Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

Bob Taylor’s Magazine.

Contents for April, 1905.

The Contents of this MAGAZINE are protected by copyright and must not be used without the consent of the publishers.

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COVER DESIGN _Mayna Treanor Avent_

FRONTISPIECE—The Late Hon. John H. Reagan 2

THE OLD SOUTH _Robert L. Taylor_ 3
Illustrated with photographs.

POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH _Henry N. Snyder, LL.D._ 9
With portrait of the Author.

TO HELEN KELLER 14

MEN OF AFFAIRS 15
Illustrated with photographs.

THE LOST HERD _Joseph A. Altsheler_ 23
With portrait of Author.

THE ISLES OF SCILLY _J. H. Stevenson, Ph.D._ 32
Illustrated with photographs.

LABOR PROBLEMS IN THE SOUTH _Herman Justi_ 39
With portrait of the Author.

TILDY BINFORD’S ADVERTISEMENT _Holland Wright_ 46
Story. Illustrated by the Author.

THE MAN AND THE MATINEE _Sybil Stewart_ 54
Story. Illustrated.

THE OLD ORDER PASSETH _Grace McGowan Cooke_ 61
Poem. Illustrated with photograph.

SOURCES OF SOUTHERN WEALTH _Austin P. Foster_ 62

SOCIETY OF THE FOREST _M. W. Connolly_ 66
Illustrated by Mayna Treanor Avent.

SUNSHINE—Conducted by the Editor in Chief 80

GREETING.
FLY IN YOUR OWN FIRMAMENT.
THE GOVERNOR.
THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR.
THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELER.

LYRICAL AND SATIRICAL—Conducted by Vermouth 87

A CUBAN SKETCH _Harvey Hannah_ 90

WITHIN A VALLEY NARROW _Ingram Crockett_ 91

LEISURE HOURS 92

BOOKS AND AUTHORS—Conducted by Mrs. Genella Fitzgerald Nye 95

THE FIDDLE AND THE BOW _Robert L. Taylor_ 103
Illustrated.

THE SOUTHERN PLATFORM 107

POEM _Capt. Jack Crawford._
THE STORY OF JOSEPH _Ida Benfey._
THE MOCKING-BIRD _Mary H. Flanner._
THE YOUTH OF SHAKESPEARE _Frederick Warde._
A CRITIQUE OF THE MASQUERADER _James Hunt Cook._
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Copyright 1905 by The Taylor Publishing Co. All rights reserved
THE TAYLOR PUBLISHING COMPANY, Publishers,
_Vanderbilt Law Building_, Nashville, Tenn.

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THE LATE HON. JOHN H. REAGAN IN HIS STUDY AT PALESTINE, TEXAS.
]

BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── VOL. I APRIL, 1905 NO. 1 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

THE OLD SOUTH.

By Robert L. Taylor.

One of the most brilliant civilizations that ever flourished in the history of the world staggered and fell with broken sword and shattered shield on that dark day when the flag of Southern hope and glory went down in blood and tears. Its decimated armies, too exhausted from loss of blood to longer pull the trigger, too weak from starvation to charge the enemy, too footsore and too proud to run, stacked their old, bent and battered muskets in the anguish of defeat and went limping back to their ruined homes in Dixie.

There is nothing left of that civilization now but a few remnants of its gray columns—_themselves_ grown gray as if in honor of the uniforms they wore—and the thrilling and pathetic story of its vanished prestige and power lingering among its tombstones and monuments like the fragrance of roses that are faded and gone. Never again will the white-columned mansions of the masters glorify the groves of live oak and the orange and the palm where Southern beauty was wooed and won by Southern chivalry, and life was an endless chain of pleasure. Never again will the snowy cotton fields and rice fields, stretching away to the Gulf or to the river, teem with happy slaves and ring with their old time plantation melodies. Hushed forever is the music of the Old South! Closed are the lips of its matchless orators! The dust of its statesmen mingles with the dust of the heroes who died to save it. Only three are left in the counsels of the nation: Morgan, the brave and the true, the able, the eloquent and learned Senator from Alabama; Pettus from the same state, the peer of Morgan in all the exalted traits of character that distinguish the unswerving and incorruptible representative and defender of Southern ideals and Southern traditions; and Bate, that grand old man of dauntless courage, that fearless soldier with many scars, the hero of Shiloh, the strong and faithful Senator who in private life is as pure and gentle as the mother of his children, and in war as bold and daring a cavalier as ever drew a sword![1] It is true there are other splendid men from the land of cotton and cane in Congress, whose heads are silvered o’er, and who have nobly led Southern thought and sentiment. They are superb exponents of the old ante-bellum civilization, but they were too young to taste the sweets of its glory. Some of them were born soon enough to listen to the lullaby of the old black mammy and to sit in the negro cabin and listen to the blood-curdling tales of uncle ’Rastus about ghosts and goblins; some, like Daniel of Virginia, Berry of Arkansas, and Blackburn of Kentucky, were old enough to follow Lee and Jackson and to fight to the finish; but their youth forbade them from sitting on the throne of living ebony with these older men, who, in reality, are all that is left of the Old South in the national legislature; and in whose presence all men, whether of the North or of the South, delight to lift their hats with that profound reverence which true nobility of character always commands. What a shame there are not four!

