The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1898-02-16
One Great Year
for Great Men
From the Chicago Tlmes-Herald.


~ n THE recent death of Mrs Mary
III ii Cowden-Clarke i number of Eng
III III lish new spapers have been misied
WI into stating that Mr.. Gladstone
alone is left of that ''class of 1909
so famous for the great names in the
worlds work. Admiral keppel in Eng
land still surVives-a hale old sailor. still
infused with much of the fire which made
his youth so notable. In America Colonel
Richard W. Thompson, Of Indiana, born
IL that same year, watches the rapid
current of times activities which he knew
In a calmer, earlier day. Lawyer, SOL
der. cabinet member he has helped n
the solution of those questions which puz-
Zled government when Clay and Web
ster and Calhoun and Benton were here.
The great remes in that "Clas~ of 1909
are quite astonishing. Mr.. Gladstone,
among the foremost-either LIVING or
dead-awaits his reward with the serene
pose of a man who has known all the
| heights of hcnor and has never been
crushed by defeat Abraham Lincoln,
born to poverty, achieved greatness and
died at the pinnacle Of most deserved
fame, Hannibal Hamlin his vce-presi-
dent through the trying period of war,
came of the same year: as did Hugh
McCulloch. power when Lewis CaSs
was a national figure when the almost
| forgotten Wabash canal was begun, and
"A power stlll-a secretary of the treasury,
| indeed. as late as 1885, Oliver Wendell
| Holmes was born in the same year and
| lived to sing to the end OF four score
! years the genuine music of his soul. Ten
nyson. laureate indeed, and by patent
| from a source far higher than his queen
was another of the great men Of the
| class. So was Professor Blacke. the
! Scotchman-a scholar, a lover of Burns,
| an essayist and foe to agnosticism.
"The class of 1909 is rapidly thinning" he
| said to Gladstone when Haussmann died.
"Still, you and Tennyson and are left"
| "Tennyson would not thank YOU for in
| Guiding us" replied the statesmen with
a twinkle in his eye, ''We are too noisy
| for him."
Haussmann himself was great man.
! He made new Paris OF a city grown
| old and unlovely. and the sayest capital
in Europe arose A hnancier, master
| of engineers and architects, a favorite
of the emperor and a deputy of the re.
| public, he knew royal and imperial and
| democratic France. Beside him from
the same birth year was Marshal Can
robert. perhaps the most distinsuish he'd
soldier I'm the class. He conquered the
| Arabs in lSiS and 1853 he fought like a
| tiger at lnkerman, he led the Xouaves
at Magenta and won imperishable fame
at Solferino.
| o.
| There was Charles Darwin; and mod
ern science dates from him. There was
| George r. GliddCn. the American Egyp-
| tolOGist; Henry Dawson Rogers, the geo.
| logist; BENJAMIN Pierce, the mathema-
| ticion: Kari Heinrich Koch the German
naturalist; Adolph Frarcke. the French
| philosophical writer; Francisque Michel.
the archaeologist and James David
Forbes, the Scottish physicist. There was
| Felix Mendelssohn the composer; Edgar
| Allen Poe, Mrs. Browning and Richard
| Monckton Mines, in the English tongue.
| and Frederick Muller Palludan, poet of
| Denmark. Names of that famous "class"
| crowd upon one. There was Cyrus Nc
! Cormick, the inventor: Shelton MacKen-
zie, the journalist; Adolph Frederic, the
| organist Frederic Otto, the chemist
Baron Manteuffel, Prussian field mar
shall; 0. S. Fowler, the American phre-
noogist; Albert Zimmerman and Phil
lippe Auguste Jearon, a German and
| French painter.
Among the women OF that far year
was Mrs. Mary Cowden-Clarke. so re-
Gently passed away-the friend OF Lamb
and of Keats and of Shelley. OF Ilazlltt
and Leigh Hunt but above all the COM
piler of that Complete Concordance"
which had added a charm even to the
| study of Shakespeare, She wrote novels
and poems and essays almost to the day
of her death. Fanny Kemble was an
other. She made her debut at Covent
Garden Theater IN 1899 married Mr..
Pierce Butler a South Carolina planter,
I'm 1894 secured a divorce and resumed
her maiden name in 1899. She was an
actress of the very first rank, an author
and an honor to her race.
| o
Space does not suffice to name them
all. the list is so long but no year-no
five years-has produced so many great
and eminent men. But time has brought
them low, and all save three or four
have passed away. The class however,
will be forever famous.