With Bob Taylor

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 lightof 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 itIn the blood which heroes gave it,And its foes now scorn to brave it.Furl it, hide it, let it rest.”

“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 buildingschool 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.

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 thegame 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.

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?

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.”

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 denouncesevery 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 foolswho 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 intellectualculture, 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.

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