Footnote 1:

Senator Bate has died since this was penned.

SENATOR WILLIAM B. BATE.
]

GOVERNOR JAMES B. FRAZIER, OF TENNESSEE.
]

A sigh of deep regret came from the Southern heart when Missouri registered the decree that Cockrell, the soul of honor, the impersonation of truth and integrity, the soldier and the statesman, must cease to reflect honor upon that great commonwealth as one of its representatives in the United States Senate. But it must be a sweet consolation to him to go back among the people whom he has served so faithfully and so well, with the consciousness of a clean life behind him, both private and public, and with the prestige of a glorious record in the service of his country.

GOVERNOR JOHN C. W. BECKHAM, OF KENTUCKY
]

To those who have marked the passing of men in recent years, how solemn the thought that there are so few left to tell the tale of the manhood, the wealth and the influence of that chivalrous race who staked all and lost all save honor in the struggle to preserve its institutions. There is only one remaining who served in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis, in the person of the venerable and beloved John H. Reagan of the Lone Star State. The dews of life’s evening are condensing on his brow and its shadows are lengthening around him, but the burden of his fourscore years and five still rests lightly upon him. The snows that never melt have fallen upon his head, but there’s no snow upon his heart; ’tis always summer there! He has been distinguished through life for his rigid honesty and the fearless discharge of duty, and he will die, as he has lived, the idol of his people. May God lengthen the twilight of his declining years far into the twentieth century![2]

Footnote 2:

Since this article was set up, Judge Reagan, too, has passed away.

One by one the great majority of the star actors in the thrilling drama of the past have made their exit behind the sable curtain of death, and in all probability another decade will clear the stage.

GOVERNOR ANDREW J. MONTAGUE, OF VIRGINIA.
]

GOVERNOR EDWIN WARFIELD, OF MARYLAND.
]

GOVERNOR J. M. TERRELL, OF GEORGIA.
]

It is one of the purposes of this magazine to aid in keeping ever fresh and green the history and traditions of the Old South; to keep alive its chivalrous spirit, and to tell the pathetic story of the lion-hearted men around whose names are woven some of the greatest events of history. It has been beautifully said that “literature loves a lost cause.” If this be true, the South will yet be a flower garden of the most enchanting literature that ever blossomed in any age or in any land. Some Homer will rise, greater than the Greek, and dream among the cemeteries where its heroes sleep and sing the sweetest Iliad ever sung! The spirit of another Hugo will brood over its battle fields and gather tales of valor and reckless courage; of grim visaged men scorning shot and shell and riding to the cannon’s mouth; of bayonets mixed and crossed; of angry armies clinching and rolling together in the bloody mire of the awful strife; of Death on the pale horse, beckoning the flower of the Old South to the opening grave! He will gather up the tears and prayers and the withered hopes of a dying nation; the piteous wails of pale and haggard maidens for lovers slain in battle; the shrieks of brides for grooms of a day brought back with pallid lips sealed forever and jackets all stained with blood; and the swoons of mothers with the kisses of fallen sons still warm upon their wrinkled brows. He will gather them up and weave them all into volumes of romantic love more vivid and terrible than the story of Waterloo! He will paint in burning words a picture, not of all the horrors that followed the blunder of Grouchy in that battle upon which hung the fate of empires, but of Stonewall Jackson falling in the noontide of his brilliant career and passing over the river to rest under the shade of the trees; a picture, not of Wellington seizing the fallen Napoleon and banishing him to solitude and death on a rock in the sea, but of the great and generous Grant receiving our own immortal Lee like a king at Appomattox, declining to accept his sword and bidding him return to the peaceful walks of private life among the green hills of old Virginia; a picture, not of Ney, who had fought so long and so bravely for the triumph of his beloved France, shot through the heart by cowards within the very walls of Paris, but of Gordon, with golden tongue portraying the last days of the Confederacy amid the shouts and tears of the brave men who had faced him with booming cannon and rattling musketry on a hundred fields of glory; a picture, not of the English Channel as the dividing line between the drawn swords of France and Britain, but of Mason and Dixon’s line healing into a red scar of honor across the breast of the great Republic and marking the unity of a once divided country!

GOVERNOR NEWTON C. BLANCHARD, OF LOUISIANA.
]

GOVERNOR N. B. BROWARD, OF FLORIDA.
]

GOVERNOR JAMES K. VARDEMAN, OF MISSISSIPPI.
]

SENATOR JOHN T. MORGAN.
]

Not very long ago, during the Spanish-American War, there was commotion in a far Southern town, caused by a coterie of young men bitterly protesting against the sons of Confederate veterans wearing the blue and fighting under the old flag. An elderly man with “crow’s feet” at the comers of his eyes and silver in his hair, listened for a while in silence, but finally arose from his chair and said: “Young men, you are wrong. I followed the stars and bars for four long, weary years! I saw its colors go down at last and I straggled back to my native state, barefooted and in rags, only to find my home in ashes. I swore eternal enmity to the stars and stripes and to the blue. But one day, after the battle of Manila Bay had been fought, a Mississippi regiment went marching up the main street of my town and lo! my boy was in the ranks dressed in the Federal uniform. In my rage I rushed to the Colonel and shouted, “Take that blue uniform off these young men and let them put on the gray and show the world how the sons of Confederate veterans can fight!” but the Colonel smiled and shook his head and the regiment marched on eager for the fray. I went home in my fury more bitter against the North than ever before. But when one day they brought my boy home in his coffin and I looked down upon him pale and motionless, in his blue uniform and wrapped in the old flag, my animosity vanished in a moment and in my tears I said: ‘Henceforth that uniform is my uniform, that flag is my flag and this whole country is my country.’” This sentiment is not incompatible with loyalty to the gray nor to the folded stars and bars, but it is the expression of the only feeling that will ever unite all the sections of the Union.

