Waterbury evening Democrat., 1895-08-16

amusing feature of tho case to my mind is their supreme agotism.
 It is over thus. In all my travels have noted that 1t is in regions remote from great lines of travel, where the land is poor, and the brush thick, and tho population thin, that religious delusions prevail and Mormons and Millenarians flourish. It is where the people sit in log cabins of long winter evenings by great roaring wood fires and discuss Chiliasm and infant dam- nation, grace, free will and predestination, election and reproduction, whether few will be saved or many, whether God foreknew because he had foreordained or because foreknowledge is inherent in infinite knowledge, whether he predestinated the elect or elected the predestinated, and all the other complicated conundrums of su- pralapsarian theology. On the other hand, it is in great cities, mining regions and manufacturing centers that wild delusions about money, work and wages abound, but the latter are far less excusable, for in these matters we have experience to go on. And yet they are equally persistent and I sometimes think much more injurious. No delusions are so hard to cure as those of city men who think themselves above error in business matters. I know a man in New York city who maintains that gold is a fixed and invariable standard of val ues; that while all other products of labor arc forever fluctuating gold is gifted with the attribute of fGod-immutability! The man is quite sensible, too, in most respects, is entirely harmless and allowed to run at large.
 Military Matters.
 All this, however has nothing to do with the wide extended battlefield have lately surveyed and the routes of the two armies I have just tramped over, or even the long disputed question on which have been seeking fresh light, Why did Grant attack Lees intrenchments at Spottsyl- vania, seeing that the route which he final ly took was open to him without attack ing? All writers on military science agree upon three eprinciples-never attack 8 forti- fled place when it can be turned, never at tack an enemy on ground of his own choos- ing if it can possibly bo avoided and never do what the enemy expects and has provid- ed for Grant violated all three and sev- eral other rules of war during his 12 days before Spottsylvania. The results were a dead loss of some 15, 900 effectives and then the march to the left by way of Massapon- ax, precisely as ho might have marched without firing Q shot. An army of critics have wrestled with the subject, but if any one of them has given satisfactory ex- planation it has escaped my notice.
 As Grant moved off eastward and then southward it was of course open to Lee to move nearly directly southward and then eastward. I first travelled from the Fred ericksburg railroad northwestward over Grants route and have just finished my tramp southward over Leo's> to the North Anna, where the next struggle for position took place; but, being weary by this time of great pine forests, where tho stagnant air is almost stining, of the Wilderness, | where good stopping places arc few, and of | hearing the same old complaints of hard times for the farmers, came in here for a | little rest And, much to my surprise, | found that this queer old hamlet of perhaps | 300 people is the center of a little region | rich in historic interest and is itself place | well worth visiting. Here, for instance, | is the courthouse, erected in 1735 of bricks | brought from England,, the bricks being glazed and of a peculiar make and abso- lutely unchanged by 160 years of weather. 1 Tn this courthouse Patrick Henry made his | first recorded speech, the one headed in his | biography Against the Parsons" His famous liberty or death speech and that in which he compared George III to Caesar and Tarquin were made at Williamsburg. Arid Land.
 | Two and a half miles from here Henry l Clay was born in a region called ''The l in that tract, but how they live passes my | comprehension. It is rather the most sim | 2uIar combination of sand flat, swamp | river bottom, brush thicket and hummock l land that l ever saw. There is just enough
 sand to make the land poor without mak-
 ing it dry and just enough black dirt to
 make it muddy without making it fertile
 and just enough of rock to be troublesome 1 without serving as n foundation for any | road.
 How many great men were born here
 lbouts it would take long time to tell
 if the local statement bo accepted, but
 among them I might mention tho once mo- 1 yorious rather than famous Beau Hickman
 of Washington. In this region, too, con
 trary to the rule elsewhere, many of the
 old manorial families have held the land
 originally granted to them from the crown,
 md the people still point with pride to
 amilies the names of which would make
 lon, -nll if this were a directory instead
 If an itinerary. As to battles, why, all the
 .cgion for days ride around town is but
 combination of battlefields, largo and
 small, and by every arm of the service
 But of this more anon.
 l J. H. BEADLE.