West that awoke admiration in all capable of appreciating force and worth.
As firmly rooted as a mountain on its base, he was incapable of a
plausibility which veers toward unstableness. No matter in what relation,
there was no misunderstanding any position which was taken by Dr. West.
His countenance was an index to his firmness. He was sometimes firm even
to sternness, an inherent quality of his character which was doubtless
strengthened by the controversial period through which much of his early
life was passed. But to have known him with any degree of intimacy, was to
find that beneath a somewhat rugged exterior beat the heart of a genuine
man. Advancing age softened and mellowed much of that which often led to a
misunderstanding of his real nature.
Among the productions from his pen was a work entitled "The State of the
Dead," which work reveals much research and profound study on a
much-mooted question. In the presentation of his views on divers subjects
Dr. West was not unaware of encountering opposition, sometimes on the part
of those with whom he was denominationally connected, but his convictions
were never bridled in the expression of the independence of thought.
Nor was the life and career of Dr. West confined to his pulpit
ministrations, with an occasional excursion into the field of authorship.
He was a stalwart citizen and patriot, and with the courage of an Ajax he
was ever ready to pronounce his views, and to wield his battle-ax, if
necessary, in the advocacy of any question for the public weal. He was a
man, and whatever interested men interested Dr. West. He was a citizen as
well as a minister.
Dr. West was an ardent advocate of education, and often his tongue and pen
were brought into requisition in the advocacy of this great cause. He had
his own views of this public interest, and to have them was to express and
to defend them.
Dr. West was a devout Methodist, and from his native temperament he could
be none other than an intense one, but the compass of his being was too
great to circumscribe him to the boundaries of his own denomination in his
relations to others. Numerous were his friends and associations beyond the
pale of his own people. With the intensity and tenacity with which he
clung to his church, there was not sufficient power embodied within the
church to restrain him from a criticism of its policies or methods, if
they happened to run counter to his own convictions. With the uniqueness
of his individuality he impressed all with his earnestness and sincerity,
and, much as one might oppose him, he could not withhold regard for his
convictions. The sincerity of his convictions did not fail to find vent
through his powerful tongue and the sharp point of his pen.
There was a wonderful blend of heroic manhood and unquestioned
spirituality in the life and character of Dr. West. This served to make
him impressive, and oftentimes powerful. Back of his often stern
declarations lay an unquestioned spiritual force, and the combination of
the two gave to Dr. West an assertiveness always to be reckoned with. His
gifts and acquirements fitted him for a high sphere in the councils of his
own communion, and while others differed with him, often widely, his
sincerity was never a question, nor was his integrity ever challenged.
He passed through many testing periods during his eventful career, and
went from the earth leaving behind him a trail of influence for good, and
a vast contribution to the good of the public. He rests from his labors
and his works do follow him.
EUGENE A. SMITH
The name of Eugene Allen Smith belongs to the roll of distinguished
Alabama scholars. Autauga is his native county, where he was born October
27, 1841. Academic training was given him at Prattville, in his native
county, till 1855, after which he went to Philadelphia to school, for a
period of four years. On his return to Alabama, in 1859, he entered the
junior class of the University of Alabama. The emergency of the times led
to the adoption of a military system of government for the university, and
Mr. Smith was a member of the first corps of cadets.
The war interfered with his course, and in 1862, he, together with other
cadets, was detailed to go to Greenville to drill recruits at a camp of
instruction. He did not return to the university to graduate, but received
his degree of bachelor of arts from the university authorities, as the
course leading to that degree had practically been taken by him.
Commissioned as first lieutenant in one of the companies drilled at the
camp of instruction, Mr. Smith saw service on the field, both in Tennessee
and in Kentucky, sharing in the capture of Mumfordville, and in the battle
of Perryville.
