than ever the slave trade did.

“I have found no vestige whatever of ancient civilization. Other

travelers in different parts of Africa have not been more successful—I

think everything tends to show, that the negro is of great antiquity, and

has always remained stationary. As to his future capabilities I think

extreme views have prevailed. Some think that the negro will never rise

higher than he is; others think he is capable of reaching the highest

state of civilization. I do not agree with either of these opinions. I

believe that the negro may become a more useful member of mankind than he

is at present, that he may be raised to a higher standard, but if left to

himself he will soon fall back into barbarism, for we have no example to

the contrary.

“The efforts of missionaries for hundreds of years have had no effect.

The missionary goes away and the people relapse into barbarism. That he

(the African) will disappear in time from the land I have but little

doubt; and that he will follow in the course of time the inferior races

who have preceded him. So let us write his history.”[16]

The foregoing is from the pen of a man of science, an eminent naturalist,

and is worthy of the thoughtful consideration of all persons to whom

evidence has meaning.

That the present condition of the negro in the Southern states is

superior to the African in his native lair, or his descendants in

other emancipation countries, cannot be doubted. But it should not

be forgotten, that whatever improvement there may be, is due to the

training of a superior race of white men, for many generations, and since

emancipation, to the facilities for education, morally, intellectually,

and industrially.

The Southern white man, under normal conditions, in the absence of

excitement and irritating circumstances, is the negro’s best friend.

He can here work out his destiny, slowly, as natural law moves—through

generations, and he will reach his goal, whether it be high or low, and

no man should obstruct, or deny him this. It is only insisted that he

is not yet fitted for the elective franchise unrestricted—a right, as

jurists hold, not springing out of man’s nature, but a civil right to

be conferred by the state upon those most capable of its intelligent

exercise. Nor is it conferred by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments

to the constitution; those amendments are merely limitations upon the

states preventing them from enacting a law excluding negroes from voting,

because they are negroes.

They do not prevent restrictions upon voting, if reasonable, and applied

to both races.

About one-fourth of the area of the United States is directly afflicted

with this race problem, and while the people of the South are more

interested in its wise management than the people of other states, yet

every patriot and every business man looking forward to that high destiny

which awaits us as a nation, must feel concerned for its proper solution.

The matter should be put upon a higher plane than party politics.

Investments and rapidly developing industries in the South would be

retarded by partisan agitation, and business men, acting through

their organizations, should seek to avert it. It is believed that

all of the Southern states had, at the time of the adoption of the

fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, universal suffrage fixed in their

constitutions, and since the legislatures could not restrict suffrage

under the old constitutions, the effect of those amendments, was to

suddenly enfranchise ex-slaves, while most of their former owners were

disfranchised for participation in rebellion.

The latter was not unnatural, but the former was, and must stand in

history as the extreme limit to which partisan and fanatical passions

have carried men. The most rapacious exactions of pecuniary indemnity,

or the stripping the conquered of the very soil of their fathers, are in

comparison trifling inconveniences.

That one great enlightened section of the white race, was willing

to submerge another great section of its own race, beneath a sea of

African ex-slaves, has a parallel only in England’s calling to its

aid “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an

undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The one was an offense against _life_.

The other an offense against _institutions_.

The one violated every known rule of civilized warfare; the other

consigned the conquered to the dominion of African ex-slaves.

Both will live in history—both will testify to enlightened men, the one,

of the horrors of war, the other, of the baleful sequences of war.

By every consideration of prudence, and the general welfare of all

concerned the status of the negroes of the Southern states should not

be interfered with by congressional, or other outside action. His

unrestricted right to vote, and his solid vote as a race, have been the

greatest impediments to good government in the Southern states. Never was

there a more appropriate field for the application of the doctrine of

_laissez faire_.

[11] The English In the West Indies, p. 333.

[12] At Last a Christmas in the West Indies, p. 338.

[13] Man, p. 77.

[14] Great Basin of the Nile, Vol. 1, p. 250.

[15] Lake Regions of Central Africa, p. 489.

[16] A Journey to Ashango Land, pp. 435-437.

A SATANIC SUGGESTION

When de Lawd got Adam all ready foh ter talk,

Sez de debbil, stan’in’ by ’n’ lookin’ shahper ’n a hawk,

“Dey’s sump’n in de ribs what’s gwine ter make a balk!”

’N’ he wink—dat ole debbil.

De rascal met Adam pokin’ ’long one day;

“You’se lonesome, Mistah Adam?” ’n’ he went on ter say,

“Ax de Lawd ter make you sump’n ter dribe dat away.”

’N’ he grin—dat ole debbil.

De Lawd tuk de rib right outen Adam’s side.

When de woman’s all done Adam’s so glad he cried.

Nen comes dat fuss in de gyahden—’n’ de debbil neahly died!

He laf so,—dat ole debbil.

_William Chester Estabrook._

REMUS

(WAS MY DOG)

A SERIAL NARRATIVE OF FUN, FISHING AND FIGHTING FORTY YEARS AGO

BOY TALES FOR BALD HEADS

By Laps. D. McCord

BATTLE OF BURKE’S ORCHARD

Ed and I skinned our rabbits and sunk them in the creek and kept on over

to Burke’s apple orchard, where we found two dozen boys belonging to

all parts of town and representing all the gangs and tribes and feuds.

Newspapers prate about Kentucky feuds, Italian vendettas, the Mafia and

such petty things, as if they were in it alongside of the Fayetteville

feuds. There were various and sundry deadly schisms existing among the

several factions, with sub-feuds between the minor clans, under-feuds,

super-feuds, and inter-feuds, until the feudal system ramified the whole

body politic of Fayetteville boydom so thickly that you could roust one

up and make grim visaged war wrinkle his front whenever two or three boys

were gathered together, except at Sunday-school.

I have not a word in protest of the outrage perpetrated upon us by the

Kentuckians and Italians, in imitating our feuds. Everybody knows it is a

brazen infringement, but these people are outside the jurisdiction of our

two judges.

The clans were dividing, and a brawl brewing when we got there, and it

looked like there was going to be about a five-pronged battle, with

perhaps a little side rock-polemics and personal gouging disputations.

Ed and I did not know the merits of the question under debate, but in

those days the code did not require you to know the mere vulgar details

and causes. All you wanted to be certain of was that the other fellows

were there. The world should rid itself of the delusion that it requires

any especial aggravation to prompt a boy to hit at any head he sees

poking up.

The first thing I saw, Sam Ramsey had climbed after a particularly red

apple that Bob Neeld had claimed the week before, and when he shook it

down John Formwalt picked it up and bit it. Fon Feeney, who belonged to

a subsection of the Ramsey Rooters, saw the dirty deed, and he smashed

John on the jaw with a rotten apple, and Bob grabbed the red apple. A boy

does not mind being hit with a pile driver or a club, or being shoved

off a house backwards, or shaken out of a tree, in a fair fight; but he

despises to be hit with anything soft and rotten. When Fon hit John, Will

McEwen made a dive at Fon, but Bob Wilson tripped him up and fell on top,

and in rushed eight fellows, looking for an opening. John Formwalt, with

rotten apple smeared over his jaw and running down under his shirt, was

a terror to see, and here he came making for everybody in sight, but he

ran jam against Charlie Fulton’s fist, and stopped to count the stars.

Then Matt Neill came frisking up to close the debate, and Willis Bonner

landed on Matt’s snoot, and he hunted grass. There was a mighty mixtry

along about then of gouging boys, and Sam dropped out of the tree right

on top of the Kilkenny bunch and went for every head in sight.

Spot Miller had been sparring for an opening for an under-hook, and

was about to run his fist clean through John Perkins, when Big Yaller

Marshall started for Spot and I punched Big Yaller in the paunch and

doubled him up. It is swollen to this day. Fitzsimmons hit Corbett just a

little above where I hit Big Yaller, but he wrote me afterwards that he

aimed at the same place. Ed ran clean over Bob Bright to get at George

Morgan, who had Bob Clark down rubbing dirt in his mouth. It was just

getting where the fun was ripest when Bob Bright called a truce. Bill

Allen’s nose was bleeding again, and the boys all wanted to see that, for

Bill had the out-bleedingest nose ever stuck on mortal face. I have seen

it myself, coupled with what other boys have seen and sworn to, bleed

four barrels on a stretch, and a good deal on the ground, judging by

the way he messed up his clothes and things around for ten feet, though

of course he may not have bled more than half that much. Billy Hill ran

over home to get a bunch of keys to hang down his back, and I rolled up a

piece of paper and made him put it over his front gums and draw his lip

tightly over it. Hal McKinney (his father was a doctor and Hal was then

a candidate) pressed his fingers hard up and down by the side of Bill’s

nose, and Ed made Bill spit on a chip and he went off and hid it under

a rock. That last is considered about infallible, but it all failed on

Bill’s nose, and then Big Yaller told him to scratch in the ground with

his big toe, and bleed forty drops in it and cover it up with a leaf and

say:

“Bloody nose, two big toes,

No more blood than this goes.”

Strange to say, that failed, too. When Bill’s nose started in to play

ball it finished out nine innings. Bill is no more, and a royal good

fellow he was, but I have seen him shed more blood than Bragg’s army,

and I can prove it. Bob Bright started home with Bill, where they knew

better how to humor his nose, and George Steel laughed at John Formwalt’s

smeared face, and John doused him, and the war broke out with worse

sanguinary symptoms than ever, the crowd gradually dividing into two

parties and backing off and resorting to rocks. It looks dangerous and

bloody on ordinary white paper like this to read about two dozen boys,

all throwing rocks at short range, so thick and fast that you might

hold up your hat and catch it full, and it looks like somebody ought to

get hurt, but they don’t much. I never saw a boy knocked more than one

somerset at a time, and besides that, a boy is as hard to hit as a kildee.

