The Big Stone post. (Big Stone Gap, Va.) 1890-1892, 1890-10-10
r1rHY SAYINGS
And the Persons who said them First and
others who said Thorn Afterwards ana
Got the Credit for them.
library Of American Literature.)

library Of American Lterature.l
The editors have expended a great deal.
Of industry in tracing to their authors
great many sayings which in this country
have become party watchcries and house
hold words. Some results of their re-
searches are likely to surprise the reader.
Thus the phrase Omitted we stand, divided
we fall" has been variously attributed to
John Dickinson and Arthur Lee, but it
seems the Boston Gazette of July l8, 176S,
contained the lines:
Then join hand In hand, brave Americans ell,
BY uniting we stand, BY dividing We fall.
| Benjamin Franklin put the sintiment
Enthusiastically wnen he said at the sign
ing Of the Declaration of Independence
1--WE must all hang together or assuredly
we shall all hang separately" Who first
used the phrase Brother JonathanT Ac-
cording to the editors it was Georgia Wash
ington, when he said eve must consult
Brother Jonathan" meaning his secre-
tary and aide, Jonathan Trumbull, of
Connecticut. To Thomas Jefferson we
owe the assertion that the honor of candi-
dature for public Office fought neither to
be solicited nor refused" and the other
familiar dictum that vacancies in office "by
death are few, by resignation none"
Characteristic Of Aaron Burr are the fol-
lowing sayings, first, claw is whatever is
boldly asserted and plausibly maintain
ed" and second, 1.-THE rule Of my life is to
make business pleasure and pleasure my
business" To Davy Crockett we are in
debted for the injunction, "Be sure you
rsoEk Alo,. oGa II MO
Randolph who furnished yituperatiye
epithet for dstasteful collation., when he
called the administration of j. @. Adams
and Clay "a combination Of the Puritan
with the backlog" To Clay himself we
owe some memorable words. For example,
"If we fail, let us fail like men," and this,
II had rather be right than be PRESIDENT;
and again, II have heard something about
allegiance to the South. know no South,
no North, no East, no West, to which
owe my allegiance" Curiously enough, it
was now forgotten novelist, Horace Bin
ney Wallace, who in 1888 hit upon the now
familiar thought, "a foreign nation is q
kind of contemporaneous postcrity." 1t
is apparently to Thomas H. Benton that
we owe the widely current Americanism,
"a new departure" John Pierpont it was
who, before the days of stuffed ballot
boxes, returning boards, and wholesale
bribery, described the ballot as
weapon that comes down as still
AS snowflakes upon the sod;
But executes a freemans Will
As lightning does the will OF God.
In no way could Calhoun have defined
his view of the nature OF our Constitution
more lucidly yet tersely, than in his re-
mark to Oliver Dyer, that we should not
use the word nation" in.speaking of the
United States, but the word "Union " or
"Confederacy." The origin of the slang
phrase, "Give 'cm JESSIE" is now
seldom recognized. The editors of this
work remind US that it was the repub-
lican watchword in the Fremont campaign
and, of course, alluded to the Christian
name of the candidates wife.
We would not pass over neat saying
of Thomas Wentworth Higginson's appro-
pos of Henry James, Jr., "that Mr.. James
cosmopoltanism ia, after all, limited; to
be really cosmopolitan man must be at
home even in his own country" On the
other hand it was Henry James who laid
his finger on the reason why 80 few of us
can sympathize with Thoreau, when he
said that Thoreau "was worse than pro-
vincial-hc was parochial." The notion
that Grover Cleveland should be credited
with the authorship of the dictum, "public
Office is public trust" is exploded by the
editors, who point out that Henry Clay, in
1929, laid down the principle that "Goy-
eminent is a trust and the officers of the
Government arc trustees; and both the
| trust and trustees are created for the BEN
Lea e 81, Nnt NAL "
on the score of paraphrase of this aph-
orism that Grover Cleveland is permitted
to figure in Library of American Lit
crature," from which Samuel j. Tilden,
the author of two volumes Of noteworthy
"Speeches and Addresses" is excluded.
The latter's exclusion is the more surpris-
ing, because r. B. Hayes is admitted for
the sole reason that he made on one occa-
sion the remark, whose substance has
been uttered hundred times, "He serves
his party best who serves his country
best" Apropos Of the dictum reproduced
by Cleveland, the editors show that in 1881
the very phrase, "public Offices are pub
lie trust" was used by William Wallace
Grape in speech reported by the news
papers. 1t was later in the same year
that Cleveland first announced his discov-
cry. Why Clcveland's statement that
"labor is the capital of workingmen,
truism adapted to primary schools--should
be thought worth reprinting in this val
ume, we are unable to understand.
Few know that the author Of the CAM
paign term, "spellbinders,' meaning speak
ers able to hold an audience spellbound,
IS one William Cassius Goodloc. We are
of course, indebted to James Russell
Lowell for the saying, apropos of inter-
national copyright, that "there is one book
better than a cheap book, and that is
book honestly come by" And who but
DR.. Holmes could pack so much truth in
80 neat vehicle as we see embodied in
the aphorism that "t0 be seventy years
Young is sometimes far more cheerful
and hopeful than to be forty years Old"