In recognition of his proficiency as a drill officer, Mr. Smith was
detailed to the University of Alabama as instructor in tactics, at which
post he continued till the end of hostilities between the states. Then he
began in earnest his scholastic career, for in 1865 he went to Europe, and
for three years studied in the Universities of Berlin, Goettingen, and
Heidelberg, devoting his time exclusively to the study of the sciences,
with special reference to chemistry, physics, botany, mineralogy, and
geology.
Dr. Smith's course abroad was completed early in 1868, when he passed with
the highest grade, _summa cum laude_, an examination for the degree of
doctor of philosophy, having for his main subjects, mineralogy and
geology, and for minor subjects, chemistry and botany. After reaping his
degree, he remained still another semester at Heidelberg in attendance on
lectures.
Possessed of an inquisitive and retentive mind, Dr. Smith, while in
Europe, spent much of his time on tours of observation and scientific
investigation in Russia, the Netherlands, the German states, Switzerland,
the region of the Tyrol, Austria, France, and Italy, and when he started
on his homeward trip he was engaged for a time in geological
investigations both in England and in Scotland.
On his return to America, late in 1868, Dr. Smith went immediately to the
University of Mississippi, serving as assistant on a geological survey.
For three years he was devoted to the work of making chemical analyses of
soils for the survey, varying his investigations by an occasional
excursion into the cretaceous and tertiary formations of Mississippi, and
in 1871, he published his first paper, "On the Geology of the Mississippi
Bottom."
During the following summer, Dr. Smith was elected to the chair of geology
and mineralogy of the University of Alabama. Two years later, in 1873, he
was appointed state geologist of Alabama, and for ten years his work on
the survey was gratuitously rendered to the state. In 1880 he rendered
valuable service in connection with the tenth census, furnishing reports
on Alabama and Florida for the cotton culture volumes of that census.
While visiting Florida in connection with this mission, Dr. Smith
discovered that the greater part of the peninsula of Florida was underlaid
by a substratum of the Vicksburg or Eocene limestone, which comes to the
surface at intervals down the peninsula through the overlying Miocene and
later formations. The results of this tour were published in the American
Journal of Science for April, 1881. A more comprehensive paper was written
for the fourth report of the United States Entomological Commission, which
embodied a general description of the climate, geological and agricultural
features of the cotton-producing states.
In connection with all this labor, Dr. Smith had charge of the departments
of chemistry and geology at the State University of Alabama for many
years. In 1888 a new chemical laboratory was erected at the university,
which addition, under the special direction of Dr. Smith, was thoroughly
equipped with all needed chemical apparatus, and is one of the best
chemical departments among those of the institutions of the South.
In the meantime worthy honors came to Dr. Smith from different quarters.
He was appointed honorary commissioner to the Paris Exposition, from
Alabama, in 1878. He became a member of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, serving as secretary and vice president of the
geological section, and serving also as a member of the committee
appointed by that body on the International Geological Congress and on the
Geological Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition. He is a charter
member of the Geological Society of America--of which he has been Vice
President, member of the council and President in 1913. He was appointed
to prepare the report of the American subcommittee on the Marine Cenozoic
for the International Geological Congress.
Dr. Smith has long ranked the leading scientist of Alabama, and his
investigations in the field of geology have been of immense value to the
state and country. His connection with the state university has been one
of its chief elements of popularity. Modest and shrinking in disposition,
without the least obtrusiveness or assertion, he has not been estimated at
his real worth to the public, and only those who have been thrown into
immediate connection with him know of the enormity of his labor and of its
value to the state. The young men under his instruction, and the learned
faculty of the university prize his worth, and are unstinted in the
expression of their estimation of his services. No son of Alabama has been
more distinguished throughout America and among the savants abroad than
Dr. Eugene Allen Smith.
JAMES T. MURFEE
The real educator does more than to impart knowledge and acquaint with
principles with which to translate this knowledge into practical use--he
imparts himself. No youth falls under the influence of a great teacher
without taking with himself thereafter somewhat of that instructor. He is
not the great and successful educator who merely knows, but one who does,
as well.
