The age-herald., 1901-06-03
THE MURMUR OF THE WORLD.

Sans Souci, Friday-This noble old South Carolina country-seat Is a green eddy calm place In the great current, and the Murmurer Is for brief space hap py in it's repose and sweetness.
 How wondrous green it is and how al- turing and restful! The splendid old man. sion is hid amongst the primeval oaks and black-green Ivy and towering vines here draped the walls in the springtime fresh- ness of rustling leaves and fragrant fiowers the soaring vines reaching above the top of the tall tower and waving there, green signal to the blue sky and q world of green, stretching field on field to the blue mountains far and near.
 Surprisingly beautiful Is the landscape of which beautiful Sans Souci Is the cen ter. There is a dignity and repose about it suggestive of rural England, and it seems as if some score of square miles had been cut out of Devonshire and drop ped down here upon the Carolina land. If there be any evidences of decay they are hidden under this marvellous wealth of grain and grass, flowers and trees
 Driving along these quiet country roads one is amazed and charmed to see long reaches of the red clay roadside covered over with immense. beds of the wild honeysuckle with It's white and yellow flowers, natures ornamentation done with the regularity and precision of the gard ener's art in beds of flowers
 To one come out of our turbulent and noisy valley down there at the foot of the Alabama moutains, with it's turmoil, it's ceaseless mad rush, it's smoke and its dust, where even babes and old men are feverish with energy, Sans Souci, with Its whispering woods and voiceful helds, Is a paradise of resting delight It appeals to me with a hundred tongues and every tongue tuneful as a poets dream. Its joys I am gathering unto my self in tropical abundance and they make the dreamer, the idealist, the singer just once more before the treadmll ahead of me claims the fulfillment of the most toilsome exactions of life that has been seldom suffered to daily by the primrose path of careless pleasures.
 As l write upon the wide vine and hower-wreathed balcony up aloft the glad faces of many merry maidens gone to gladden. other scenes of merriment and happiness, the songs of seven mocking birds are borne t ome upon the soft breeze from the leafy trees in bursts of incomparable melody, and breaking into these songs are the trills of innumera- ble other birds, forming the melodious discord that makes for the real harmony of bird-song in a happy hunting-ground of birds that are never molested.
 No bird is ever disturbed here by soul less man or boy. It seems to be sacred tradition of the Carolinians to protect the birds. My own earliest recollection embraces the stern and unyielding ad- monition of Carolinian, scholarly sn and lover on a cotton plantaties zh the Blackbelt of Alabama. that 10 bird in that splendid wilderness of ours should be harmed; and I am grateful today that never yet has any bird suffered harm through me. Here about Sans Souci for more than a century the creed of the fields has been that the birds should be protected, and the result is that there are birdnests in every tree and bush.
 Sans Souci-Without care! Free from worry, strife. turmoil, anxiety and the wearing and wearying exactions of the workaday worldl It means all that-is all that. Care Is anchored down wonder in the public highway. leading into the beau tiful city of Greenville-the Green City and I cannot believe there Is much care In those woody streets and over-arching avenues of greenness! In our land I have not seen any large town so interesting, so old-worldly quaint so beautiful. It is an enlarged and vastly older, richer, more picturesque Eufaula or Tuscaloosa. Cen tury-old churches and church yards and dwelling where the clematis, the ivy, the Virginia creeper, the honeysuckle and woodbine and rose-vine run riot, and the