SENATOR B. F. PETTUS.
]

We must recognize the fact that a new civilization has arisen in the South from the ashes of the old, and while her people cherish the past for its precious memories, their faces are turned toward the morning. They are not only producing more cotton than ever before, but building gigantic plants among its snow-white fields, and with the magic of modern machinery are transforming the raw material into finished fabrics; they are pulling down the hills and dragging forth their treasures of coal and iron, of marble, zinc and lead, and are converting them into all the finished implements of peace; they are harnessing their beautiful rivers to the thunder-clad steeds of the storm and turning the myriad wheels of industry with electric power; and they will some day out-herod Herod in the marts of the world.

The representatives and governors of the South, confronted with new and perilous problems, have had the courage to grapple with them, the brain to control them and the heart to turn many of them into blessings. They have brought wealth out of poverty and prosperity out of desolation; and Hope stands on the horizon with a new crown in her hand, beckoning this new civilization to a throne of power never dreamed of by the old. And yet, while the Southern people rejoice in the resurrection of their country from the dead and in the bright prospects spread out before them, let them never forget to worship at the shrine of memory nor to permit the glory of the blessed past to be dimmed by the splendor of the future.

POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.

By Henry N. Snyder, LL.D.

HENRY NELSON SNYDER, M.A., LITT.D., LL.D.
]

President Henry N. Snyder, of Wofford College, speaks to our readers
in a thoughtful and commanding way on a question, that with the rapid
and general development of the South is becoming more and more
recognized as a vital popular problem.

As the executive head of one of the South’s most representative
denominational colleges and as a lecturer on the subject before
representative summer schools for teachers, President Snyder has had
occasion to bestow upon his theme serious and special study and his
intelligent and earnest treatment of his topic tends to present it in
a practical and popular form and to eliminate from it those
speculative and academic qualities that have so generally
characterized its discussion.

A native of Macon, Ga., where he was born during the final year of the
Civil War, President Snyder was reared and educated in Nashville
where, after completing the course of the city high schools he entered
Vanderbilt University in 1883, and from which he graduated in arts,
with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He was until 1890 connected with his alma mater, the last three years
of which time he was instructor in Latin and student of graduate
subjects. He subsequently pursued advanced special work in German and
English universities, since which time, until 1902, he was professor
of the English Language and Literature in Wofford College. He has been
president of this institution since 1902.

President Snyder’s contribution to the actual promotion and solution
of his subject has been considerable, as he has served as lecturer on
English Literature at the South Carolina State Summer School and the
Summer School of the South, at Knoxville, Tenn.

He is a frequent contributor to magazines on literary and educational
subjects and is a member of the Modern Language Association of
America, and the Religious Education Association.

The American democracy is not so much an achievement as a prophecy. Its chief glory cannot be in what it is, but in what it is to be. It has not attained the measure of its growth till every man in it has a fair chance and an open field to make the most of himself, and has done so with reasonable completeness. It is therefore essentially idealistic, and, however deeply concerned with the present hour’s duty and work, its face is ever set toward a larger future for itself. But this larger future can only be realized in a finer and more efficient quality of the men and women who are to do the work and continue the unfolding life of this free democracy of equal opportunity,—equal opportunity not for the few favored by fortune or circumstance, but for every child born in it. No democracy dare have any other mind with reference to itself.

The most necessary, as the most inspiring, work therefore which a democracy assumes to do is that of seeing to it that all its children are rightly trained for intelligent service and skilled efficiency. This task it undertakes not only that it may live as a collective body but also that each citizen may in the best and fullest manner express his own individual life. In this two-fold view of the matter popular education, the putting of all the children of all the people into the best possible schools, under the best possible teachers, for the longest possible time, becomes the sacred and imperative duty of a democracy that cares for to-morrow as well as for to-day. And the to-morrow of a democracy, in all the manifold activities of its complex life, is determined by what it does for the child of to-day.

From this viewpoint no democracy ever had a better opportunity to test itself and its ability to control the future than that phase of democratic life working out its destiny here at the South. For the conditions are such as to make the task of training the citizenship of the future almost the one thing to be done. The figures representing those conditions have been so often used of late that one is really inclined to resent the very mention of them. Nevertheless, a proper understanding of the conditions entering into this, as into any problem, is the first step toward the solution. Moreover, in this struggle now on for popular education at the South, it is no part of courage to blink a fact because it is ugly, nor of sane judgment to let anything or anybody beguile us into fighting our battle in the dark. We should keep steadily before us the facts as they are, the stupendous nature of the work that lies ahead and how it is to be done, and withal the eternally vital need of doing it now and in the right way.