This was pre-eminently the dominant power of James Thomas Murfee, LL.D.,
whose station in life and whose labors within the realm of education made
him distinguished throughout the South, and beyond. To him education was a
passion, not of the spasmodic sort which spends its force at theoretical
random, but which he built into constructive character in such way as
wisely to direct the instruction obtained. His idea was to build knowledge
into character, making the one a component of the other, and thus
construct manhood, not alone for usefulness in the ordinary humdrum of
life, but in order to invest the entire man with an atmosphere conducive
to making life radiant, delightful and useful--to teach one not alone to
do, but to be. This was the conception which Dr. Murfee had of a thorough
education.
Swayed by this purpose, Dr. Murfee for a long period of years, taught in
several states, but the bulk of his lifework was done in Alabama. One
never met him without finding him buoyant with enthusiasm concerning
education. Nor did he expend his theories in mere phrasing, but reduced
them to actual practice. His was the enthusiasm of patience. His passion
was to make men, and to turn to practical account every advantage afforded
in the drill of the classroom to this end. He sought to excite assertion
of a salutary sort, and then to impart the power for its execution. There
are hundreds of men adorning the different vocations in this state and in
others, including the preacher in the pulpit, who gratefully trace the
inception of their success to this great teacher of youth.
Indeed, the rule is well nigh universal that a genuinely successful man is
able to date the turning point of his life to the vital touch with some
superior character, from which thrill has been derived, and as life
broadens into stern practicalness, additional ingredients from the same
source are appropriated which continue to tincture and temper for good
throughout. While the recipients of these advantages may not be always
conscious of the derivation of these augmenting and contributory forces,
yet the fact remains that without the abiding presence of this once
dominant force, life might have been vastly different.
There would come under the sway of this master of men, at the different
institutions in which he served, raw lads from obscure rural retreats,
unskilled, gawky, and awkward, yet within whom were powerful
possibilities, which the student of character and the incisive teacher
would detect, and, like the opaque diamond in the hand of the lapidary,
the crude youth would yield results often the most astonishing.
Thus through multitudes who sat at his feet Dr. Murfee has been
instrumental in changing the faces of many communities, as his students
have taken their places in life. This expression is attributed to
Alexander the Great: "I am indebted to my father for living, but to my
teacher for living well."
All this is suggested by the life and career of the great teacher now
under review. A life so long and so useful was necessarily varied. Born in
Southampton County, Virginia, on September 13, 1833, Dr. Murfee lived
through a number of the most stirring periods of our national history. His
collegiate career was at the Virginia Military Institute, from which he
was graduated with the rare distinction of never having received a demerit
in a school, the most rigid and exacting in scholastic work and
discipline. It is not surprising that the result was that he bore away the
highest honors of his class, which occurred in 1853.
Dr. Murfee's gifts and disposition led him to the adoption of the vocation
of teaching, and he was called first to Lynchburg, Va., in that capacity;
then, later, to the chair of physical science in Madison College,
Pennsylvania. In 1860 he came to Alabama as professor of mathematics and
commandant of cadets at our state university. During the war that
followed, soon after his advent into the state, he became the lieutenant
colonel of the Forty-first Alabama Regiment, but resigned to resume his
duties at the University of Alabama. Near the close of the war, when the
state was overrun by the federals, he commanded the cadets in an
engagement at Tuscaloosa.
After the close of the war Dr. Murfee was engaged as architect to design
and erect new buildings for the university, in place of the magnificent
edifices destroyed by the enemy, to which stupendous task he set his hand
and mind, recommending at the same time a new scheme of university
organization, all of which was accepted by the board of trustees, but he
was thwarted in his efforts by the reconstruction régime.
Called in 1871 to the presidency of Howard College, then at Marion, which
institution had writhed in the throes incident to those troublous times,
he brought it to the front as one of the best institutions of its grade
then in the South. On the removal of Howard to Birmingham, in 1887, Dr.