Stooping for a rock, I dropped my pistol and Spot Miller picked it up and

the boys all saw it, and peace brooded instanter. Every fellow dropped

his rocks and crowded in, and I had every marble in the crowd in half an

hour. While these negotiations were proceeding Ed had climbed a tree and

a limb broke and he fell out and broke his left arm. Ed always regretted

it when he broke his arm, and I have seen the poor fellow almost cry over

it. It disqualified a fellow for so many of the pursuits, forcing him to

lie up for the bone to knit. Besides that, Bill Allen made arm-breaking

so common that the boys got tired of it. Bill fell upon every rock he

came across and broke his arm, and then he would rebreak it and break it

over in another place. At first it was something to have your arm broken,

and a fellow was envied and looked up to, but at that time a collar-bone

fracture was considered more _recherché_ and _distingué_. When I was

a boy you had to break all of a boy’s legs and arms and things to

disqualify him for the game. One little measly fracture was just fun, and

kept a fellow out of the garden. The only difference that it made with

Ed and me was that I had to dig all the worms for two weeks and sort o’

hold and piddle around and back him up.

I went home with Ed—and don’t you think they sent for a doctor? I could

have set it myself, but they did not ask me; and, besides that, it did

not need setting. I would bet on Ed’s arm growing out strong and straight

every time. He was that sort. If it had been cut off it would not have

surprised anyone who knew him to see another one grow out. I have already

told why it happened—because he failed to make a cross mark and spit

in it before breakfast. I think now that was also the reason I missed

that rabbit—if the reader persists in saying that I _did_ miss it. I am

willing to admit that the suspicions were against me until I showed the

wounds on the rabbit, but I am not going to try to cram anything down

public credulity, because I have several more things to tell that I am

not willing to swear to, and it is necessary to have the confidence of my

creditors.

While Ed’s arm is knitting I will gather up a few odds and ends that are

needed to round out these exciting narratives. Ed could make a bow and

arrow that was a perfect Indian’s dream, and I doubt if the Six Nations

had anything like them. Find a green cedar limb about an inch thick and

cut it to three feet length; trim the knots smooth and shave it just a

little each side of the center on the concave side at the places where

it must gently bend; cut a notch on the side just at the center for the

arrow to rest in, and string it with a stout cord. Cut your arrows out of

straight hickory and make them plumb, and then take a piece of tin about

two inches square and roll it into a sharp spike and fasten it on tightly

with a rivet. You can send that arrow through a two-inch plank and hit a

tree two hundred yards.

Tony was a little negro boy who lived at Mrs. McEwen’s. We used to hold

him down on his back and prop his eyes open and let the sun shine in. One

day I shied an arrow straight up and it came down and struck Tony on the

forehead about the edge of the hair and went in under the skin of his

forehead, clean down to his eyebrows, and stood up like a flagstaff. I

pulled it out and made him tell that a piece of stovewood flew up and hit

him.

I shot one of Dr. McKinney’s pigs one day through and through, but I did

not mind the loss of the pig nearly so much as the loss of the arrow. The

contrary little thing ran straight up to the back gate, squealing, and I

had no chance to rescue my arrow. Bob McKinney offered the arrow to me

next day, to see if I claimed it, but I was too many for him—I had never

seen it before. They were also too many for me—Joel, Bull Woolens, Tobe,

Hal and Bob—and it would have been very unhealthy to claim it with five

McKinney boys to one me.

Remus suffered an accident one day that came near disfiguring him for

life. I went into Doug Farquaharson’s barber shop and Remus followed,

and then I came out and Remus tried to follow, and there is where he

made the mistake of his life. Doug was a negro who belonged to Colonel

Farquaharson. I hardly imagine that if Doug had had the selection of

his own surname he would have hit upon such an incongruous befuddlement

of letters to spell a name that was pronounced plain “Ferguson,” but

I mention the name only to say that if you take all the letters in it

and rattle them around in a milk-shake a week and then sling them out

promiscuous-like, they would spell something that looks a little like

Remus’ face did when he got out of that shop. There was a long mirror on

the wall right by the door, and when I went out and closed the door after

me, Remus thought I went out through the mirror, and he took a running

start and made a leap at it. If Remus ever had any lurking notion that

he could jump through a brick wall, offhand, he was cured of it then.

He tried his best, but it would not work. He was the most surprised dog

when he bounced back that ever carromed on a plate glass mirror, but he

was not half as much astonished as he was messed up. His countenance

was utterly shipwrecked. No one has ever heard me lay claim to any very

beatific personal beauty for Remus, but I never knew a dog in my life to

lose more sweet elegance of expression than Remus did in half a second. I

was about thirty yards off when I heard Remus hit the wall, and I thought

I saw it bulge out a little, and I stood there four minutes and heard

glass falling. I never went back to Doug’s any more to see whether or not

the mirror was injured. I was afraid I might do him some personal injury

for setting his mirror where it could inveigle Remus into making such a

grave mistake. Four minutes of rattling glass, and the door opened and

Remus popped out, with Doug after him with a barber’s chair. I broke for

Frog Bottom and Remus for home. He stayed under the house a week, and

when he came out his tail was so firmly fixed between his legs that a

surgical operation was necessary. I understand that the wall where Remus

hit is soft to this day, and that once in a while a fragment of glass

falls out yet. It is worthy of remark, and the statement carries with it

a solemn warning to the reader, that I had neglected to spit in a cross

mark before breakfast that morning. The very next day I saw a black snake

over my left shoulder, and a boil broke out under my right arm that very

night. We cannot be too watchful, brethren.

AMBITION LURES

“Ed, dog-gone my cats ef I know whether I want to fight Indians or

not! I’m afraid One-eyed Sam’ll have ’em all killed ’fore we kin git

there.” A new ambition had struck me and I was wabbling between being a

stage-driver or an Indian fighter. Ed was amazed and replied:

“Dod-bust it, Laze, ain’t we done ’greed to go, an’ got ready? They ain’t

nothin’ in this pokey ol’ country to keep a fellow awake.”

“Huh! I’d druther be in Granville Thompson’s place an’ drive the

Huntsville stage than to kill all the Indians I ever see,” I ventured.

“If I thought there was any more bugle horns in the worl’ lack

Granville’s an’ I could git to blow one, I’d druther be one, too,” said

Ed. “I’d druther come a-sailin’ up the river lane on top o’ that big

ol’ stage a-yank-in’ them lines over four horses jes’ a-prancin’ an’

a-gallopin’, an’ a-toot-in’ a tune on that brass bugle—Ta-ta-te-ta-ra-ah!

Gen-tul-_men_! I’d druther be that than to be a policeman almos’. But we

done promise the boys, Laze—how’re we goin’ to git outer that?”

“’Spect we better not let on for a while,” I said, “cause we mightn’t git

to drive a stage. But we gotter do sump’un mighty quick, Ed. Dog-gone ef

I ain’t jes’ a-gittin’ hungry to smash sump’un-nuther.”

“Git your pistol, Laze, an’ le’s go over the river an’ kill hogs. That’ll

keep up the tas’e in our mouths ’till we go Wes’.”

“I lack to clean forgot,” I said excitedly. “’Sposin’ we run off with

that circus that’s a-comin’ nex’ week? Betcher I kin ride stan’in’ up ef

you’ll let me put rozum on my stockin’ feet.”

“I done bin thinkin’ ’bout that, but ef I don’t go out Wes’ I ’spect

I’ll hafter be a dod-busted preacher. They’re jes’ after me at home all

the time to be a big preacher,” said Ed. “I dunno whether to be a circus

rider or a preacher, Laze. Which’d you druther?”

“Shucks, feller—anybody kin preach. I want to be sump’un sho’nuf when I

git a man. I’d druther have a grocery store lack Bill Yates’s than to be

a dratted presidin’ elder or a bishop. Ef I had a store lack that with

nothin’ to do but to eat candy, an’ cheese, an’ sardines, an’ pickles,

an’ sech things, an’ set up in the back room an’ play the fiddle an’ chew

terbacker an’ spit, dog-gone my cats ef I’d quit that to be a policeman

or a emperor.”

“So’d I,” said Ed, “but what’s the use o’ tryin’ to do that? Betcher Bill

Yates’s got more’n fifty dollars worth o’ goods. Nex’ time you’ll wanter

be a queen o’ somewheres. I never see sech a feller for tryin’ to git to

be the bigges’ man in all this whole worl’.”

“They’re raisin’ me to be president,” I said sorrowfully, “an’ I ’spect I

oughter be in Congress right now. All of ’em at home don’t want me to be

nothin’ but some dad-gum little thing lack that.”

“Well, if I hafter be a dod-busted bishop an’ you nothin’ but president,

the boys’ll laugh us clean outer town,” said Ed.

The foregoing conversation occurred on our wood-pile one moonshiny

night about frost. There is no telling what heights Ed and I might have

attained if our destinies had not been controlled by persons totally

devoid of ambition to shine in the greater walks of life.

[_This isn’t all_]

NAPOLEON

PART V—Continued

PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON

By Anna Erwin Woods

In after years the Emperor Napoleon III often said to great personages

who visited Paris during his reign: “Go to the _Conciergerie_; it is very

interesting.”

Notwithstanding the sadness which filled his heart, the future sovereign

of France retained his faith in his star. Madame Récamier, the friend

who, at nightfall, in the Coliseum at Rome, had given words of sympathy

to his mother, came to visit the captive. He had also the consolation of

receiving a kind message from his father, King Louis.

At the Conciergerie, September 6th, 1840.

_My Dear Father_: I have not yet written you because I was

afraid of causing you distress. But to-day, when I learn what

interest you have manifested in me, I come to thank you and to

ask your blessing as the only thing which now has any value for

me. My sweetest consolation in misfortune is to hope that your

thoughts sometimes incline toward me....