Now as far as figures can give one anything like an adequate conception, the situation is about this: In 1900 there were 8,683,762 persons of school age in what we are used to call the Southern states,—5,594,284 white persons and 3,089,478 black. It should be said in passing, yet with all emphasis, that the South may as well get used to reckoning the children of its former slaves in both its educational assets and educational liabilities. Justice and expediency are both vitally involved in this view of the situation. Now, of this future citizenship only sixty out of every hundred were actually in process of school training, and of this enrollment only forty-two were, on the average, in daily attendance. The only comfort that one can get in this situation is by looking back and seeing that conditions have been worse and forward to see that they are bound to be better.

These figures, then, represent the mass of material that popular education has to deal with and the actual portion upon which it is really working. Now when one considers the machinery of instruction, the teachers, the school-property, the length of terms, and the capital invested, one sees even more vividly that the democracy of the immediate future must be limited in its development, not alone because its children are not in process of training but because the means themselves are inadequate and inefficient. The entire country pays, on the average, for its men teachers a salary of $49.00 per month, for its women $40.00. The South gets its men for $35.63 and its women for $30.47. Leaving out of consideration the quality of service to be had at such a pitifully low price, one can be perfectly sure that no high professional ideals and standards can be maintained at such rates. But let us look at the matter from another standpoint; upon every child in its schools the South spends $6.95 as against $10.57 for the entire country; while some states of the West spend $31.49, some Southern states are spending only $4.50. It is not surprising therefore to see what this means as to the average length of school term among us: in the entire country every child has a chance to be in school at least 145 days, while the child of the South has open to him only 99 days. Clear enough is it, then, that democracy in this section is, in comparison with the rest of the Union, handicapped in the very beginning of its race. Moreover, the relation of popular education to its best life, in the light of the situation revealed by these figures, is a deep and fundamental one.

How deep and fundamental this is, can be best realized by the comparative density of illiteracy already prevailing at the South. Fifty out of every hundred negroes ten years old and over can neither read nor write, and nearly thirteen out of every hundred whites are in the same condition of darkness. In the United States as many as 231 counties report a proportion of twenty per cent of illiterate white men of voting age, and of the total, 210 of these counties are in the South. Now the conditions represented by all these figures—and at best they can only bring the matter vaguely to our conception—in one sense, on account of the magnitude of the work to be done and the difficulties in the way, are of a nature almost to take hope and courage from us. On the other hand, the absolute need of doing the work, the fruits that must follow, and the progress already made are a clarion call to patience, patriotism, faith, and unresting effort.

But before taking up the progress already made, it would be well to remind ourselves once more of some of the causes which have brought about the present state of affairs and render the Southern situation as to popular education a peculiar one. In the first place, there was the all but disheartening poverty due to the collapse of the entire social and industrial system of the South. War, followed by Reconstruction, did the work with ruthless thoroughness. From 1860 to 1880 taxable property at the South suffered a decrease in value of $2,167,000,100, that is, to less than one-half its value at the breaking out of the War. Indeed, in 1870 the one little state of Massachusetts paid considerably over one-half the amount of taxes paid by the entire South. It is clear, then, that for nearly twenty years the South was under the simple yet stern and inexorable compulsion of how to live. In this light, therefore, what it did accomplish in the matter of training its children is to be regarded as a really heroic achievement, and is no occasion of blame because, by comparison, it seems so little. Absolutely, it is worthy of all praise.

It should be remembered, too, that in spite of its poverty, in spite of the fact that its energies have been given to a pressing struggle for its very existence, the South has had to maintain a two-fold system of popular education. It has had to care for the children of its former slaves in separate schools, and bear virtually all the expense. This has both complicated its problem and necessarily limited its educational advancement. But at this time it can be asserted with emphasis, that the South, in spite of certain reactionary eddies in the current of its thinking, will still continue to support Negro schools. Our best thought is fast fixing itself in the unalterable conviction that to keep the black man in ignorance is an injustice to ourselves as well as to him; and, moreover, that expediency itself dictates that he shall neither remain sunken in the night of illiteracy nor mistrained for the sphere of life for which he is, in his present stage of advancement, fitted. Therefore popular education has meant, will continue to mean, with the South a two-fold system of education. And the Southern white man, with his own taxes, is largely to maintain it,—at least for many years to come.

But above everything else, the chief consideration with reference to the whole question of popular education in the South, both as to its needs and difficulties, is that we are dealing with a rural folk and rural conditions. More than eighty-three per cent of the Southern people live in the country,—a pure, wholesome Anglo-Saxon stock of unwasted, if untrained, physical, intellectual and moral qualities. The problem of popular education in villages, towns, and cities is virtually solved. The task therefore is concerned wholly with what we shall do for and with the saving, and in this case, the larger remnant which draws its support from the fields. No democracy ever had better or richer assets from which to recuperate itself, or a more inspiring duty to perform in giving this class opportunity for training and development. But from the very nature of the case the proper performance of this duty is a task of stupendous magnitude, and even an approximate accomplishment of it must wait upon necessarily slow processes. The deep-seated conservatism of the people, the extent to which illiteracy prevails and the narrow poverty in many sections, remote and widely-sundered homes, roads almost impassable at certain seasons of the year, the immediate need of the children in the fields, even if the best of schools were at their doors,—here are conditions which would discourage any but a brave and patient people who believe in the divine right of all to whatever power there is in knowledge and the bounden duty of the state to offer to all its opportunities.

