The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-09-01

SKI "a. e
They are not all dead. In fact, they
seem to multiply as the years roll on
my contemporaries I mean receive
more letters from old men than l ever
did. and they write we'll and give long
epistles. When man gets along IN the
seventies he feels lonesome, notWith-
standing the near presence OF chlidreh
and grandchildren. The companions OF
his youth are gone, and so some vi
these old men unbosom themselves to
me- for sympathy. / like such letters
and try TO answer them ALL but rheu-
matism in my arm and hand cramps
nv replies. One old gentleman from
Alabama SAYS he feels better after he
has written. for he is native Georgian
and loves her people and her old red
hills and the sweet memories OF Emory
College and his visits to Athens, where
his Uncle Eleazar Newton lived. and
how he met me there in the fOrties.
and John Grant and Dan Hughes and
Jack Brown and Billy Williams, who
married my friends cousin and took
charge of the blind asylum-and how he
heard DIR. Church preach and was
charmed with the music of the choir,
where Miss Ann Waddell and Rosa
Pringle and other pretty girls sang,
and how tall, long, high man, with a
big hooked nose and a huge "pomun
Adamus'' on his throat sang bass, and
how he was a room mate Of Tom Nor
wood at Emory and a classmate oil
Bishop Key and Judge A. b. Long
street, the author of Georgia Scenes
was the president; and how he removed
to Alabama in 1S49 and married and has
seven daughters and no sons and has
ten orphan grandchildren, and has to
work early and late to support and edu-
cate them, but never sees and rarely
hears from any friend of his youth and
is at times sad and depressed and longs
for sympathy. Poor old man, I wish
that he lived near me, for I would visit
him and cheer him up, and tell him
anecdotes and antdotes. and we would
talk over the old times. and swap col
lege stories and brag about the good
old days when there We're no telegraphs
or telephones or bicycles, and We did
not want any; no sewing machines or
store clothes, and we didn't need any;
no football or baseball or haZing or sui
cides or appendicitis. And in those
days came Toombs and Stephens and
Judge Dougherty and Howell Cobb and
Walter Colquitt and spake to the peo-
pie face to face, and such eloquent men
as George Pearce and Bishop Capers
and Jesse Mercer and DR.. Hoyt and
Goulding and Ingles preached to them.
Yes, We would talk about the days of
our boyhood, when there was no gas
or kerosene or. friction matches-noth
ing but candles to give us light, and no
Prometheus to steal fire from heaven
to light them with. Shakespeare knew
how it was. for he wrote:
How far that little candle throws its
beams!
So shines a good deed in naughty
world
If Shakespeare wrote by candle light.
why shouldn't we? And~he. too, used
the flint and steel to make spark to
light them. "Pick your flint and keep
your powder dry" was General Jack
sons order at New Orleans. When
was n young merchant gun-flints We're
as common as marbles and / sold them
at the same price-10 cents a dozen.
Wonderful. wonderful are the changes,
and we old people fall in with them
and adapt them to our use and our
comfort. I wouldn't be set back to the
L
enjoy seeing this generation all set
back about seventy years, just for
about week. My Alabama friend and
other veterans would be tickled to
death to see the universal dismay-no
railroads or telegraph. no mail but once
a week-and twenty-five cents for
single etter. No daily newspapers in
the State and only four weeklies. with
nj lrypo IL ,,o
There would be no cooking stoves, no
coal, no steel pens or envelopes, no
cigarettes. No millionaires or free Mig
ger. I remember when cotton was
packed in round bales with crow-bar
The long bag was made first and was
suspended from a hole in the gin house
floor and Uncle Jack got down in it and
packed the cotton hard as it was
thrown to him. lie packed two bales a
day and they weighed 400 pounds each.
Two of them filled the bed of the big
wagon and five more We're crossed on
top and fastened down with long pole.
All the little spaces were filled with
corn and fodder, the big cover put on
and with four or six-horse team we
were off for Augusta. 1t was ten
days trip and we boys We're happy to
go along and camp out all night and
listen to the niger drivers tell about
ghosts ard Jack-o-Lanterns and
witches and raw mead and bloody bones.
1t was great fun We brought back
sugar and molasses in great hogsheads.
1t was brown sugar for white sugar
wasn't invented. except a kind called
loaf sugar, which was put up in five
pound cones and covered with blue pa
per. That kind was for rich folks and
was very precious. 1t was crystalized
like these little square Jumps that are
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