The Houma courier. (Houma, La.) 1878-1939, 1900-06-02
LEARN ALL YOU CAN.
This Is the Wise Advice Of Philoso
pher Bill Arp.
How the Julian Calendar Got Behind
Time The blood OF enc
LRWaOnS-sOme of Arp'a
COnundrums.

can. There is a comfort in it. Gold
smith says Of the village schoolmas-
ter and his pupils:
And sim they gazed and stiu the wonder
That one small head could carry all it
1 remember how I used to wonder
how our Prof. Charles Mccoy learned
all that he knew about mathematics
and astronomy. Some years |
heard Prof. Proctor, who was then the
greatest living astronomer, lecture for
three nights at Lake Weir Chautau-
qua in Florida and he lifted me IN
to the seventh heaven, as it were
and I had to strain my mind to soar
with him amongst the stars. but he
magnifed the creation and the mi
verse and the Creator in such a wav
that l have not forgotten it and NV
reverence and awe and love for the
Supreme Being has been greatly in
creased.
l was Illuminating about this because
have received a letter from a learned
friend who thinks 1 should have told
alittle more about leap year and how
the Julian calendar got behind time
ten days in 1852 years and Pope Greg
oryas astronomer, Clavius, made a new
one called the Gregorian calendar.
And how it says that all years whose
date number is divisible by four with
out a remainder r leap years unless
they are century years. These are
not leap years unless they are divisi-
bic by 400 without a remainder,
Therefore, the year 1000 will be a.
leap year, But even this allowance
will not exactly even up the march
of tine and we will lose another day
in 1924 years. Sir John Herschel cor
rected this by making every 4,OOOth
year a leap year and this would keep
old Father Time all right for % 5000
yeaTs-nuf sed-we will not figure be-
yond that.
Another respected friend writes an
interesting letter about Hugh Lawson
White, once a candidate for the presi-
Dental nomination, and says although
he was reared and lived and died in
Tennessee. he was born in IredeII coun-
ty, N. G.. His mother was a Lawson,
daughter of Hugh Lawson, and from
that Lawson ancestry more distin-
guished people have sprung than from
any other we read of. Among their
descendants are the Whites, of Ten
nessee; Mrs. Stonewan Jackson, Mrs.
Gen. W. T. Sherman, Mrs. Gen. A. P.
Hill, Mrs. Adlai Ewing Stevenson, the
Ewings Of Ohio and Tennessee; Gen.
Dwell, Gen. Henderson, of Virginia;
the Lawsons, of Georgia, and Gov.
Jared Irwin, of Georgia. All of these
were lineal descendants. Just think
of it! What a divergence of fate and
fame and fortune that made of one
blood Mrs. Stonewan jackson and Mrs.
A. P. Hill. Mrs. Gen. Sherman was a
Ewing and Mrs. Stonewall Jackson
was a Morrison. The writer says he
has a copy of Hugh Lawson's will
that was executed in 1865, and that
his grave is in. an old churchyard be-
tween Salisbury and Charlotte, and
the headstone still shows the initials
"H. L." Verify, verify, there is some
thing in the blood that transmit char
acter to several generations.
Dub tblG GIOuDlC Is IudL Ills duCESlIdl
blood becomes crossed and ~recrossed
so often that it is apt to lose its virtue
and becomes contaminated with the
blood of, some vicious ancestors. This
could only be prevented by what is
called sin and in breeding" as marry
ing cousins or second cousins, but the
doctors say that produces physical de-
generacy in the offspring, and so what
can a man do but try to elevate him
self, and not bank on his ancestors?
Col. Campbell Wallace was a noble man
and made his own fame and fortune,
and he told me that when he was q
young man he took a notion hat may
be he was a descendant of Sir Will
liam Wallace, the great Scottish chief,
and as his father died when Campbell
was a boy, and told him nothing about
it, he rode a hundred miles over the
mountains of Tennessee to see a great
uncle who was old enough 10 know
about his ancestors, and the old uncle
said: 'Now, Cam, you had better let
that pedigree business alone, for your
great-grandfather was a powerful sor-
ry man, and one day he stole some
taters often a fatboat and they
cotched him and took him down to the
canebrake and whipped him-they did,
shore "Since them said Col. Wal
lace, 81 have taken Pope's couplet for
my p~edigree:"
Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well you part. There all the honor
les"
But I do like good stock, whether in
man or beast or fowl or fruit or flow
ers. I liked the Adams family and the
Randolphs and Breckinridges and
Hollis and many others because they
held up so long. My wife came from
that ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS stock
that had c~Oal-bIack hair and dark hazel
eyes and wore No. 2 shoes and stepped
like a deer, and It was a good>cross she
made breeding back upon the Anglo
Saxon and Scotch-Irish that my ances-
tors came from. There is not quite so
much "Injun" in our children as there
was in her, but still there is enough to
make them love their friends and keep
one eye on their enemies if they have
any.
Twas Illuminating how little we know
of what is going on in many parts of