However, neither the pressure of poverty, nor the double burden of caring for two races in separate schools, nor the special difficulty growing out of the peculiar nature of conditions, nor the huge magnitude of the task, has daunted courage or enfeebled effort. On every hand there are inspiring marks of progress, and results prophetic of greater advances yet to follow. In the first place, the last six or eight years have been a period of quite remarkable educational agitation throughout the entire South. Every kind of leadership has been systematically at work to quicken the conscience and stir the sentiment of the people on this subject. Pulpit, press, organized philanthropy, and civil authority have combined with professional educators in a campaign whose rallying-cry has been the uplifting of democracy through the power of the schoolhouse. The general result is an interest both wide and intelligent, an awakened conscience, and an aroused sentiment throughout all this Southern land, all of which tends to put behind special and definite efforts of improvement an irresistible public opinion. The South is therefore keenly realizing its sense of civic obligation and its duty to its own future, and when the South once sees its duty and that rich vein of sentimentality, which lies at the basis of its temperament, is once touched, there will be no turning back. And surely it has now seen its duty and its sentimentality is thoroughly alive to all that popular education means to the child of to-day and the state of to-morrow.

For this condition we have to thank, not only the church, the press, and organized philanthropy, but a strikingly courageous and far-sighted political leadership, which the situation has called forth,—men, for example, like Governor Frazier of Tennessee, Governor Aycock of North Carolina, Governor Heyward of South Carolina, and Governor Montague of Virginia, men who have convincingly fought for the inalienable right of every child to be trained by the state at public expense. To their influence must also be added the skilled patriotic service of such State Superintendents of Public Instruction as Mynders, Martin, MacMahan, Merritt, Whitefield and Joyner,—men who seemed to regard their office as peculiarly the most sacred of all trusts committed by a people to public servants. The people have listened to such as these when they might have turned deaf ears to voices from any other source.

Too much importance cannot be attached to the sentiment which has been thus created in the last half-dozen years. It was the necessary step in the preparation for more definite things. Its immediate value has been in the awakening of people to such an extent that they will not only put their children in school but will also tax themselves for educational purposes. General and local taxation, as a result, has been increasing at a significant rate. Indeed, some of the Southern states are now giving a larger proportion of their income from taxes to the use of education than the states of the North and West. They are everywhere building better schoolhouses, furnishing better equipment, and demanding better trained teachers. Consolidation of schools, free transportation, longer terms, expert supervision, the removal of educational matters from the blight of political influence, are the things which now make the educational atmosphere fairly electric with reform, and the next few years will show a growth that will please even the most ardent optimist.

This general agitation has thus connected with it certain definite aims and methods of educational policy, which have already taken shape and are bearing fruit. Not the least important among them has been the effort to secure, above everything, trained teachers. Many of the states have either established Normal Schools for this purpose or have added to their Universities departments of Education. But it has been felt that even these were not sufficient to meet the demands for a trained teaching force. Hence in some of the states, in Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, for example, summer schools with an attendance of from four to six hundred have been running for a number of years, and at Knoxville the great Summer School has been drawing from all over the South a choice body of teachers to the number of two thousand, and offering them the best instruction to be had, North or South. To the influence of these general schools is to be added that of the County Institutes, which of themselves have been an inestimable source of power. All have stood for an intelligent knowledge of the situation, for the missionary spirit of propaganda, for a broader and more accurate scholarship on the part of the teacher, for the application of expert, up-to-date methods of instruction and organization, and for the raising of the teacher’s work to the dignity of a great profession. The significance of all this is that this movement for popular education is laying its foundations in wisdom in that it sees that the teacher himself must first be taught.

And the work has already begun to tell to a degree that can even now be measured. In the last score of years Virginia has reduced its ratio of white illiteracy by 7 per cent, Georgia and Mississippi by 8, Kentucky by 10, Alabama by 11, North Carolina and Florida, by 12, Tennessee by 13, and Arkansas by 14 per cent. These figures are eloquent of present progress and inspiringly suggestive of the future. Democracy is really caring for its own. It is told that a famous German teacher of the Reformation once stepped into his schoolroom and greeted his pupils with these words: “Hail, reverend pastors, doctors, superintendents, judges, chancellors, magistrates, professors.” Some there were who laughed at him as a joker and mocker. But he was wiser than they, and in his wisdom was the prophet of that true democracy which sees not merely the child in the school, but the future man in the state. The South therefore views in this way the progress already made and realizes that what it now does and will do with its children in the schools of the people is the true measure of its own life in the coming years.

TO HELEN KELLER.

BY JAMES TAYLOR.

Forever veiled thy piteous eyes,
Forever sealed thine ear;
How dark and still creation lies,
How distant, yet how near!

Thy sightless orbs to heaven upturn
To crave the blessed light;
Nor sun, nor stars, above thee burn—
Alas, what hopeless night.

The jeweled arch that bends above,
The earth, the air, the sea,
O’erspanned by wings of Boundless Love,
How vainly smile for thee!