King Louis had always disapproved of what he considered the vain hopes of

his son, and had never spared him censure or remonstrance. On October 7,

1840, the captive was sent from Paris to the fortress of Ham, condemned

to be incarcerated there for life. He was carefully guarded; four hundred

infantrymen occupied the barracks of the fortress and sixty sentinels,

scattered on every side, obeyed strict orders.

In the beginning his captivity was solitary. After a time the government

accorded him the precious favor of having three faithful friends beside

him. Gen. Count de Montholon came of an old and distinguished family, a

hero in the campaign in Italy, at Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram;

at the Emperor’s side at Waterloo; accompanying him to St. Helena; and

in whose arms he died. He was one of the executors of the Emperor’s

will, and the depository of his manuscripts. Devoted to the nephew as he

had been to the uncle, before the Court of Peers he spoke these words:

“I received the Emperor’s last sigh; I closed his eyes; that is enough

to explain my conduct.” He requested and obtained permission to be

incarcerated with the prince. His wife accompanied him to the fortress of

Ham, as she had done to St. Helena.

Dr. Conneau had been secretary to King Louis. He studied medicine in

Florence and intended to establish himself in Paris as a physician, but

after going to visit Queen Hortense at Arenensberg, he never left her.

These words occur in the Queen’s will: “I give to Dr. Conneau a present

of twenty thousand francs and a watch as a souvenir of his devotion in

coming to attend me. I greatly desire that my son may retain him.” This

last wish was piously observed. During the trial of her son, Dr. Conneau

sat on the bench at his side; he had never left him, and asked to share

his captivity. Blondel was not more faithful to Richard of the Lion Heart

than Dr. Conneau to Louis Napoleon.

Charles Thelin’s prayer to those in authority was not for liberty, but

for captivity with a master to whom he was not a valet, but a friend; to

that level the prince had raised him.

The prince was simply lodged. He wrote: “I have a good bed, white

curtains, a round table and six chairs.” He had also a looking glass

measuring thirty-six inches. In after years, in looking into mirrors

in palaces, he many times recalled this looking-glass. Upon two wooden

shelves were placed his silver toilet articles marked with the imperial

arms. After a time he was allowed another room to be used as a study, and

in this were placed some of his family souvenirs. Some wooden shelves

fastened on the wall held the books and papers allowed for his use; on

one of these shelves he inscribed the letter “N,” and said it would bring

him good luck. That plank was destined to be the plank of his salvation.

Everything intended for his personal service was daily subjected to

the minutest examination. An allowance of seven francs apiece was made

for the nourishment of the captives, and their cooking was done by the

gate-keeper. The prince was allowed to cultivate a little garden of

about a hundred feet on the rampart. “I am occupied a good deal just

now gardening,” he writes. “The pleasure I find makes me think that our

nature has many resources and consolations unknown to those who are

happy.” The inhabitants of the town were always asking for flowers from

his garden, and he took great pleasure in sending them.

He gave collations to the school children under an enormous lime tree

which has become legendary, and he distributed medals among them, as

well as alms among the poor. The curé of the town was the medium of

his bounty and became sincerely attached to him. By his gentleness,

affability, simplicity and great kindness he made friends even of his

jailers; captivating all with whom he came in contact, beginning with the

commandant of the fortress. The soldiers were forbidden to speak, stand

or salute in his presence; but they contrived means of secretly showing

their sympathy. On this account the garrison had often to be changed,

and the sentry boxes to be washed to efface inscriptions of “Long live

Napoleon!” “Long live the Emperor!”

Prince Louis Napoleon was a magnificent horseman. He was permitted to

buy a horse and ride in the courtyard. He amused himself by galloping

up the glacis at full speed and stopping suddenly on the summit of

the ramparts, on the very edge of the precipice, the boldness of the

rider never failing to arouse the admiration of all passers-by. Every

detachment of troops passing through the city halted at the foot of the

fortress to catch a glimpse of the prisoner. It would have been safer to

have kept in captivity forever, on distant seas, this man so impassioned

in feeling, so calm and unmoved in expression, so daring in action,

so soft and gentle in manner. What wonder that none could understand

him nor reconcile the rash temerity of his deeds and the impassive

calmness of his attitude. The prisoner of Ham made his prison a place

of meditation and study, silently preparing his political future. He

wrote a great deal, and from these written words can be comprehended

best his character, his ideas, his hopes, his illusions, his sadness and

concentrated enthusiasm. These papers written in imprisonment show the

most remarkably complex nature; the politician, the conspirator. The man

determined to wield tremendous power looks upon his prison as a vestibule

to the palace; the poetic, melancholy dreamer breathes forth in every

word a sad, sentimental longing for love and happiness.

* * * * *

The great captive lived six years at St. Helena, converting his rock into

a monument, of imperishable glory. Memory once more brought kings, as

suppliants, into his presence. The mighty conqueror saw again all nations

tremble at his approach. The captivity at St. Helena is an epilogue; that

at Ham a prologue.

The sad, poetic prisoner, filled with dreams of a wonderful future,

sustained by unshaken faith in the star of his destiny, had also passed

six years in his dreary prison; so far as men could see, calmly accepting

whatever fate might bring. He had said: “I prefer to be a captive on

French soil rather than a free man in foreign land.”

* * * * *

In the year 1845 he received a letter which changed his mind and

influenced his destiny. It was from his father, for whom he had a

profound veneration, and towards whom he had ever been faithful in the

discharge of filial duties. King Louis had not been sparing in his blame

of the vain hopes which had led his son to the escapades of Strasbourg

and Boulogne. With a gloomy memory, replete with bitterness, of all the

tempestuous glory of his family, he looked with anger and compassion upon

this audacious soul—his son who could throw himself into the stormy ocean

of human greatness. A king against his will, an unhappy husband, a loving

father deprived by fate of his children, his life had been one of sadness

and disappointment.

In August, 1845, he wrote:

My son, you deceive yourself strangely if you believe me

indifferent to your position and your sufferings. Doubtless I

am unable to forget that you placed yourself in this position

out of mere wantonness, but I suffer from your sufferings

because I had hoped for some solace in your happiness, a

happiness which should be independent of all the glories of

life. Moral sufferings have reduced me to the point of being

no longer able to stand upright, or even to rise from my chair

without assistance; and yet I have no one who can assist me. I

cannot even write any more, and you will see from my signature

how I can sign. I have taken some measures for you, but it is

only too probable that they will be useless, like all which

have been attempted hitherto.

The Prince replied:

Fortress of Ham, September 19th, 1845.—My Dear Father: The

first real joy I have felt in five years I experienced in

receiving the friendly letter you were so kind as to write me.

M. Poggioli succeeded in reaching me, and I was, at last, able

to talk with someone who is entirely devoted to us and who

saw you not long ago. How happy I am to know that you always

retain your tenderness for me!... I am of your opinion, my

father, the older I grow, the more I perceive the void around

me, and the more convinced I am that the only happiness in this

world consists in the reciprocal affection of beings created

to love each other. What has touched me, affected me most, is

the desire you manifest to see me again. To me this desire

is a command, and henceforward I will do all in my power in

order to render possible this meeting which I thank you for

desiring. Even the day before yesterday I had determined to

make no effort to leave my prison. For where should I go? What

should I do, alone again in foreign lands, far from my own

people? A grave in one’s native land is better. But to-day a

new hope lights up my horizon, a new aim presents itself to my

endeavors; it is to go and surround you with attentions and

prove to you that if for the last fifteen years many things

have come between our hearts, nothing has been able to uproot

filial piety, the first foundation of all virtues; I have

suffered much. Sufferings have destroyed my illusions and have

dispelled my dreams; but happily they have not weakened the

faculties of the soul, those faculties which permit one to

comprehend and love all that is good.

King Louis’ application for his son’s release having proved fruitless,

the Prince resolved to make a personal appeal to the French Government.

[Illustration: With Bob Taylor]

SENTIMENT AND STORY

There was once a civilization in the beautiful land of the South more

brilliant than any that ever flourished in all the tide of time. About

its ruins there clings a pathetic story of vanished dreams made holier

and sweeter by lips that are dust and hearts that are stilled forever.

There is nothing left of that civilization now but the memory of its

departed glory lingering among its tombstones and monuments like

the fragrance of roses that are faded and gone. It was an imperial

civilization, ruled from a throne of living ebony; but like great Caesar,

it fell at last, with a hundred gaping wounds, and its bleeding corpse

dissolved into ashes long ago on the funeral pile of war. I would not

recall those bloody wounds nor wake the hatreds of Civil War, but rather

let me lift the curtain and give you a glimpse of the glory and the grave

of that civilization.

I lift the curtain and see the old South enthroned amid the luxuries of

peace and plenty. Heaven never smiled upon a happier people nor upon a

land more beautiful; the eagles never soared under softer skies. I see

the white-columned mansions of the masters rising in groves of maple and

live oak, where perfect types of Caucasian beauty are wooed and won by

men as brave and courtly as ever shivered lances in the romantic days

when knighthood was in flower. I see the snowy cotton fields stretching

away to the horizon, alive with toiling slaves who, without a single

care upon their hearts, sing as they toil from early morn till close of

day; and when their task is done I hear them laughing and shouting at

the negro quarters in the gathering shadows of the evening. I see them

swinging corners in the old Virginia reel to the music of the banjo

and the fiddle and the bow, until the dust rises above them and swings

corners with the moonbeams in the air. I see the old black mammies

soothing their masters’ children to sleep with their lullabies. I see

the whole black race rejoicing in their transplantation from darkest

Africa and gladly serving the white race who led them into the light of

civilization and the Christian religion, leaving not an infidel among all

those millions of slaves.

