Chapter I: DO not care so much where, as with whom, I live. If the right folks

are with me I can manage to get a good deal of happiness in the city or in the country. Cats love places and become attached to chimney-corners and all sorts of nooks--but I have but little of the cat in me, and am not particularly in love with places. After all, a palace without affection is a poor hovel, and the meanest hut with love in it is a palace for the soul.

If the time comes when poverty and want cease for the most part to exist, then the city will be far better than the country. People are always talking about the beauties of nature and the delights of solitude, but to me some people are more interesting than rocks and trees. As to city and country life I think that I substantially agree with Touchstone:

"In respect that it is solitary I like it very well; but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it is in the fields it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court it is tedious."

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WHAT do I think of the lynchings in Georgia?

I suppose these outrages--these frightful crimes--make the same impression on my mind that they do on the minds of all civilized people. I know of no words strong enough, bitter enough, to express my indignation and horror. Men who belong to the "superior" race take a negro--a criminal, a supposed murderer, one alleged to have assaulted a white woman--chain him to a tree, saturate his clothing with kerosene, pile fagots about his feet. This is the preparation for the festival. The people flock in from the neighborhood--come in special trains from the towns. They are going to enjoy themselves.

Laughing and cursing they gather about the victim. A man steps from the crowd--a man who hates crime and loves virtue. He draws his knife, and in a spirit of merry sport cuts off one of the victim's ears. This he keeps for a trophy--a souvenir. Another gentlemen fond of a jest cuts off the other ear. Another cuts off the nose of the chained and helpless wretch. The victim suffered in silence. He uttered no groan, no word--the one man of the two thousand who had courage.

Other white heroes cut and slashed his flesh. The crowd cheered. The people were intoxicated with joy. Then the fagots were lighted and the bleeding and mutilated man was clothed in flame.

The people were wild with hideous delight. With greedy eyes they watched him burn; with hungry ears they listened for his shrieks--for the music of his moans and cries. He did not shriek. The festival was not quite perfect.

But they had their revenge. They trampled on the charred and burning corpse. They divided among themselves the broken bones. They wanted mementos--keepsakes that they could give to their loving wives and gentle babes.

These horrors were perpetrated in the name of justice. The savages who did these things belong to the superior race. They are citizens of the great Republic. And yet, it does not seem possible that such fiends are human beings. They are a disgrace to our country, our century and the human race.

Ex-Governor Atkinson protested against this savagery. He was threatened with death. The good people were helpless. While these lynchers murder the blacks they will destroy their own country. No civilized man wishes to live where the mob is supreme. He does not wish to be governed by murderers.

Let me say that what I have said is flattery compared with what I feel. When I think of the other lynching--of the poor man mutilated and hanged without the slightest evidence, of the negro who said that these murders would be avenged, and who was brutally murdered for the utterance of a natural feeling--I am utterly at a loss for words.

Are the white people insane? Has mercy fled to beasts? Has the United States no power to protect a citizen? A nation that cannot or will not protect its citizens in time of peace has no right to ask its citizens to protect it in time of War.

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OUR COUNTRY.--Our country is all we hope for--all we are. It is the grave of our father, of our mother, of each and every one of the sacred dead.

It is every glorious memory of our race. Every heroic deed. Every act of self-sacrifice done by our blood. It is all the accomplishments of the past--all the wise things said--all the kind things done--all the poems written and all the poems lived--all the defeats sustained--all the victories won--the girls we love--the wives we adore--the children we carry in our hearts--all the firesides of home--all the quiet springs, the babbling brooks, the rushing rivers, the mountains, plains and woods--the dells and dales and vines and vales.

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GIFT GIVING.--I believe in the festival called Christmas--not in the celebration of the birth of any man, but to celebrate the triumph of light over darkness--the victory of the sun.

I believe in giving gifts on that day, and a real gift should be given to those who cannot return it; gifts from the rich to the poor, from the prosperous to the unfortunate, from parents to children.

There is no need of giving water to the sea or light to the sun. Let us give to those who need, neither asking nor expecting return, not even asking gratitude, only asking that the gift shall make the receiver happy--and he who gives in that way increases his own joy.

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We have no right to enslave our children. We have no right to bequeath chains and manacles to our heirs. We have no right to leave a legacy of mental degradation.

Liberty is the birthright of all. Parents should not deprive their children of the great gifts of nature. We cannot all leave lands and gold to those we love; but we can leave Liberty, and that is of more value than all the wealth of India.

The dead have no right to enslave the living. To worship ancestors is to curse posterity. He who bows to the Past insults the Future; and allows, so to speak, the dead to rob the unborn. The coffin is good enough in its way, but the cradle is far better. With the bones of the fathers they beat out the brains of the children.

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RANDOM THOUGHTS.--The road is short to anything we fear.

Joy lives in the house beyond the one we reach.
In youth the time is halting, slow and lame.
In age the time is winged and eager as a flame.
The sea seems narrow as we near the farther shore.

Youth goes hand in hand with hope--old age with fear. .

Youth has a wish--old age a dread.

In youth the leaves and buds seem loath to grow.

Youth shakes the glass to speed the lingering sands.

Youth says to Time: O crutched and limping laggard, get thee wings.

The dawn comes slowly, but the Westering day leaps like a lover to the dusky bosom of the Ethiop night.

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