The blush of morn, the sunset glow,
The dew-gemmed paradise
Where Summer’s roses blow,
Are not for thy dim eyes.

Hushed is the sound of Music’s voice,
Hushed is the murmuring sea;
No trembling harp bids thee rejoice,—
’Tis silence _all_ to thee.

On Beauty’s loom which Nature wields
With deft, mysterious skill,
To deck with tapestries her fields,
Her every vale and hill,

She weaves with gorgeous threads of light
In mist, and cloud and rain,
Her irised gossamers so bright—
But weaves for thee in vain.

But God will make thee doubly whole,
And give thy spirit sight,—
His glory shall illume thy soul,
For God is love and light!

MEN OF AFFAIRS

With the commercial awakening of the South and the increased
importance of the section as a factor in the national life, has
developed a new citizenship—a sub-structure of the Old South with a
modernized superstructure—in which with the sterling and standard
traits of the old regime is strongly blended the nervous activity of
the new. As a means of paying special tribute to the work being
accomplished in the local and general fields by new generation of the
South it is the intention of this magazine to devote a department
toward setting forth their achievements as well for public information
as for acknowledgment of their services, and in offering the initial
installment of this special column it is desired to direct attention
to the highly representative types herein noticed with the significant
intimation that all are yet in the prime of life with greater
opportunities ahead of them.

Richard M. Edmonds.

_The Manufacturers’ Record_, the South’s, if not the country’s, most representative trades journal, had a modest origin less than a quarter of a century ago in a small desk in an obscure business office in Baltimore. Its founder and guiding spirit was Richard M. Edmonds, who from nothing in the way of working capital save sagacity, energy and determination, has developed a magnificent journalistic property, occupying its own seven-story building and has himself become a man of large affairs and wide influence.

In the development of the now admittedly fertile field of trades journalism, no one point may be more emphasized as having been significantly demonstrated than that it holds peculiar and pronounced opportunities for those desirous of actively participating in the vital activities of commerce.

In no less than three distinct phases of Southern development have Mr. Edmonds and his paper conspicuously figured—in the encouragement of industrial and technical education, in the promotion of the cause of immigration from among the most desirable domestic elements and the diverting of the cotton manufacturing business from New England to the cotton fields. It was Mr. Edmonds’ editorial columns that first started the now irresistible southward migration of the mills by pointing out the many and conclusive reasons why the advantages for cotton manufacturing were all in favor of the South.

As a commercial and financial figure it may be noted that Mr. Edmonds is now a member of the executive committee of the International Trust Company, a three million dollar Baltimore corporation, and is chairman of the executive committee of the Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company, with a capitalization twice that of the former. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Southern History Association, the Maryland Historical Society, the Southern Society of New York, and other organizations.

Mr. Edmonds was born in Norfolk, Va., in 1857, receiving a common school education in Baltimore, where he started life as a clerk in the office of the old _Journal of Commerce_.

RICHARD M. EDMONDS.
]

Jacob McGavock Dickinson.

Successively a teacher, a practitioner of law, a railroad attorney, a teacher of law, Assistant Attorney General of the United States, general counsel for one of the country’s large railroad systems and a leading legal representative of the nation’s interests before the Alaskan boundary tribunal,—this is the record of this distinguished Southerner, yet in his physical and mental prime.

A native of Mississippi and a product of ultra Southern environment, himself a soldier of the gray at the very early age of fourteen, Mr. Dickinson’s evolution into a representative type of national citizenship comprises an interesting study in contemporary American life.

Educated at the old University of Nashville and at the Columbia Law School, New York, with a capstone of extensive travel abroad and special work in law and economics at the universities of Leipsic and Paris, Mr. Dickinson has combined an ideal working equipment with a tremendous energy and a capacity for laborious and sustained mental effort.

As a practitioner his unusual ability was several times recognized by gubernatorial appointments as special judge on the Tennessee Supreme Bench, to which he declined a permanent appointment, shortly thereafter being called to the very high duties of the position of Assistant Attorney General of the United States. After his retirement from this position he became District Attorney for Tennessee and northern Alabama for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, from which he was promoted to his present position as Chief Counsel for the Illinois Central, with headquarters at Chicago.

His greatest public service, as is well known, was his representation of the government in the Alaskan boundary dispute, wherein his presentation of the nation’s claims is admitted to have had a material influence in the successful outcome of that famous piece of international litigation.

JAMES McGAVOCK DICKINSON.
]

Judge Dickinson maintains a close identity with Southern matters by keeping up his connection with various societies and organizations, among the number being the Isham Harris Confederate Bivouac, at his native town, Columbus, Miss.

Samuel Spencer.

In the executive feature of railroad operation Samuel Spencer is a prominent national figure. From an humble position in the ranks, a combination of native ability, splendid equipment and consistent application has resulted in his promotion to the presidency of six large roads, while he is in addition a member of the board of directors of nearly a score of others and of nearly a dozen of the country’s most representative banking and other corporations.

SAMUEL SPENCER.
]

A native of Georgia, where he was born at Columbus, in 1847, Mr. Spencer entered the Confederate army, serving the last two years and with much credit, after which he graduated from the University of Georgia with A.B., and subsequently from the University of Virginia with his engineering degree.