Murfee was tendered the presidency of the college in its new location, but
preferred to remain at Marion, where he founded, in the original college
buildings, the Marion Institute, of which he was the superintendent until
1906, when he retired from active service on an annuity from the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This annuity was granted on
the basis of "long and distinguished service to the cause of education in
Alabama."
In 1882, Dr. Murfee was appointed by President Harrison, a member of the
board of visitors to the West Point Military Academy. After his retirement
from active service, Dr. Murfee devoted his time leisurely to the
development of the educational foundation at Marion, that it might become
a source of perpetual strength to the state and to the South. On April 23,
1912, Dr. Murfee died at Miami, Fla., at the advanced age of seventy-nine
years.
ABRAM J. RYAN
"Father Ryan," as he is familiarly called, was Alabama's sweet singer. He
was a born poet, and sang because he could not help it. Emanating from the
heart, his plaintive strains go straight to the head. Yet he wrote only at
intervals. Moved by the afflatus which only a poet feels, he would now and
then take up his poetic pen and give voice to the minstrelsy of his soul.
His verse is merely fugitive snatches of song springing from an
imagination essentially poetic, and a heart subdued by religious emotion.
In no sense was poetry a profession with this charming lyrist, for he
himself tells us that his verses "were written at random--off and on,
here, there, anywhere--just when the mood came, with little of study and
less of art, and always in a hurry."
Leaping warm from the heart and taking the wings of poesy, his thought
throbs with virility, and makes an appeal to the heart of another with a
force that is irresistible; visions of matchless beauty rose continually
before his imperial imagination and sought vent in song.
Had Father Ryan subjected his thought to the lapidary finish of the
professional poet, it is doubtful if it would now be so popular. He wrote
as he was moved, the fervid thought seizing the first words within reach
as a vehicle, and thus they fall on the ear of the world.
Simple songs his poems are, generally melancholy, meditative, pensive, the
chief virtue of them being that they touch the heart. His thoughts seem
to move in popular orbits in search of objects invested with the
plaintive. It is not the weirdness so often met with in Poe that one
encounters in the poetry of Ryan, but the touch of moaning, the sadness of
a burdened heart yearning and burning for that which it has not, but hopes
for and looks for in other realms yet unrevealed. Resounding corridors of
gloom, dimly lighted vestibules, processions of mourners moving till lost
in darkness, the chimes of melancholy airs heard by mystic ears, the
muffled footfall in mysterious darkness, the touch of vanished hands, the
outreach of timorous arms through the gloom for a kindred touch, the
sighing of a soul for its inheritance--these are the elements which
resound his verses through.
Much of his poetry savors of his theologic thought and environment, and,
naturally enough, the object frequently pertains to that dear to the
devout Catholic; but it is not about the substance of his thought that we
here speak, but of his undoubted genius as a poet. Equal objection might
prevail against much that is written by other poets, as, for instance, the
substance of some of Poe's productions, whose "Annabel Lee" is heathen
throughout, but it is poetic in its every syllable.
The symbols and paraphernalia of his church, its worship, and all that
pertains to it may be encountered in one way or another in the poetry of
Ryan, but the undoubted genius with which it is wrought and molded into
verse is that which fascinates the lover of poetry.
That Father Ryan would have been pre-eminent in poetry had he exercised
his powers, seems clear. The vividness of expression, the subtle beauty
inherent in his strains, and the deft touch given his thought are those of
the genuine poet. He dwells apart from the ordinary drift of thought. The
coloring of his thought was derived from numerous sources, and, emitted
from the furnace of his heart, it was ever in transformed shape. The
rattle and clatter of the rushing world fell on the ear of his soul with
the element of melody. His emotions were pent up, and when they leaped
their barriers, they gave to a responsive soul-world that which we call
Father Ryan's poems. His own soul, subdued to softness and gentleness by
his inner reflection, sang itself in musical cadence.
