Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1884-02-07

were brave men enough, but were not
always ready to face their desperate
antagonists. Gordon, In his mild
way, would take one or other of these
by the arm and lead him into the
thick of the fire. He always went un-
armed himself even when foremost in
the breach. He never recognized dan
ger; to him a shower of bullets was
no more than a hailstorm. He carried
one weapon to direct his trOOps-he
had but q little cane, and this soon
won for itself the name the name of
! 'Gordon's magic wand of victory"
His Chinese followers, seeing him al
ways victorious, always foremost in
the fight, concluded that it was his
wand that insured him protection.
The idea encouraged the ever victori-
Gus army greatly, and was Of more
service to the young commander than
all the arms he could have borne"
Gordon left China in 1864, and re-
turned to England. He was still only
a Captain of Engineers. Yet he had
led several thousand men with con-
summate skill, and it was not denied
that he had won great victories. Hav-
ing thus outstripped all laws OF semi
GRITTY, having commanded armies and
saved an empire when he should, ac-
cOrding to rule, have been still engag-
ed IN mastering the intricacies of for
LITIGATION, it necessarily followed that
it was not an easy matter to provide
him with suitable work on his return.
With the best possible intentions the
young hero was given a consular ap-
pointment on the Danube, whence he
was summoned in 1874 to Egypt by the
late Khedive. The new task assigned
to him was IN some respects more
difficult than that intruSted to him in
China, for whereas in the far east he
had only to yanquish an enemy whose
forces were revealed, he had to deal
in the SOudan with difficulties which
were only partially known, while he
lad to reconcile as we'll as hecould in
struvCions that were incompatible with
the facts of the position. It was to
his credit that, working on a reduced
pay, and without any desire for fame,
he devoted all his powers to the per-
Torrance of his work, and constitu-
ting himself the champion of distress
ed humanity, spared no effort to put
an end TO the suffering and Infamous
lot of the dark skinned races over
whom he was called to exercise author
ity. During five years he toiled in
| this cause with unhagging zeal. and
when he resigned the powers with
which the Khedive had intrusted him
it was admitted that he had not merely
put stop to the worst evils of the
traffic in slaves, but that he had pre-
pared the way for the emancipation
of the Soudanese in 1889, should the
Egyptian government of that day pos
sess the forces and the will to make
good its bond. So far as his career
has yet run, Chinese Gordon, who is
a Major General in the Royal En-
gineers, will be remembered for two
episodes, the TAPPING rebellion and
! the governOrship of the Soudan. His
biographer shows that his private life
has been a counterpart of his public
career. Devotion to duty has been
his motto throughout, and if his ex-
treme dislike to be praised and his
over anxiety to hide himself and his
actions from the world have been
sometimes misunderstood, they al &
the natural accompaniment of his
simple but lofty character The age
of heroes has long gone by, but so
long as Chinese Gordon is with us
there will be living type of the quail
tiles which were, and must always be,
| heroic.