I lift the curtain and look again. I hear the tocsin of war. Unfaltering

courage and high-born chivalry with shimmering epaulets of gold and

bright swords gleaming proudly rode to glory and the grave; bayonets

glittered under the silken folds of the Stars and Bars, the shrill

fife screamed and the kettle drum timed the heavy tramp of the shining

battalions as the infantry deployed into line; and thunder-tongued

batteries unlimbered on the bristling edge of battle; a sea of white

plumes nodded to the music of Dixie and ten thousand sabres flashed as

the cavalry hovered on the flanks and rear awaiting the bugle signal for

the charge. Then came the blinding flash and the awful thunder peals

where angry columns in frenzied fury met and the hills were strewn with

the dead and dying, and the very furrows of the fields ran blood. They

were fighting for their homes and the civilization of their fathers as

forward with the fierce and daring rebel yell the intrepid armies of Lee

and Jackson rushed into a hundred carnivals of death.

Once more I lift the curtain and see their decimated and half-starved

columns, ragged and bare-footed, exhausted and encompassed by

overwhelming numbers, reel backward in defeat and anguish at Appomattox;

the harp of Dixie is hung on a willow tree and the flag of its hope and

glory goes down in a flood of tears. Despair swept the harp strings of

Father Ryan’s heart, and the South’s poet priest poured out his soul in

song:

“Furl that banner, for ’tis weary,

’Round its staff ’tis drooping dreary,

Furl it, fold it, it is best;

For there’s not a man to wave it,

And there’s not a sword to save it,

And there’s not one left to lave it

In the blood which heroes gave it,

And its foes now scorn to brave it.

Furl it, hide it, let it rest.”

I lift the curtain and look again. I see the clouds roll away. The

laughter of other days is hushed; the mansions lie in charred and

blackened ruins, and there is nothing left but mourning and requiems

above a land of desolation and of new-made graves. I see the triumphant

armies of the Union, with flags flying and bands playing the martial airs

of victory, marching in pomp and splendor through the grand avenues of

their cities, amid the plaudits of rejoicing millions, leaving the weak

and helpless race they had emancipated as a charge upon their ruined and

impoverished masters. I see the remnants of the Confederate armies giving

shelter and food and raiment to this helpless race and furnishing them

with land and plows and mules, and building school houses and taxing

themselves to promote the education of the negro children at their doors.

I see the sturdy veterans at work in every department of life, and new

cities and towns rising in the track of war, and the devastated South

blossoming like the rose.

Now a vision of the future opens before me. I see the land of Washington

and Jefferson, of Jackson and Polk, of Hill and Gordon again the richest

land in all the world, not only in material wealth, but in the wealth

of brain and courage and manhood, and in the Cabinet and the Congress,

wielding again the destinies of the republic. I see generation after

generation weaving garlands of the lily and the rose and hanging them

about the monuments of those who wore the gray. I see the North and the

South clasping hands in eternal friendship and brotherhood, and Old Glory

waving above a united people for a thousand years to come.

The knightly spirit of the cavalier, that led their comrades to the

opening grave, inspired the heroes who still survived, to face the dark

and lowering future as bravely as they had faced the foe in the dreadful

past; and buttoning on their tattered jackets of gray, their paroles of

honor, they turned their tanned and tear-stained faces Southward and

straggled back to Dixie to rebuild their ruined homes and raise the

domes and spires of a new civilization in the air above the ashes of

the old. Upon their faithful souls there is no stain of treason; upon

their noble brows they wore no bloody wreath of conquest, but only the

crown of honor. When impartial history shall be written by the truthful

and the just, the names of these men who knelt at the shrine of the Old

South and laid their hopes, their fortunes and their lives on its sacred

altar, shall shine with the names of the world’s greatest heroes, and

generations yet to be shall scatter flowers above their hallowed dust,

as sweet tokens of their undying love and their devotion to the precious

memories that cling about the folded Stars and Bars.

[Illustration]

To the jaded politician who has grown weary of fishing for votes and

angling for suckers, there is surcease of sorrow in the brawling brooks

of the mountains, where the genuine speckled trout plays hide and seek

with the sunshine in the shoals, or sleeps in the darkening eddies, under

the fragrant bloom of the overhanging honeysuckles. To the overworked

public servant upon whose head the snows that never melt have too soon

fallen, these bright, leaping, laughing, dashing, buoyant mountain rivers

are the symbols of youth and the synonyms of happiness. On their grassy

brinks he may sit and listen to the singing of his reel and the swish of

his line, and watch the game black bass as he leaps up out of the middle

of the stream, with the hook in his mouth, and flashes in the sunlight,

and then darts back to make the reel sing and the line swish again. Or,

if he wishes a diversity of sport and pleasure, I will lend him one of

my shotguns and a pair of my leggings, and we will leave the trout and

bass in the brook and brimming river and follow my brace of beautiful

Llewellyn bird dogs, “Fiddle” and “Bow,” into the fields, and serenade

the vanishing coveys with chilled shot and smokeless powder. In such a

life, in such a land there is no snow upon the heart; ’tis always summer

there.

[Illustration]

We are the product of the labor and sacrifice of age—labor and sacrifice

which unknowingly worked out its own destiny in shaping ours. In our turn

we toil to-day that future generations may have such heritage as we will

to bequeath to them. Shall we permeate their lives with the dreariness

of drudgery, the weariness of eternal struggle, the unworthiness of our

fellow men and the hopelessness of reward? Or shall we live each day

in joyousness of spirit, in happy accomplishment of duty, in serene

confidence in the worth of mankind, believing that “God’s in his heaven,

all’s right with the world,” attracting to ourselves the happiness and

sunshine we radiate?

Which is the better legacy to our posterity?

[Illustration]

Common folks cannot understand so-called high-class music, nor the

figures of these newfangled dances, and, therefore, they are in a

condition which is beautifully illustrated by a tale I used to hear

before politics snatched me baldheaded. At an old-time country dance,

the fiddlers rosined their bows and took their places on the platform.

The floor manager rose and imperiously shouted: “Get your partners for a

cotillion! All you ladies and gentlemen who wear shoes and stockings will

take your places in the center of the room; all you ladies and gentlemen

who wear shoes and no stockings will take your places immediately behind

them; and you barefooted crowd must jig it around in the corners.”

[Illustration]

THE PARADISE OF FOOLS

[Illustration]

PART X

Why mourn and brood over broken fortunes and the calamities of life? Why

tarry in the doldrums of pessimism, with never a breeze to catch your

limp and drooping sails and waft you on a joyous wave? Pessimism is the

nightmare of the world. It is the prophet of famine, pestilence and human

woe. It is the apostle of the Devil, and its mission is to impede the

progress of civilization. It denounces every institution established

for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery

of injustice. It sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and

insincerity. It brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and

scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. Its disciples are those who rail

and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an

assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the

provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the

facial muscles of a corpse.

God deliver us from the fools who seek to build their paradise on the

ashes of those they have destroyed! God deliver us from the fools whose

life-work is to cast aspersions upon the motives and characters of the

leaders of men! I believe the men who reach high places in politics

are, as a rule, men of sterling worth and intelligence, and upon their

shoulders rest the safety and well-being of the peace-loving, God-fearing

millions.

I believe the world is better to-day than it ever was before. I believe

the refinements of modern society, its elegant accomplishments, its

intellectual culture, and its conceptions of the beautiful, are glorious

evidences of our advancement toward a higher plane of being.

I believe the superb churches of to-day, with the glorious harmonies of

their choral music, their great pipe organs, their violins and cornets,

and their grand sermons, full of heaven’s balm for aching hearts, are

expressions of the highest civilization that has ever dawned upon the

earth. I believe each successive civilization is better and higher and

grander than that which preceded it; and upon the shining rungs of this

ladder of evolution, our race will finally climb back to the Paradise

that was lost. I believe that the society of to-day is better than it

ever was before. I believe that human government is better and nobler and

purer than it ever was before. I believe the church is stronger and is

making grander strides toward the conversion of the world and the final

establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth than it ever made before.

I believe that the biggest fools in this world are the advocates and

disseminators of infidelity, the would-be destroyers of the Paradise of

God.

[Illustration: With Trotwood]

THE LAST DRIVE

’Twas long ago, aye, long and long ago,

I see the starlight and the paling clouds

Which linger yet in Mem’ry’s afterglow,

Pale cheeks that lie amid a sky of shrouds.

The swell of Evening’s breathing all around.

The flocks of Fullness by Contentment led,

Heart incense, murmur’d from the grateful ground

Up to the fold of Faith, bright panoplied.

The fields, the fresh’ning air—earth odors from below,

Your laugh, your perfumed hair—gone long, so long ago.

’Twas long ago, aye, long and long ago,

So says the world, Sweet, reckoning thereby

From season unto season. They do not know—

We reckon—we—from mem’ry unto mem’ry.

And when one mem’ry overshadoweth

All others, as morning over moon-skies,

The pink of slumber o’er the pale of death,

It stands alone before my aching eyes—

That evening drive—the hush—the twilight’s deepening blue,

The sunset’s crimson in your blush: “I love you, too.”

Sweets, sweets, sweets, from a heart of sweets!

And sweets to a soul of sad despair—

Oh, love, to-night the Past the Present meets

With love’s own linkéd laughter in the air.

But, oh, you went from out my heart as goes

The full rose, blushing, to the frosts of death—

As autumn flowers to the winter snows;

And now, dear heart, O now I love you so,

I love you yet, altho’ ’twas long, so long ago.

_John Trotwood Moore._

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE

The problem of life is not so strange when taken in its relation to

things around us. The things which to us seem incomprehensible are often

so merely from our own ignorance or failure to look at them in the light

of existing environments. The questions of life and death, could we grasp

them with the myriad of causes before and after, which go with and are a

part of them, might even themselves be understood. Of death we know one

thing which should rob it of all fear, and that is that, as our coming

into the world was painless and unconscious to us, so shall our going out

be; and that as we had no choice in the matter of our coming in, so shall

we have none in the matter of our going out, and that as we are a link

in the cause of events, we should accept our position with the cheerful

fortitude of one upon whom a task has been placed by an unseen Creator,

relying upon the justice of His wisdom to see that it is not greater than

we can bear. For in the bearing of it lie all our growth and all the

strength and nobility which shall fix our place in the life to come.