Since leaving college in 1869 Mr. Spencer has devoted his energies uniformly to his ambition to rise to the highest round of the railroad ladder, with the result that he is now president of the Southern, the Mobile and Ohio, the Alabama and Great Southern, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific, the Georgia Southern and Florida, and the Northern Alabama, aggregating a mileage of over nine thousand miles and employing more than forty thousand men.

Besides innumerable other roads, in the management of which Mr. Spencer is director, he is also a director of the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Old Dominion Steamship Company, three large New York Trust companies, the Hanover National Bank of New York, and one of Boston’s large street railway systems.

Mr. Spencer is identified with the American Society of Civil Engineers and other representative political, scientific and forestry associations, and is socially very much of a cosmopolite, being a member of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Macon clubs, besides that wealthy sportsman’s paradise, the Jekyl Island Club.

One of the very few Southerners who have advanced into the circles of millionairedom, Mr. Spencer resides principally in New York and Washington, but is much in the South and is still in feeling and sentiment very much a Southerner.

James Clarke McReynolds.

JAMES C. McREYNOLDS
]

In the appointment of James C. McReynolds to be Assistant Attorney General of the United States the President followed his revolutionary precedent in the selection of Judge Thomas G. Jones, of Alabama, as occupant of the Federal Bench. In this instance conventional custom was further ignored in the elevation of a man considerably younger than the age generally considered requisite.

Born at Elkton, Ky., a little over forty years ago, Mr. McReynolds was graduated from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia with his academic and law degrees, respectively, in both of which institutions he ranked high in scholarship and character.

His initial experience in public life was gained as the private secretary of Judge Howell E. Jackson of the United States Supreme Bench, which, with his already ample legal equipment, served him in good stead in the general practice in Nashville where his career at the bar was characterized by ability, integrity and a high order of fidelity to the many large interests that he represented.

In civic and political movements Mr. McReynolds’ record was signalized by a notably courageous, independent and unselfish interest.

Since his promotion to the duties of Assistant Attorney General of the United States he has established principles of large governmental significance and his able presentation of the government’s litigation before the Supreme Court has elicited the unanimous commendation of that impartial and august body.

Mr. McReynolds’ appreciation by the President would have been further displayed by his appointment as United States District Judge to succeed Judge Hammond, had not a technicality involving residence interfered.

THOMAS DIXON, JR.
]

Thomas Dixon, Jr.

One of the most picturesque and dramatic figures in the limelight of to-day is the Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., a man who has at his age probably succeeded in as many different lines of endeavor as any other man of the times.

An intense product of the new South, Mr. Dixon speaks his opinions on his section’s great and peculiar problems with an incisive virility and a fearless conviction, and with his novels, “The Leopard’s Spots” and “The Clansman” has gained a popular audience for the Southern point of view, before unreached. He has also illumined the divorce evil and the subject of socialism in his dramatic story, “The One Woman.”

Born in North Carolina just forty years ago, and educated at Wake Forest, a Baptist denominational school, Mr. Dixon has in rapid succession essayed the fields of law, the ministry, lecturing and authorship, and has been prominently identified with each. He was a member of the North Carolina legislature at one time and is said to have essayed the histrionic for a brief spell.

First attaining more than casual prominence as a Baptist minister in New York, Mr. Dixon felt the opportunity of a non-sectarian evangelist fraught with higher possibilities in the metropolis and more in keeping with his temperament and convictions, founding a popular church wherein as a religious and civic free lance he attracted a large and influential hearing.

On the lecture platform he found a broader and more congenial labor still, and from lecturing he took to literature, to which he is now devoting his time exclusively. He has planned a trilogy of novels in exposition of the negro question, the second of which, “The Clansman,” takes its text from the vital role played by the Ku Klux in the redemption of the South from the triple scourge of the carpet bagger, the scalawag and their irresponsible tool, the ignorant African.

Mr. Dixon’s late successes have constituted him a man of affairs and he now resides upon his extensive Virginia plantation, where he does much of his literary work and incidentally lives the life of the Virginia planter and gentleman of the olden day.

He is proud to admit the valuable assistance rendered him by his wife, not only as literary critic but as a ready helper in the physical construction of his productions.

JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES.
]

John Temple Graves.

As lecturer, orator and editor, John Temple Graves, of Atlanta, is well known to the country at large. As a lecturer he is classed by George R. Wendling as being in a class with Governor Taylor at the head of the Southern field; as an orator he has had the distinction of presenting his section’s sentiments and peculiar problems to the national ear as has no other man since Henry W. Grady; and as an editor he has by the forcefulness of his personality developed in a brief period of time an extensive business enterprise and a material public influence in his section.

Mr. Graves’ most telling work on the platform has doubtless been his contribution to the enlightenment of the Northern mind on the negro question, while on this and various other subjects he has appeared three times as the orator of the New England Society of Boston, twice of the Merchants’ Club of Boston, once of the New England Society of Philadelphia and twice of the Southern Society of New York. In the capacity of journalist he has officially represented the South as spokesman before the World’s Congress of Journalists at Chicago, in 1893, and also before the World’s Press Parliament at St. Louis, last summer.

As a memorial orator Mr. Graves is entitled to distinguished rank, it having devolved upon him to deliver the funeral orations over the remains of his state’s most eminent sons—Grady and Gordon.

