The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1900-11-25
Atlanta. &C.


the Northern or the Southern point of
view, have written with candor and good
temper. 1t is true that one of them con-
fesses that Reconstruction is still revo-
lutionary matter. Those who delve in it
find banked fire; still hot and fiery with
in. for all it has lain under the ashes a
whole generation; and thing to take
fire from"
But without some such examination OF
the conditions under which the Southern
States were readmitted to the Union. it
is impossible to form a clear opinion of
the most significant of our internal prob
lens of the coming decade, namely, the
movement for the Acknowledgement of the
Southern negro.
Little, Brown and Company have in
press 1.-THE Spiritual Significance" by
Lillian Whiting, author of the three series
of 1.-The World Beautiful" The argu-
ment presented in those volumes is con-
tinued in a plea that the future life is
the continuation and development of our
present life in all it's faculties and pow
ers, and that a truer knowledge of the
nature of man and his relations to God
tends to higher morality and increasing
happiness The title of the work is
found in these lines from aurora Leigh. =
eff a man could feel,
Not one day in the artists ecstasy,
But every day. feast, fast and working
dav.
The spiritual significance burn through
The hieroglyphic of material shows,
Henceforward he would paint the globe
with wings"
ABOUT LEE, JACKSON AND BROOKS.
(Wm. e. Curtis in Chicago Record)
In the basement of the chapel of Wash
lngton and Lee University at Lexington,
Va, the office of the late Robert E. Lee,
formerly president of that institution, is
preserved exactly as he left it on the
morning that he occupied it for the last
time Net a book a letter or q paper has
ever been disturbed. Once or twice a
year the room is carefully busted. but at
all times the windows are kept closed
and the shutters drawn in order to protect
the sacred place so far as possible. Let
tiers that he received the last morning
that he was able to do any work lie on
his writing table under a paper weight.
The newspapers he read that day are
beside them precisely where he laid them
down; the morning reports Of the differ
ent members of the faculty lie untouched
They were never examined Visitors are
sometimes admitted to this hottest of no.
lies, especially if they served in the Con-
federate army under the great chieftain
whose dust is inclosed in a marble sar
cophagus across the hall from his study
beneath beautiful recumbent statue,
H. = I-aA
exists.
Stonewall Jackson is buried in the little
public cemetery at the other end of the
t4pn under a bronze statue representing
him upon the battlefield with a fieldglass
in his hands. Gen. Jackson's house is
now occupied as a tenement by several
families The hall adjoining the First
Presbyterian church in which he conduct
ed his famous "nigger" Sunday school is
still occupied for that purpose, for it is
no longer considered contemptuous for
lesser men than Stonewall Jackson to
teach colored people the truths of the
Bible.
Some years ago a story was published
widely throughout the country about Gen.
Jackson's ghost haunting the halls of the
Virginia Military Institute, where he was
professor, out IL IuTuS Out W nave pceA
a "fake" invented by two imaginative
students who were DESTROYS of creating a
sensation.
Col John NJ. Brooke, who designed the
ram Merrimac and thus revolutionized
marine warfare, is still living at Lexing-
ton, professor emeritus of physics in the
Virginia Military Institute. He was one
of the early graduates of the Naval
Academy of Annapolis, served with honor
and distinction in the navy, commanded
one of the ships in Commodore Perry
squadron that opened Japan to foreign
commerce, and invented the deep-sea
sounding apparatus now in use throughout
the world. Col Brooke has patented sew
eral other important inventions, and has
received medals, diplomas and other re-
wards from several nations. He left the
navy to enter the Confederate army at
the beginning of the civil war. and at the
close of the war was appointed to pro-
fessorship in the Virginia Military Insti-
tute, which he still holds.
Early in the war the Confederate Mil
itary authorities found themselves al
most entirely without percussion caps,
and President Davis sent for Gov. Letch-
err. Of Virginia to devise some means OF
obtaining them. Gov Letcher said that
he knew man who could build machinery
to make them, and summoned Col
Brooke. The emergency was explained to
him, and he was asked if he could do any
thing to relieve it, He replied: "Give