It seems a paradox, indeed, to us to think that we must die to live; yet

if we look around us we may see where this same principle is carried out

in all the relations of the world; that we grow not by what we get, but

by what we give; that we are developed not through pleasure and play, but

through hard knocks and hard work; that we are softened and ripened not

through happiness, but through pain and sorrow; that use is growth, and

idleness is decay, and that from stone to star and from plant to planet,

disintegration is the law of God, that greater things may be built upon

the ashes of the past, and a grander life evolved from the crucifixions

of the present.

The reason we fail to properly understand the workings of God in our

lives and the lives around us is because we take too narrow a view of

life. We do not look far enough ahead, and so we fail to harmonize things

because of the narrowness of the scope. We see a child born, open its

eyes upon the world, suffer a little pain and pass away as if it ne’er

had been, and we wonder why all of this for nothing. We see injustice

elevated and the wicked people prosper and thrive, and things that are

great come to naught, and things that are little become great, and in

our short-sightedness we complain and doubt, and rush after the short

cuts and practice the bad because, for the time being, it seems more

profitable than the good. These, indeed, would seem paradoxes, and

well might we doubt, and do, if we look at it only from the transitory

standpoint of temporal life. Nay, the very fact that such seeming

injustice can live, that a young life should be taken, that fraud and

envy should prosper, is our strongest evidence that this life is but a

link in a chain, and a very short link at that; that there is one grand

principle of recompense in all nature and all law, and that as surely as

God lives, and the universe lives, and this law lives, so surely will

all things be adjusted and evened up. With this view of it, then, we can

readily see how the young life that is taken here has that much more to

its credit in a land and living a life that is nobler, and that wrong and

injustice may grow gray-headed here; but so sure as the great laws of

centrifugal and centripetal force act in unison to balance and adjust,

there shall be a balancing in which the gray head of every wrong shall

pay back, with interest and to the last farthing, in another life, the

over-drawn account it made in this.

We know nothing—we are too small to know. But we do see this—everywhere,

always, forever and around us: that everything is balanced, and that

Balance is the Great Law of the Universe.

Will this Great Law then balance everything, from star-dust to star, from

force to effect, and leave man’s life unbalanced?

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

A QUAIL HUNT IN AN AUTOMOBILE

A TRUE BILL

My telephone rang and I laid down my pen.

“Hello, Trotwood,” called my neighbor, one of those strenuous business

men who goes at things with a rush from daybreak till dark. He has made a

pile, but like all such he has got hold of the handle of things and can’t

turn loose. Some day he will turn up his toes and leave a handsome widow

with a tempting competency.

“Hello, I say; is that you, Trotwood? Yes? Well, say, let’s go after

quail this morning. Ever see such a pretty day?”

“Never did,” I replied. “It’s glorious, and I am ready for a quail hunt

any day except Sunday—never had any luck on Sunday, you know.”

“I’ll be around in my new automobile in ten minutes.”

“Oh, say,” I shot back, “now, that’s another thing. I’ve never been out

of town in one of those things—they are not bred right, and besides I’ve

got religious scruples on that subject. Cut it out, Horatius. I’ll have

the little mare and buggy hooked up by the time you get here.”

I heard him laugh derisively. “Nonsense! Why, man, I’m going way up

on Bear Creek pike—fifteen miles—and we want to go flying, for it’s 9

o’clock now. But I’ll have you there in forty minutes. Now, the little

mare would be two hours and then dead tired for a long drive back home.

Say, no use talking—I’ll be there in ten minutes; have your pointer

ready; I’ll bring my two setters;” and he rang off.

“I guess I’m in it,” I said to myself, as I went off to put on my hunting

clothes. But I remembered that the Bear Creek pike was not a very public

thoroughfare, and no one that I knew would be likely to meet me.

“If it gets out on me,” I said, “I’ll prove that I didn’t want to.

Besides, this new hunting cap I’ve got would make Moses look like a Turk

in Hades—nobody’ll ever know it.”

The truth is, I wanted to go hunting—it was in my blood that morning, and

these beautiful December days with a hazy glow on the blue hills and that

stillness that comes like a dropping nut in a forest, and the sunshine

spiked with the faintest crisp of a frost would put it into anybody’s

blood—anybody who had it. And when the infection hits you there is only

one antidote—a dog, gun, a tramp over the hills and—whirr! bang! bang!

And to-day was ideal. I had felt it all morning—the cool, bracing air

with that little frosty aroma of leaves curling to crispness under

the first blight of things, and that other delightful odor of pungent

woodland damp with frost-biting dew. And the hills blue and beautiful are

alone worth going to meet, and the trees crimson in the hectic flush of

the dying year.

Jack, my pointer, was jumping all over me and turning dogsprings of

delight.

“Down, Jack! Heigh ho, old boy; that machine is against my religion, but

I’d go hunting in a negro hearse to-day. Besides,” I said, with a twinge

of conscience, “he’ll get us to the field in forty minutes, and the

little mare is getting old and we’ve got a late start.”

I sighed and felt better. I had fought so long and said so much for the

horse, and now—now—it was inexorable; they were being driven to their

fate—they had to go before the relentless wheel of progress. I was

virtually admitting it, I, who had said I’d never—

I shouldered my gun. Somehow it didn’t seem like the old, joyous hunt.

At the front gate the automobile stood—a pretty thing, to be sure. Its

owner was smiling, goggle-eyed and all aglow, his hand on the wheel, or

whatever you call the steering end of it.

“Jump in, Trotwood, old man—we must be in a hurry. Slap Jack in there

behind with my two setters. Be in a hurry! By George! I know where there

are a dozen coveys, and we’ll be there in forty minutes. Hi, Jack! what’s

the matter? Get in! Confound him, what’s the matter with that old dog?”

I was lugging Jack and trying to get him in. He was kicking like a

half-roped steer. He had always jumped to his place in the little buggy,

but now—

I knew what was the matter. Even Jack, dog that he was, had his

principle, and he was man enough to say so. While I—

I turned crimson.

“Get in, old boy,” I begged. “We’ll be there in a jiffy. Dead bird—good

doggie.”

I got him in, with his head down and his tail between his legs. To all

intents he was going to a funeral. I turned quickly away, for I could not

stand the scorn and dumb reproach of his eyes. Right then I would have

quit and gone back, but I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings.

“Jump in, jump in—let’s be going,” he shouted, in his nervous, business

way. “Oh, just a minute! There—you’re on the ground. Say, here, take this

and give that starting crank a whirl. I’m not very expert myself,” he

went on, “and I sometimes forget; but you’re on the ground—there—right

there!”

I took the crank and put it in the spindle he pointed out.

“Now give her a whirl, old man—a good twist—there!”

I gave her a whirl—several of them. I whirled her like blue blazes. I

kept on whirling, while her owner grasped the wheel and his eyes danced

nervously, as he expected her to flash into the throb that said steam was

on.

But she didn’t flash and I kept whirling.

“Faster, Trotwood, harder!” he cried.

I whirled and whirled. I began to get warm. The sweat began to pour off.

“Say,” I said, gasping for breath, “this beats turning a grindstone. What

the devil—”

“Why, I canth—thee—” he lisped “Turnth again—quick—a tharp, sthnappy

onth!”

I turned her again, quick, sharp and snappy. The thing pulled heavy and

felt like an unoiled grindstone, just out of the store. My arms ached,

the sweat poured off and my back was nearly broken.

I gave her a final desperate twist, and—there she was!

Dead as a log wagon.

“Confound it,” I said, mopping my forehead and staggering up; “I could

have curried the mare and hitched her up six times. Why, something’s

wrong with your old gas-wagon,” I went on, getting hot. “I’ll not turn

this crank any more,” I said; “I’ll be so sore in my arms I couldn’t hold

my gun straight to-day.”

He looked puzzled—annoyed.

“Why, I can’t thee—” he began to lisp again.

“What’s that you’ve got in your mouth?” I jerked out. “You don’t lisp

that way naturally.”

A smile broke over his face. He took out a little, black peg and roared.

It was too funny—to him.

“Beg yo’ pardon, old boy—beg yo’ pardon—ha—ha—ha! Good joke. That’s the

switch plug. You take it out when the machine’s idle, and I forgot to

put it back in the little hole. Here,” he said, sticking it in—“and it

connects the current—ha—ha—good joke—now give her a whirl.”

I gave the whirl, but in no manner to enjoy the joke. I heard her fire

up and begin to throb. We moved off beautifully. We began to fly up the

smooth pike, my hand back in Jack’s collar, for fear he’d jump out and

suicide. I dared not turn round to look the honest dog in the eyes.

“Fine, fine—ain’t this fine, old man?” cried my friend enthusiastically,

as we buzzed up the road. “Look at your watch—nine-twenty. Ah, now we’ll

be in the field at ten sharp—sharp—two good hours for hunting before we

eat our pocket lunch.

“Now, your little old mare,” he laughed, “would take up those fifteen

miles by now? Say! ha! ha!—acknowledge the corn, old man—the decree has

gone forth—it’s all over with the old pacers.”

I growled and said nothing. So did Jack. It was good, though, the way we

were eating up space and getting nearer to the birds—those game, nervy,

whirring birds that dart like winged flashes of thunder before your gun.

We whirled over the bridge at the river at lightning speed. I saw the

sign up about the fine for going over faster than a walk, but how—

“How can an automobile walk—ha-ha!” he shouted, for he had read it also

and divined my thoughts and winked knowingly at me. “That applies to

horses and jackasses and such,” he laughed—“things that walk. But this

don’t walk, eh?”

