The age-herald., 1900-03-12
IN HOTEL LOBBIES
 AND ELSEWHERE

l Hl1lllOHS Ol DNfSOilS or all SOIIS LII OlneF
 lands will envy the lot of the honored Con-
 federate veteran Ellis. who died in Selma
 last Friday remarked quiet man with
 many mdsgivings as regards courts and
 juries, witness stands and lawsuits Vet
 eran Ellis, who was a good soldier. good
 man, good citizen, passed the Soriptural
 limit of mans earthly life, and died at 72. Not once during all that long and worthy | age did he enter a courthouse. He didn't
 have to: and only officers of the law, mem-
 bers of the bar, and crazy persons, togeth
 CT with such hapless creatures as those
 acting under the lash of necessity or the
 spur of compulsion ever darken the doors
 of court houses. The sheriff's wrtts and
 the mandates of the courts contribute ito | the unhappiness of a vast multitude of good l men and women, and likewise bad ones 1 Generally the bad sort work the undoing of the good Veteran Ellis never had l lawsuit, never had business in a court of l record, never served on a jury. and didn't l know the difference between wit | ness stand and a bagpipe. His ex- 1 por.ence respecting these particulars | is enough to arouse the envy of 1 uncounted millions of human creatures, l with whom the courts play battledoor and shuttbecock. 'Pon my word, if I were l placed in a witness stand tomorrow I fear l I'd be struck dumb, so fearseme of the l law have l become. If I were forced on | a jury I'd vote on the side of the lawyer l l est tone of voice. If a lawyer in the case 1 shrieked or pointed his finger at me- or called the jury intelligent there'd be a l hung jury, a mistrial, or the shrieker 1 would lose his case I'd prefer a calm,
 cool, sarcastic lawyer like one I heard about. He was examining a witness in I most icy tones. Suddenly he called out, The witness will tell the truth and shame 1 the opposing attorney Oh, the devil! l muttered the laughing judge"
 That is very interesting. your story of 1 Veteran Ellis and the courts of law" oD- | served the rheumatic person to the quiet l man with the wholesome fear of coults; 1 ''but the most interesting fact connected 1 with the brave old soldier is that he went | through -four years of the bloodiest and most QlS9StrOuS war OL HOuern It1IlttS anu | never received so much as a scratch of | wound, and from the beginning to the end of his long and honored life he was never | sick so long one day! His first and | only warming came at noon of his last day l at business. Ebshteen hours later he was dead For more than seventy years he 1 lived without illness, without drugs, with l out doctors, without the science of medi- 1 cine, without the nostrums of ,quackery. 1 To those of us who have lived most of our l lives in physical pain, swallowed tons of l drugs and looked to the doctors for life | itself the experience of Veteran Ellis is l incredible. Yet the world would have been deprived of its most humane and most | charitable class of men if everybody were an Ellis. The docltors-God bless em! | thered be no doctors. And the doctors do more to brighten human life Ilan all | other classes or professions When you fear you are come at last to the jumping off place, your doctor will blackguard you and threaten and boss you around at terrible rate: but you love him all the | more. Your doctor relieves your suffer- | ing. and in the doing of id he binds you to | him with bonds of which there can't be any adequate or worthy description. The doctors-why, the world wouldn't be our | world if it were not for the doccors They | and their assistants, the blessed white capped nurses, are the guardians of human Fife. Come to think about all this, it wouldn't quite do for everybody to be blest as Veteran Ellis was.-Ah. there goes that lumbago!''
 An interesting relic of the war between the states was brought to town Saturday by Abe Kauffman, one of Loveman, Joseph 6 Loeb's popular travelling men. 1t was a ten-pound ibombshell that had lain at the | bottom of we'll for t1hirty-eight years and was still Hive and dangerous. Tn | 1862 federal soldiers were in possession of l Athens, Alabama, but there was an un- l expected attack by confederate troops, and 1 the federals were forced to abandon the l town," said Mr. Kaufman. Before do- | ing so, however they hastily threw about three hundred shells and solid shot, and
 many muskets, into the town well. There
 the 'warlike stores have remained ever | since, the well not having been cleaned 1 out since the federals fled in '62 Only the I older inhabitants remember the historical | incidents, and so when the shot and shells | dHu muSkeilS were brought Up rom the | obttom of the old we'll there was a sen- l sation in the beautiful and prosperous lit- | tie city of Athens. A friend presented one | Of the shells to me. It is in state of 1 perfect preservation, and I value it as a
 relic of our great civil war;
 Frank Whitaker Gist, the bright and | popular editor of the Columbian Chroni- | cle, and chairman of ithe democratic com | mittee of the Fourth congressional dis
 trict, is in Birmingham. Mir. Gist repors l the states great School for Girls to be | doing well.
 George A Sorrell, the popular lawyer of l Alexander City, is dn Birmingham. Mir l Sorrell Is a candidate flor the legislature l from Tallapoosa county, and he is said to l flavor the reelection of Senator Morgan l Ale is widely known and greatly respected.