The age-herald., 1901-01-20

fifty years ago, and began the sale of pa pers and other things to make a living. His little one-room hut contains a chaif, bed and a table. It is upholstered and is situated within thirty feet of the railroad track that is the great highway between New York and New Orleans Here for ale most countless years he has lived on the great throbbing highway of commerce, and here, as age crept on, he has had harder and harder struggle for existence, seeming ly going backward in proportion as the great material interests of the country went forward. In this little hut, Sx16 feet, there has been fought out one of the stern est, most uncompromising fights that the stars have ever looked down upon. Here this blind man has lived in serene philoso- phy, with the winter winds whistling through the upholstered boards, or the summers heat beating and burning down, and in his total blindness has murmured not. His help was for years a little negro girl that fed him and cooked for him, as he was not able to hire any one else, and now he has his bread cooked by a negro wo- man and brought to him, and the hotel furnishes his water He cannot meet the trains now, but stays in the hotel, where it is warm, and cries his papers, and does a good business on a very small scale. He is as independent as nature. He asks no favors of any man, and fights out the bat tie of life alone-uncompromised and under no obligations to any man. He Will receive no charity, and has a high ideal in business life. He pays for what he buys, and has always met his business obligations. In religion he Is too liberal to meet the views of most people, but there is a singular hon. esty in his life and a strangely attractive fascination about his absolute independ- ence under the very shadow of death and afflicted in the most direful manner. He was selling his wares here when the sol- iarc hU In civil war and of them bought 25 cents worth of lunch from him in 1863 and promised to pay him when he came back. The years passed on, and a few days ago the soldier, MT. Cunning ham of Nashville, came by again, and, re- membering the incident, paid the money.
 An article written about him by our cor respondent several years ago brought a letter to him from a long lost brother in Arkansas, but he, too, has ceased writing the old blind man. The hotel people and the people here would willingly help him, but he desires no help as long as he is able to get bread of his own earning. And the thousands of people who have travelled through here on the trains in the many years that have passed will remember on reading this the old blind man with the rosy face, crowned with halo O. white hair, and the heavy white beard, on whom the shadow of night had fallen long ago, and they will hear again the old familiar cry that every traveller In the United States that has passed through here within the past forty years has heard Here's your hard billed eggs, parched peanuts and bis- cuits!"
 The old mans cry is growing weaker now, and the most unique figure that Ala bama has ever had will soon have passed away, but not until his strange life has become part of the history of this coun- try. R. w GORMAN.