_Honk! Honk!_

He was blowing for a stray mule to get out of his way.

The mule got, tail up, and settled into a barbed wire fence, which he

tried to jump, but only succeeded in cutting up his countenance.

_Honk! Honk!_ “Get out of the way, if that’s all the sense you’ve got.

My! but ain’t we buzzing?”

I nodded, beginning to become exhilarated myself.

“This is pretty good,” I admitted. “I begin to see how you people soon

become speed crazy. We’ll get the birds to-day,” I warmed up, “and I

thank you for—look out! stop!”

He stopped, but not in time. It was a nervous-looking, old, fleabitten,

gray mare, full of Stackpole Traveler, Dan Rice and Boston blood. I had

seen it so often that I knew the very turn of its tail. In the buckboard

she was pulling were three country girls, fat, solidly happy, their lines

wabbling around anywhere, and the old mare going where she listeth. They

were the kind of girls I knew and loved in my sappy days down in Alabama.

I used to commence to kiss ’em about Christmas, knowing they’d wake up

and respond about the Fourth of July. Two of them amply filled up the

buckboard, but, as usual, a third one had piled on top of the others

somewhere, and—

“Great heaven, Horace!” I shouted. “Stop—that one there on top is holding

a baby.”

I sprang out, for I saw the old mare begin to squat, her old, scared,

brown eyes blazing in her white face like holes in a big lard can. I

heard her snort like a scared bear and saw her feet pattering jigs all

over the pike. Then she whirled, running into a fence, where, between the

overturned buckboard, the shafts and the rail fence, she stood wedged

upon her hind legs, pawing the air.

But the girls surprised me. Without a change in their fat, immutable,

expressionless faces, they simply rolled out on the pike in a bunch, the

baby on top, like snow folks tilted over by a boy.

They got up, dusting their frocks. They had taken it for granted. It was

all right. There was not a squawk—not even from the baby, as one of them

picked it up and I grabbed the bits and straightened out the old mare.

“I hope you ladies aren’t hurt,” said my friend from the roadside, in his

machine.

“Sally, is you hurt?” asked the fattest one.

“Naw,” she grunted.

“Mamie, is you?”

Mamie merely wiggled.

“Is Tootsy hurt?”

Tootsy was eating an apple, with unblinking eyes fixed on the wonderful

machine.

Nothing was hurt but the harness. That was hurt before they started, but

I had to spend the next twenty minutes patching it up. Finally we got

them all in, Tootsy on top. No word had they spoken, but I could see they

were eying me with that country suspicion that makes every maid of them

rate every man she meets in the road as Lothario, Jr., or a prince in

disguise.

“Now, ladies, you are all right,” I said, trying to keep cheerful; “and I

am so glad none of you were hurt.”

Then one of them drawled, but looking over toward the distant horizon:

“Ain’t you named Mister Trotwood?”

I turned red and pleaded guilty.

“After all you’ve writ, I don’t think you had oughter done this,” and

they all drove sedately off, still looking toward the horizon.

“Now, that’s the worst thing about automobiles,” said Horatius, after we

started again—“these fool country horses. Why, I waited till this time

of day, thinking they’d all be in town by now, for they get up with the

chickens. Anyway, we are not likely to meet any more of them.”

“I hope not,” I sighed, pulling out a cigar and a match. I struck the

match, as I’d always done in the buggy. It was blown out before the

sulphur burned.

“You can’t do that in an automobile,” he yelled; “we’re going too fast.

Like to stop for you, but we’re fairly humming—be there in half an hour,

old man.” _Honk! honk!_

We had turned a bend in the road.

“Great Caesar!” I shouted. “Nobody going to town! Look!”

His jaws dropped. There they were. We could see for half a mile, and so

help me heaven, but this was the procession that passed as we pulled out

of the narrow pike on the roadside, consumed with impatience to get to

the field, the machine throbbing beneath us like a loft over a bran dance.

First, an old sorrel mare, a worn-out buggy of the vintage of 1874, and

two old ladies.

The whole thing approached gingerly, creeping up like a yellow cat. It

was a toss-up as to which of the two’s eyes popped the biggest, or had

her mouth shut tightest. The old mare was game, and sidled up, and just

as I saw the wheels begin to form in her head and the occupants throw

down the lines and begin to pop two pair of country-yarned legs out of

the two sides of the buggy, exclaiming:

“_Fur ther Lord’s sake thar, Mister, ketch ’er!_”

I jumped out and had her by the bits.

One of them relieved herself by spitting snuff over the dashboard, while

the other took it out on me, deprecating the day when “Sech folks an’

things blocks up ther public trail—an’ so he’p me, ain’t that thar Mister

Trotwood, an’ my old man bred this mar’ by his say so! Trotwood Ananias,”

she sniffed, as she drove off.

The next were right on us—two slick, three-year-old sugar mules, hauling

a load of darkies. They came on in a rattling clip, making more noise

than a freight train, jollying, laughing and cackling. The men were on

plank seats across the wagon, the women in high-back hickory chairs,

squatting low and feeling as good as Senegambians usually do in a white

man’s country, where he does all the worrying and thinking and they do

all the loafing and eating.

They passed us without a wabble. I expected that, for a mule, like a

negro, never sees anything until he has passed it. I saw the gate of the

wagon had been taken out in the rear to let the damsels in; also the

chickens, the coop of ducks, a bundle of coon-skins, pumpkins, a sack of

unwashed wool, some spare ribs and a tub of only such nice chitlings as a

country mammy can prepare. They passed, and then the scare got into those

three-year-old corn feds good, by way of their tails. For I saw these

straighten out first, then their ears. I saw the big driver fall back on

the lines, and—

“_Whoa, dar!_”

They jumped twenty feet the first jump, and ran half a mile in spite of

his lugging and sawing. But the first jump was enough. The damage was

done then, for everything in it but the driver, who held on to the reins,

came boiling out of the rear. Up the road for half a mile was a telegraph

line of chitlings—the rest were mixed up. They all rose but one damsel,

weighing close to 468 pounds. She sat still. A young buck went to help

her up.

“G’way f’m heah, nigger—wait till I see ef my condiments is busted,” she

cried, feeling her sides and her chest. “Sides, I wants Brer Simon to

hope me up.”

Brother Simon helped her and she was all right.

We gave her a dollar and the others a quarter each. It was expensive, but

I deemed it just.

_Dey wuz all right den!_

The following then passed with more or less hesitancy, shying and

plunging:

A surrey and team; a boy and his best girl; a log wagon and four mules,

the leaders rushing by in terror, pulling the wheelers by the neck, as

they were trying to go the other way.

Old ’Squire Jones on his roan Hal pacer. The horse got half-way by before

he decided that the goggle eyes on the roadside had him. Well—no goggle

eyes had ever caught any of his tribe—not yet! In bucking to wheel,

he tapped the old ’squire in the mouth with his poll. The old man had

been raised a Presbyterian, with Baptist propensities, and he made the

ozone sulphuric. He brought his horse back to the scratch, spurring and

swearing. It was all right this time, till the old horse looked into the

back of the machine. True to the fool in his pedigree, he knew what the

machine was, because he had never seen one before; but the dogs—they

were things he had seen all his life, and he bolted backward again,

jamming the old squire’s stomach against the pommel and his back against

the cantle. It was time to go, and we shot out, leaving the old horse

waltzing into town on his hind legs.

“I didn’t hear his last remarks,” I said, as we went along. “They seemed

to be rather personal.”

“Let ’em go,” said Horatius. “You wouldn’t want to put them in your scrap

book.”

“I don’t think the mare and buggy would have made us all these enemies,”

I remarked, “and we would have been there by now. Do you know it’s eleven

o’clock?”

“We’ve got a fine run, now,” he apologized. “We’ll be there in thirty

minutes.”

“We’ll be there by night,” I snarled. “Say, we’ll just call it a ’possum

hunt, eh?”

This made him mad, and he did not speak till he got to the big hill.

Here at the foot we stopped and sat, throbbing.

Horatius fumbled with a side brake a moment, touched a pedal and looked

wise.

“What’s all this for?” I asked.

“I’m resting for a little headway before taking that steep hill. And say,

while we’re at it, you ought to know something about a machine—you might

be called on to help me in an emergency.”

I turned pale. Up to this time I had felt secure. Now I understood

something of the feelings of that pair of mules that never saw danger

until they had passed it.

“Why, I thought you knew all about it,” I began.

“Of course I do, but something might happen to me. You might be thrown

on your own resources. Now here,” he went on, “this little lever at your

foot is the sparker—it quickens things—the next one is the throttle; that

means more power. This is the switch-plug here; this is the starting

crank and this the brake. Now remember and watch me start.”

He did, the thing starting slowly up the hill and then beginning to go in

little jumps, exactly like a horse galloping.

“Pull him down,” I growled; “he’s broken his gait—” for I felt every

moment as if it would soon wabble and quit. But he kept galloping and

I settled down and began unconsciously to wabble my body as I would in

motion to a galloping horse. I couldn’t help it. I glanced at Horatius—he

was doing the same, but hitching at the side crank all the time, and we

were bobbing like two Muscovy ducks over a mud hole.

It was uncomfortable—it was uncanny.

“Confound you,” I growled, “I tell you the thing’s galloping—he’s all

tangled up; bring him down.”

_Snap_, went something, and Horatius breathed easy.

“All right now,” he said, as we began to climb the hill beautifully. Over

the top we went, and then—down—down! How she did fly! My heart jumped

into my throat. I held my breath and felt that same feeling I used to

feel pumping in a swing when I’d soar up to the top and start down again.

