Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1868-08-24
THE DUMAS.



1t Is after this fashion that the younger
Dumas writes OF his grandfather and
father:
Soldier and General of the Rep ublic
my grandfather could stifie 3 horse be-
tween his legs, and break helmet with
his teeth, and he defended all alone
Brixon bridge against a vanguard Of
twenty men. Rome would have decreed
him the honors of triumph, and would
have made him Consul Cslmer and
more economical France refused college
education to his son, and this son, reared
in the midst Of the woods, air and sky,
impelled by poverty and his own genius,
swooped one day upon Paris, and en-
tered literature a his father enteEad the
enemy's ranks : jostling, destroying,
knocking over everything which did not
make way for him. Then begun the Cy-
elOpean labor which has lasted forty
years. Tragedy, drama, history, novels,
travels, comedies, you have thrown ev-
erything into the world OF fiction with
new creations. You have made news
paper, book and stage burst, too narrow
for your immense shoulders. You have
supplied France, Europe, America: Won
have enriched publishers, translators.
plagiarists; you have made printers
breathless, foundered eopyists, and de-
v0ured by need of production; you have
not always sufficiently tested the metal
you used, and you took and threw into
the furnace, sometimes st hazard, every-
thing which came under your hand. |
The intelligent fire divided them. |
That which came from you flowed
away bronze; that which came
from others went away smoke. |
In this way you have hammered q great
deal of bad iron but on the other hand |
how many of them who had remained
obscure have bsen lighted and warmed |
at your forge, and il the hour of restitu.
ton be struck, what gain for you, were
you merely to take back what you have |
given aud what has been taken from |
you. You have become "Dumas, Sr.,n
for the respectful "old Dumas y for the |
insolent, and amid all sorts of clamors |
you may sometimes hear the phrase:
Really, bis son has more talents than he. |
How you must have laughed. No. You |
were proud, you were happy, like any
Insignificant father; you asked nothing |
better than TO believe it, maybe you be- |
lieved what they said. Dear, ingenious, |
and good, great man who would have |
given me your glory as you gave me |
your money when was young and lazy, |
am delighted to have at last tho oppor- |
tunity to bow publicly before you, to do |
you homage in the face Of the sun and |
to embrace you, as 1 love you, in the face |
Of the future! Let others of my age and |
my worth declare themselves your equal; |
tits their business and have no more |
reproach than to envy them their suppo- |
sitiOn, for /, by merely being your son |
shall be as well known as thee; but DOS
sibly, which, let come what may, will be |
Obliged to reckon with you, when it |
reads our names one under the other
chronologicslly in the balance sheet of
this century, must distinctly understand !
have never looked upon you except as |
my father, my friend, my master, what |
ever may be said to the contrary; that |
thanks to your neighborhood, have had |
the good fortune Of never exsggerating |
myself and Of looking upon myself as 3 |
baby, because I was always obliged to |
compare nyself with my redoubtable
father.