The age-herald., 1901-04-28
OIden Alabama.


 to the Union down to the civil war the structure of her political and social life was essentially Virginian.' writes Prof. George Frederick Mellen in discussing Jo- eeph G. Baldwin and the Flush Times" in Alabama, a most admirable paper in the current Sewanee Review, the best Southern periodical ever yet issued.
 Professor Mellen is himself an Ala bamian who knows thoroughly his Ala bama. though he now dwells in House Beautiful at Knoxville. Following out the Virginian quantity in this States his tory, he refers to the historic fact th;s the president of our first constitutional convention. the first Governor of the Ter ritory and of the State, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, and one or the first two United States Senators were native virginians; and of the eight dele gates from Madison county in the hrst constitutional convention seven were Virginiansl
 But Professor Mellen deals in the main with Joseh Glover Baldwin. "the able jurist, the brilliant humorist, the polished man or letters, W0OSc ldhAC 10 PSA maps e'S widely known as that of any other Ala bamian of his day, and whose fame Is certainly securer than that of any other author of the ante-bellum school of writ ers" He traces Baldwin's lineage back to the roll of Battle Abbey and to the "Doomesday Book of the eleventh cen tury in England. and finds that the Bald wins were "among the highly favored from Alfred the Great to King Henry VIII" Our Baldwin was born in Virginia in 1915. He left that State in 1886 and journeyed to East Tennessee, thence to Alabama, and his experiences are told with wonderful vigor and humor in his famous book, "Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi" in which he says:
 "The transition from east Tennessee to southwestern Alabama and eastern Mis- sissippi was something marked. It was somewhat like a sudden transition from Sleepy Hollow to the Strand. A man re- tailing onions by the dozen in Weathers- field and the same man suddenly turned into a real estate broker in Sam Fran cisco would realize the cantrast between the picayune standard of one region and the wild spendthriftism, the impetuous rush and the magnificent scale of opera tons in the other."
 Baldwin made his home in Gainesville, Sumter County. Alabama, "both county and town being then among the most prosperous in the State, though but re- gently acquired from the Indians and opened up for settlement" "Old settlers, in joyful reminiscefice, tell of the time when successive cotton wagons consti- tuting trains in length from & quarter of a mile to a half mile, rolled their bales into the streets of the place Gainesville on the Tombigbee riverl for shipment to Mobile" In 1S45 there were fifty-two law yers resident in Sumter County, twenty nine of whom lived in Livingston and eleven in Gainesville
 Professor Mellen refers to Baldwin's Flush Times as his great and endur- ing work" and declares very properly that there is not dull or commonplace page in the book. from the introduction of Ovid Bolus, the naturally dexterous and accomplished liar, to the voluntary withdrawal of the ignorant applicant for o know that it's any harder than took it at fust; but then, B.. ther's so d-d much more of itl' "
 It is learned privately that Professor Mellen's paper in the Sewanee Review is to be given to the Alabama State Depart ment of History, which is so ably con- ducted by MT. Thomas McAdory Owen, and it will be published with the Pro- ceedings of that department, thus becqm- ing valued part of the States written and preserved history. The paper is em- inently worthy, of preservation It is clear, lucid and logical-runs like the musical murmur of brook that glides through wood and meadow and field. It is almost the happiest of Professor Mel lens many happy efforts.
 Readers of the Age-Herald will remem- bcr that some weeks ago this newspa per printed noble tribute to Alabama de- livered by Professor Mellen in introduc- ing Alabama's Mrs. Gielow to a Knox vile audience