The same when I started down the elevator from the 19th story of the

Masonic Temple and felt my legs give way and threw my arms around the

neck of the elevator boy and begged him for heaven’s sake to stop until

I got my breath and my legs in speaking distance of each other, and

collected the rest of myself.

“Stop her,” I cried, “down—this—hill—I’m—feeling—queer—Lord—I’m—stop, I

tell you!”

“It’s easy,” he laughed. “Do it yourself—on that brake—there—just to

teach you—there!”

Gasping for breath and pale with fright, I kicked up the little pedal—

_The thing bumped twenty feet!_

“Don’t!” I heard him yell. “Good Lord, that’s the throttle!”

I saw a big ditch on the other side of us. I saw his hand dart quickly to

his side.

Like all man and woman-kind, in emergencies with a horse, I do the fool

thing—grab at the reins. This instinct overpowered me. I grabbed the

brakes to help him. I over-did it. It stopped so quickly it actually

kicked up behind. It stopped like a twelve-inch ball striking armor

plate. I went over clear across the ditch. The three dogs were faithful

and they followed. Horatius tried it, but the steering wheel stopped him.

“It was my fault,” I said, as I limped up, after the dogs got off of me.

“I grabbed at your reins, I guess—thought you were running away.”

But the sudden stop had sprung something, and Horatius was out fixing it.

He had pulled off his cap and got under the machine, and I saw the beaded

sweat begin to rise on the crown of his bald head, like bubbles on a mill

pond.

This did me a world of good. I lighted a cigar, propped up and began to

smoke.

For half an hour he tinkered and tinkered. I smoked and gave him such

bits of sarcastic encouragement as happened into my head. I reminded him

that Tempus was fugiting, and that it was already quite 9:50 and we were

still ten miles from nowhere; that the little mare would have been there

by now, and we would still have had some friends left on the Bear Creek

pike.

“Consider the lilies that ride in automobiles,” I quoted—“they toil not,

neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that that old gray mare, in

all her glory never worked as hard as you are working now.”

It was my time, and Jack and I enjoyed it, sensible dog that he was.

After every bit of such he’d wink and fairly guffaw.

Horatio was working hard. He was groveling in the dirt to do it, too, and

that suited me also. I could gauge his efforts by the sweat drops that

arose on his bald spot, growing and then bursting like soap bubbles, to

roll down his collar.

“Plague it,” he said at last, rising, “I can’t see very well without my

glasses. Say, stop your guying, now, and look under here and see if you

can see what’s wrong.”

I got out as leisurely as a lord; all I could see was a small coil of

wire, red hot. “I see it,” I said, solemnly. “The thing’s appendix is red

hot. Give me an axe and I’ll open it up.”

Jack howled with delight. I thought he’d die. Horatius smiled grimly.

But it was one that said:

“I’ll even this up yet.”

“Put in your shells; we’ll hunt around toward that farm house, and up

there I’ll ’phone to town and have Smith come out and fix it.”

Thus he spoke, and I agreed. In fact, there was nothing else to do.

We rolled the machine aside, the dogs were let out, and we were soon

quartering a field toward a farm house.

“Whose place is this?” I asked, as the dogs began to hunt down the wind.

“Old Bogair’s a French Canadian. He came here three years ago from

Canada—ticklish old fellow, but he knows me, and it’s all right.”

I felt secure, for while the game law is very strict, requiring written

permission to hunt on one’s premises, intended as a guard against pot

hunters, no gentleman ever objected to another hunting on his farm.

We started through a cedar wood in a glady spot and I saw Jack beginning

to nose the wind and to throw up his head for quail. Then I heard my

companion calling lustily for me to come. I rushed up, Jack at my heels.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A coon—a big coon—up in that cedar tree. Get on the other side, quick!”

I ran around, and, sure enough, up among the branches, trying to hide,

but showing the end of a brindled and streaked tail, was the coon.

In a trice I let him have it, and he came crashing through the branches.

Jack ran up and seized it, shaking. I saw yellow eyes, ears laid back,

and the coon spitting and fighting for life. It was dying, but struck

out, tearing Jack’s nose to threads. I ran up and planted the heel of my

hunting boot on its neck, while Jack howled with his lacerated nose.

“That’s a funny looking coon,” I said, as I eyed the thing suspiciously.

I heard Horatius laugh and saw him turn and make a break for the road. I

looked up—old Bogair had run up, red-faced and breathless.

“By gar,” he yelled, as soon as he saw what I’d done, “vut fur you keeld

ze house cat fur? Vut fur?”

It was true; but never had I seen a tomcat look more like a coon. On a

distant hillside I could see my deserting friend rolling on the grass and

shouting.

In vain I apologized. Old Bogair kept dancing around and shouting: “Vut

fur you keel ze house cat fur? Vut fur?”

“What are you damaged?” I said at last, with disgust.

“Ah, _en passant_—dees one from T’ronto, I breeng. Hee’s registaire—fife

tallar, an’ fife fur treespaire.”

I paid it like a man. Old Bogair smiled and bowed, with his hand on his

stomach.

“Eet vus all right now.”

I took up the cat by the tail.

“Vut fur, you don’t vant heem,” he gasped.

“Yes, I do,” I said, hotly. “He’s mine. I’ve paid for him and I want to

take him over yonder and rub him under the nose of that villain that

induced me to go hunting in an automobile and steered me on the premises

of a confounded Dago who keeps registered cats that look exactly like

coons when up a tree.”

He thought I was complimenting him.

“_Voila_—I t’ank you,” he said, bowing again, with his hand on his

stomach.

I hunted around an hour before I went to the machine. I waited to cool

off. Jack found a fine covey, and I missed them right and left. I had

lost my nerve and my luck.

When I reached the machine, Horatius was in, blinking, and we said not a

word. It was my time to freeze. Smith had run out from town and fixed it.

A little wire the size of a pencil point had got an inch out of place,

and it had been as dead as a log wagon on us.

It was now exactly 3:30, but we decided we still had a chance to get a

covey. We made the next three miles in beautiful time, meeting only one

man driving a game, high-headed horse that swept by us without giving us

the least notice.

“If they were all bred like that one,” I said, “a man in a machine might

think he had some rights on the road.”

“Glad you are beginning to see the other side,” said Horatius.

I shut up.

“We’ll be there by four,” he said; “just the time the birds begin to feed

good. Oh, we’ll get a few yet. It’s a long lane, you know. Our luck is

turning.”

“This _is_ fun,” I said, as we flew along the newly gravelled road

parallel with the creek—“fine—give it to her.”

The scenery was beautiful; the bluffs were draped in clustering red

berries, and the woods old gold and crimson. The water foamed over the

lime rocks, glowing iridescent in the sun, and the air was bracing as we

buzzed along.

_Honk! Honk!_ “Let her up!” I cried, as a touch of speed mania got into

me. “Say, I see how it is,” I said, “why a man soon gets the speed mania

in him. Horsemen can’t blame you, for they have got it, too.”

“Oh, we’re riding,” he cried. “You have an hour yet.”

We were indeed riding—along a narrow path of the road rising to a rather

abrupt hill. Rising and peeping over, I saw a long procession of creeping

things, their ears just shining above the hill we were both ascending.

“Halt! Stop!” I cried.

It was too late—everlastingly too late! We were meeting a negro funeral

procession—good old Uncle Pete, as good an old-time darky as ever lived.

I had known him well, a fellow of infinite jest. But I did not recognize

him promptly, now—at least as I soon saw him.

I hate to write what followed. I felt faint and sick.

Be it known that every negro loves to be buried behind white mules. It

is his glory and his religion. This kind was hauling Uncle Pete. Now,

a white mule is an old mule, and the older the mule, the bigger the

fool, and when they peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into

a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always do. When I first saw

them I was looking at the north end of that funeral procession. The next

instant I was looking at the south end. And as the thing turned over

once to adjust itself to different direction, a venerable old darky shot

out of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a two-dollar coffin, and

everything in that two miles of vehicles turned tail at the same time.

I jumped out, grabbing my hunting coat, which I knew held a flask of

whiskey, and rushed pell-mell through the woods for the creek bank. All I

wanted was a little water in that whiskey.

After fixing myself so I would not faint, I went back in time to see that

everything had been fixed and the thing headed north again.

“No, sah, it didn’t hurt Brer Pete,” the preacher was explaining to

Horatius; “but it did upsot some ob de sisterin, an’ dey fainted when he

come outer de back end ob dat kerridge so nachul an’ briefly. No, sah;

nobody’s hurt, sah; it wuz jes’ a sivigerus accerdent.”

“How much money have you, Horatius? I’ve spent all mine on dead and

registered cats,” I said, bitterly.

He had plenty, and tipped the whole two miles of them, as they passed by,

singing: “Jordan is a hard road to travel.”

And never had that old song seemed so real to me!

“I stop right here,” I said, after assuring myself that I would not faint

again. “The sun is setting; we’ve been out all day, and found nothing but

a cat and a corpse.”

Our experience had taken our nerve, and we waited two hours by the

roadside, way after dark, until we’d seen everything we met in the

morning go back home.

Then we lit up and reached home at ten o’clock.

The Angel and the Cherub met me at the gate, scared to death.

“So glad you’re safe,” she cried, kissing me. “I know you’ve got a full

bag—you’ve never failed, and, oh, Dearie, I’ve invited a dozen ladies

over to-morrow for lunch, promising quail on toast—so I do hope nothing

has happened.”

By this time the Cherub was climbing over me, shouting: “Daddy, show me

old Bob White—show me old Brer Rabbit.”

The bitterness of it went into me.

“Quail on toast?” I cried with sarcasm. “Change it now, my dear; write

them all a note at once and tell them tom-cat is better, for it’s all

I’ve killed to-day. Just make it tom-cat on toast.”

I left her crying and saying she believed I had taken a drink. But that

was false—to keep from suiciding, I had drunk the whole flask!