Mr. Graves is still a young man and is a native of Rome, Ga., and a graduate of his state institution at Athens, of which he is a devoted alumnus. He now devotes his time chiefly to his journalistic interests and resides in Atlanta.

Though not a politician Mr. Graves has been twice elector at large in two consecutive presidential campaigns in different states, and has led the Democratic ticket in both instances.

IN VENICE.

BY ISABELLA HOWE FISKE.

All seems a dream of art—upon the arch
Of the grey bridge, the dim canal that spans,
A child steps, hand-raised, and my eye that scans,
Can scarce believe that here too, centuries march,
For Titian might have painted her just so,
Slow-foot Venetian centuries ago.

JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER.

Joseph A. Altsheler, whose story, “The Lost Herd,” follows, is a
representative type of the new generation of Southerners in
contemporary literature.

Born, reared and educated in the South, he has won successive and
substantial laurels in both journalism and literature, and is at
present the unusual combination of a successful figure in both fields.

Born in Kentucky, that commonwealth that has contributed so many
distinguished workers to the literary history of the day, he attended
the local schools of his native heath in the southern part of the
state until entering Vanderbilt University, where he ranked high in
class work, being a Latin scholarship man.

After leaving college, he immediately took up journalistic work in
Louisville with _The Evening Post_, subsequently going with the
_Courier-Journal_, with which paper he remained several years, gaining
wide journalistic experience as legislative correspondent, dramatic
critic, city editor and editorial writer.

In 1892 Mr. Altsheler followed the almost inevitable ambition of the
American with pronounced literary attainments, migrating to the broad
and inviting field of the metropolis, since which time he has
successively filled responsible positions with the _New York World_,
being at present in charge of its tri-weekly edition.

About nine years ago Mr. Altsheler turned his attention seriously to
fiction, since which time he has produced no less than ten novels, in
many of which he has drawn largely upon his own extensive personal
experiences as a journalist.

His first book was “The Sun of Saratoga,” while his latest is “Guthrie
of the Times,” a contemporary romance with a strong political flavor.
He has now in press “The Candidate,” also a novel of the day, and
likewise treating of political life, this time in the West instead of
in Kentucky.

THE LOST HERD.

By Joseph A. Altsheler.

Redfield parted the twining bushes with both hands, and pushed his body through the cleft, while I stood by to see the issue. He took but a single step and then threw himself back like a soldier who would escape a bullet, his face, now turned toward me, showing a yellowish hue in the moonlight. He raised his hand and wiped his damp forehead, while I gazed at him in silence, seeing fear, sudden and absolute, in his gaze, as if death had faced him, with no warning.

We stood so, for a few moments, until the terror died slowly in his eyes, when he took another step back, and laughing a little, in a nervous way, pointed before him with a long forefinger.

I advanced, but he put a restraining hand upon my shoulder, and bade me take only a single step. I obeyed and, with his hand still on my shoulder, looked down a drop of a thousand feet, steep like the side of a house, the hard stone of the wall showing gray and bronze, where the light of the moon fell upon it.

I saw at the bottom masses of foliage like the tops of trees, and running through them a thread of silver, which I felt sure was the stream of a brook or creek. We were looking into a green valley, and now I understood Redfield’s terror, when instinct or quickness of eye, or both, saved him from the next step, which would have taken him to sure death.

The valley looked pleasant, with green trees and running water, and I suggested that it would furnish a good camp to us who were weary of mountains and ravines and stony paths.

Redfield pointed straight before us, and three miles away rose the mountain wall again, steep and bare, the hard stone gleaming in the moonlight. I followed his finger as he moved it around in a circle, and the wall was there, everywhere. The valley seemed to be enclosed by steep mountains as completely as the sea rings around a coral island.

I said that I had never heard of such a place in these mountains, and Redfield reminded me that there were many things of which neither he nor I had ever heard, and perhaps never would hear.

His retort did not dim my curiosity, in which he shared fully, and, lying down for greater security, we stared over the brink into the valley, which looked like a huge bowl, sunk there by nature. The sky was clear, the moon was rising, and we could see the boughs of the trees below waving in the gentle wind. The silver thread of the brook widened, cutting across the valley like a sword blade, and we almost believed that we saw soft green turf by its banks. But on all sides of the bowl towered the stone walls, carved into fantastic figures by the action of time and mountain torrents.

The green valley below could not remove the sense of desolation which the walls, grim and hard, inspired. My eyes turned from the foliage to the sweep of stone rising above, black where the light could not reach it, then gray and bronze and purple and green as if the moon’s rays had been tinted by some hidden alchemy. I assisted nature with my own imagination and carved definite shapes—impish faces and threatening armies in the solid stone of the walls. I felt the shiver of Redfield’s hand, which was still upon my shoulder, and he complained that he was chilled. I knew it to be the stony desolation of the walls, and not the cold of the night, that made him shiver, for I, too, felt it in my bones, and I proposed that we look no more, at least not then, but build a fire, and rest and sleep.

We did as I proposed, but while we gathered the fallen brushwood, each knew what was in the other’s mind; the mystery of the valley was upon us, and we would wait only until daylight to enter it and see what it held.