His verse, always graceful and often brilliant, flowing melodious and
limpid with the lilt of a landscape rill, borrowing delicate tints of
beauty from the greensward and varied bloom which fringe its banks, and
flashing back the light derived from heaven, makes an instinctive appeal
to the soul of the reader, and has a sobering effect on his thought. From
the source to the sea there is the same gentle flow with its occasional
puddle and its subdued sound of ripple.
That which our poet does is more indicative of possibility than of final
actuality. His strains are merely soft touches of the fingers of the
musician on the keys of the soul, and yet they evoke such melody that one
wishes the reserved force of the soul, whence they come, might have fuller
and freer expression, that the slight thrill experienced might rise to
rhapsody.
Most rare are many of the pithy passages to be met with in his
productions. Did space permit, it would be a delight to enumerate many of
these gems which glitter along his pages, but only one or two may here be
indicated. On the occasion of a visit to Rome, he penned a fragment on
"After Seeing Pius IX." The first four lines are here quoted to illustrate
the power of the poet derived from a mere glance of a man's face, and in
the last two of the lines quoted resides a power in metaphor rarely met
with. Says the poet:
"I saw his face today; he looks a chief
Who fears not human rage, nor human guile;
Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief,
But in that grief the starlight of a smile."
The transference of the idea of the twilight and the gentle star meekly
peeping through, to the struggle discerned in the features of one, is a
picture that would occur to none other than a poet.
Equally striking is the beauty of the figure contained in his "A Land
Without Ruins," where he says:
"Yes, give me the land where the battle's red blast
Has flashed to the future the fame of the past."
Numerous are the striking pictures which he brings before the eye by one
single stroke of the pen. Nor does Father Ryan conjure with the emotions
merely to quicken and to stir for the moment. Indeed, he does not seem
conscious of that which he has done and so greatly done; he merely sings
out his soul in low refrain and leaves his melody lingering in the air.
Ryan was patriotic to the core. In the thunderous years of the great Civil
War his pen was busy with the ink of patriotic fire, but the aftermath of
the war was more aptly suited to his nature. When in her night of sorrow,
the South was a land of mounded graves, within which slept a generation of
young heroes, while blackened chimneys stood sentinel over them, and while
the monuments of the South were only heaps of charred ruins, and her once
fair fields were littered with wreck and disaster, these appealed to our
lyrist with unwonted force. The spirit of his Hibernian blood was
invincible, and when embodied in a stream of poetic fire it illuminated
scenes which else were dreary and desolate. From out the environment of
darkness and ruin, his spirit sought the solace which the future must
bring in recognition of principle, and thus he sang. Thousands who
differed with Father Ryan religiously, honored him as a gifted singer. He
has but scant recognition in the literary history of the country, but this
is to be expected. He was largely a poet of locality, both geographically
and religiously, and wrote not so much for others as for his own pastime,
but Alabama owes him much as her greatest poet. Because of the genuine
merit inhering in his verse, and because of the unquestioned worth
attaching to his productions, he is easily the file leader of the literary
spirits of Alabama.
JAMES R. POWELL
The presentation of the name of Colonel Powell suggests a turning point in
the history of the state. A new era had dawned of which Colonel Powell was
an exponent. The long agitation with which the country was rocked for
decades, had culminated in bloody conflict which was waged to exhaustion.
The turbulence of rehabilitation represented in the struggles of
reconstruction had followed, and now the eyes of the people were once more
turned to the ways of peace and re-established prosperity. Resources
practically immeasurable were untouched in the soils and mountains of a
great state, and public thought began to peer into the future with a
longing for tranquil prosperity. A class of men represented by the subject
of this sketch was in demand, and, as is always true, when the demand
exists for men they are to be found. Thus appeared this pioneer at the
threshold of a new era.