Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1856-11-06
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From the New Orleans Delta.
w. r. TABER.

The public is familiar with the melan-
choly details of the recent duel, in which
w. r. Taber, the junior editor of the Char
lesion Mercury, fell; but it cannot be ex-
pected, outside the State of South Carolina,
to appreciate the grievous loss of the South
in the sudden extinction of this young and
gallant life.
Mr.. Taber was the most promising man Of
his years in South Carolina his intellect was
we'll balanced and thoroughly cultured; his
principles were squared to the high and no.
Bile standard of Johr G. Calhoun, and his
character was the natural embodiment of
those principles. He was married man,
who, like the Greek patriot, had ''two loves"
his family and South. To the former he
was the kind husband and prescient father;
to the latter, he was "the soldier to trust in,
the courtier to WOO" The whole energy of
his powerful nature was devoted to the main
tenance of the moral and political dignity
which has always characterized his native
State. He believed that the continuance Of
the race of gentlemen Gin the Bayard, Ro-
land, or Philip Sidney meaning of the word)
was more important than the existence ofthe
Union, and he labored with pen and tongue
to hedge South Carolina with barriers against
the terrible invasion of Northern vulgarity,
which has done so much to debauch our press
and disgrace our people. This was noble
mission, we'll understood and manfully work.
ed out to the close.
The incidents of Taber's life are few, as is
usually the case with the intellectual men of
the world who work like the German, Schleg-
ell, deliberately under ground" but they
are essentially beautiful in themselves and
furnish brilliant example to the young men
of the South who are about to commence a
public career, and already have the confused
sounds of their coming labors in their ears.
His early days were those of student, not
oyerburthened with worldly wealth, and pass
ed quietly away in communings with the
gifted and the great whose words and deeds
were preserved in the conservatory of litera-
ture. He married shortly after his majority
into distinguished family, and subsequent
ly found his appropriate sphere of action in
the life of public journalist. Becoming
one of the partners and editors of the Mercu-
ry, he attracted immediate attention by the
directness, vigor and invariable conscienti-
BUSINESS of his writings, and soon assumed
the position of a Representative man" in the
South His nature was as Southern as the
sun, and as bounteous withal, warming every
heart within its reach, giving an impulse to
the growth and Towering of genial thought,
and securing human love and respect as if
by some central and mysterious principle of
attraction.
Such men are not born into the world eve
ry day, andit is only natural and proper that
their disappearance from our midst should
occasion public sorrow and regret. How
painfully sublime in the presence of this
newly-made grave in Charleston, are the
words of Thomas Carlyle, in recording the
death of Goethe-"when the inanimate ma
terial sun has sunk and disappeared, it will
happen that we stand to gaze into the still
glowing West and here rise great, pale,
motionless clouds, like coulisses or curtains,
to close the Flame-theatre. within; and in
that death-pause Of the Day, an unspeakable