TROTWOOD.

THE NEW YEAR

Across the heath the day-gleam creeps,

The landscape glows with radiance fair

Above the hill the sun-god peeps,

And flings the points of glory there.

In bosky dell and upland glade,

Dame Nature sets her signet bright—

Where rippling rill and mossy fen

Flash glistening in the glorious light.

Now comes the bride, a sylvan sprite,

Bedecked in robes of spotless hue;

Reluctant stands, in sweet affright,

Aglisten with the morning dew;

Then speeds away, in merry chase

To run the course so well begun;

God grant her strength and days of grace,

To win the race ere set of sun.

_W. O. Thomas._

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Owing to the election of Governor Robt. L. Taylor to the United States

Senate, and his inability to give all his time to the splendid magazine

his fame and talents had made so successful, Trotwood’s Monthly has

combined with the Bob Taylor Magazine, an account of which will be found

on another page.

By this combination we have the largest list of subscribers of any

Southern Magazine and are in position to give our readers a better

magazine than either publication could give separately.

Trotwood personally wishes to assure his friends that the Taylor-Trotwood

magazine will continue to follow the same literary lines and to follow

the same plans and literary methods Trotwood’s Monthly has pursued from

the beginning. In short, it will be the same old Trotwood with better

facilities, larger scope, a greater field, more capital and a wider

influence, assisted from the United States Senate by the wit, pathos and

humor of the inimitable Bob Taylor, the friend and champion of the plain,

honest, common people of his country. We congratulate ourselves and feel

warranted in congratulating the many thousand readers of Trotwood.

TROTWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY.

[Illustration: BOOKS AND AUTHORS]

LILLIAN KENDRICK BYRN

ON NEWFOUND RIVER. By Thomas Nelson Page. New York: Chas. Scribner’s

Sons. Price, $1.50.

Mr. Page, whose place among the foremost of living American authors no

one disputes, has given us, in “On Newfound River,” a charming love

story. It is not so long or so elaborate as “Red Rock,” but the author

says of it: “It does not pretend to be a novel. It is, on its face a love

story of simple country life in Old Virginia ... the incidents are those

which might have taken place in a rural community before the war where

the gentry ruled in a sort of manorial manner, and their poorer neighbors

bore a relation to them, part retainer, part friend.” The illustrations

are by John Edwin Jackson, a young Southern artist who has risen to the

front rank in the illustrating world by the merit and sympathetic quality

of his work.

THE AMULET. By Charles Egbert Craddock. New York: Macmillan & Co. Price,

$1.50.

The history and characters of the Tennessee Mountains seem to have become

the peculiar property of Miss Murfree, who is never so happy as when in

this particular field. In her latest book, which, like “The Story of Old

Fort Loudon,” deals with the early settlement of this state, she gives

a stirring history of the vicissitudes of the early settlers, and the

terrible vengeance of the Cherokees. As the time antedates the Revolution

by thirteen years the heroine is a lovely, highborn English girl, while

the hero is a sturdy young product of colonial training and education.

While it is an engrossing love story, it is also a distinct contribution

to American romantic history.

OLD CREOLE DAYS. By George W. Cable. New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons.

Price, $2.50.

Mr. Cable’s delightful book, his first volume, by the way, was published

in 1879, and so popular has it proven that it goes through several

editions every year. Each issue seems more artistic than the last, but

surely the illustrations can never be better than those which Albert

Herter has given this Christmas. He has caught the very spirit of the

Creoles, their grace, their jauntiness, their naive simplicity. It may

not be generally known that Mr. Cable, born of a Puritan mother and a

Virginia father, started out on a promising newspaper career in New

Orleans, after returning from the Confederate army in 1865; a career

which came to grief because he refused to edit the theatrical column,

having a deep-rooted prejudice against the stage. He then became a clerk

in a cotton firm and his Creole sketches, done at odd times, appeared in

_Scribner’s Magazine_, where they speedily won for him the recognition in

the world of letters which his later work has so well upheld.

THEIR FIRST FORMAL CALL. By Grace MacGowan Cooke. New York: Harper &

Bros. Price, $1.

The laughable experience of two country lads who go to make their first

call on the girls they admire is rendered still more quaintly comical by

Peter Newell’s inimitable drawings. One of the boys had prepared for the

ordeal by a faithful study of “Hints and Helps to Young Men in Business

and Social Relations,” but the principles expounded therein prove very

poor working dependences. “When seated,” the “Hints and Helps” advised,

“ask the young lady who her favorite composer is. Name yours. Ask her pet

poet. Name yours.” The sufferings the boys endured in trying to follow

these instructions, the humiliating climax that ended their first attempt

to fulfill the social amenities, make a thoroughly enjoyable story.

LIFE AND SAYINGS OF SAM JONES. By Mrs. Jones and Reverend Walt Whitcomb.

Atlanta: J. L. Nichols & Co. Price, $2.50.

Carrying out what was perhaps his last request, within one week after

the death of this beloved man, his old co-worker, Mr. Holcomb, with

several stenographers, under the advisement of the bereaved widow, began

working night and day, arranging and weaving together into tangible shape

“The Life and Sayings of Sam Jones.” The result is a book replete with

anecdote, incident and narrative, all showing the forceful and vigorous

character, the personal magnetism, the practical knowledge of human

nature and the winning tenderness of this foe to cant and sham. These

qualities, coupled with his homeliness of speech, every word of which

was a sledge hammer blow to the wicked, brought the rich and poor, the

ignorant and the educated to hear him. He knew how to excite his auditors

to laughter one minute and to tears the next. He knew how to reach the

hearts of the callous, and how to encourage the struggling. The volume is

profusely illustrated and will probably be put through several editions.

A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. By John Fox, Jr. New York: Chas. Scribner’s

Sons. Price, $1.25.

Mr. John Fox, Jr., the author of the popular “Little Shepherd of Kingdom

Come,” was born in Bourbon county, Kentucky, the very heart of the

bluegrass region. At fifteen he entered Kentucky University and from

there went to Harvard, where he graduated the youngest of his class.

He first thought of studying law, but became attached to the staff of

the New York _Times_ and has had a passion for the pen ever since. His

interest in the life of the Kentucky mountaineers led to his first book,

“A Modern Europa,” and the success of this first effort led to the

writing of others. At the outbreak of the Spanish War, Mr. Fox joined

the Rough Riders, but left the service to act as special correspondent

for _Harper’s Weekly_. His experience there furnished the material for

his next novel, “Crittenden.” After the war he returned to his home and

has been engaged in writing steadily since, having a half dozen or more

stories to his credit. The study of the mountain dialect is particularly

interesting to Mr. Fox. He has found, he says, over two hundred words

used in his section that were in use in Chaucer’s time. His latest book

is a realistic description of the life and old-world ideals still to

be found in the remote mountain districts, and is written in his usual

sympathetic vein.

BY THE ETERNAL. By Opie Read. Chicago: Laird & Lee. Price, $1.50.

This silhouette of the illustrious and ever fascinating Old Hickory

far exceeds anything that has previously appeared from the pen of the

Arkansas author. It deals with the life and adventures of Jackson up to

and through the battle of New Orleans, showing clearly the integrity, the

invincible determination, and the kindliness, withal, of the hero. Two

duels are described and through the story runs a pretty romance, which

meets and overcomes obstacles, aided by the future president. It goes

without saying that Mr. Read has introduced, or rather brought out, a

strong element of humor throughout the book.

[Illustration: BUSINESS NOTICES]

REUBEN WATSON BOYETT, Amory, Mississippi

[Illustration: REUBEN WATSON BOYETT]

Young Mr. Reuben Watson Boyett, whom we take especial pleasure in

introducing to BOB TAYLOR’S readers, resides at Amory, Mississippi, and

although only thirteen years of age, is the champion local solicitor of

subscriptions. The people in that part of Mississippi stand loyally by

him. A travelling agent through that region recently was met everywhere

with the response that the subscription had been promised young Boyett.

He is a handsome young fellow, but he is better than that: he is what

the slangster calls a “live wire”—pushing, energetic, honest, prompt, a

boy who is sure to become a successful man. His work for BOB TAYLOR’S is

being widely emulated, but other agents must get very busy to pass him.

* * * * *

Don’t fail to read the ad of _The Commoner_ and BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE in

combination in this issue. Bryan’s paper and Taylor’s magazine should be

in every family. By reading _The Commoner_ you understand the political

situation at all times, and it’s bound to be particularly interesting

during the next twelve months. Whether you are for or against Bryan,

he’s an important factor in this country—keep up with him. BOB TAYLOR’S

MAGAZINE differs from other magazines as Bob Taylor differs from other

men. If you already take the magazine, tell your friends about it. Get

some subscribers for us—many or few—and we’ll pay you well.

* * * * *

CHRONIC ASTHMA CURED

Miraculous Recoveries from Asthma and Catarrh Due to Vienna Treatment.

Evidence of the wonderful cures effected by the _Vienna Toxico Treatment_

in Asthma, Catarrh and Bronchitis continue to pour in from all parts of

the country. Diseases of the respiratory tract have evidently this time

met their master. Obstinate cases are cured in less than sixty days. The

dose is minute and acts directly on the membranes and tissues, and it has

a wonderful tonic effect.

The Toxico Laboratory, 1269 Broadway, New York City, who are the sole

dispensers, have generously offered to send a test treatment to every

sufferer who will write for it.

* * * * *

Gray & Dudley Hardware Company, of Nashville, Tenn., offer free a 50-cent

cook book to housekeepers who send them the name of the most prominent

stove dealer nearest to them. It’s a good cook book; costs you nothing.

Write for it and say you saw the offer in BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE.

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The Massachusetts Squab Co., Box 878, Whitman, Mass., are offering

bargains in pigeons. See their ad in another column.