The age-herald., 1901-05-06
Who Is the Real Originator


 rich widower."
 Who Is the Real Originator?
 Taking up the discussion of the Age Herald's Murmurers quotation. which has aroused most extraordinary interest, the Washington Post pursues the theme with unexampled dignity, repose, clamness, sweetness, beauty love and rhetorical finish, rising to the mighty altitude of fair syntax, a glory to which even the great and illustrious Post is not in every line accustomed Behold the murmuring of the Post
 "A very interesting controversy has broken out in Alabama, the nature and importance of which may best be illus trated by quoting powerful communica- tion published in one of the leading news papers of that state-the Birmingham Age-Herald:
 To the Editor of the Age-Herald.
 :" Is not the literary strength of the quotation,
 He who dallies is a dastard, He who doubts is damned. Found in it's artful alliteration, and the real strength of the fact stated contained
 
 Shakespeare, McDufie, nor Hill deserves credit for the immortal words" as It was the Apostle Paul who uttered, or wrote, the last line. will be seen by reference to the fourteenth chapter of Romans. The conversion of the couplet seems to be but modern declaration strengthened by supplemental truth from Holy writ. therefore hardly worthy of a controversy as to who may have been the modern constructor The time and the occason-the period of recon struction in the South-rendered forceful the use of the expression by Benjamin Harvey Hill. F. V. E.
 Referring to this wild, luxuriant not to say riotous outburst of rhetoric the elderly and staid Montgomery Advertiser another giant of Alabama journalism has this to say:
 The authorship of the above quota tion has been a matter of discussion for few days in our Birmingham contemp- orary. Some have attributed it to the fa- nous Ben Hill of Georgia, and some to other distinguished men. So far as is now known, the first man to use the ex-
 
 Hamilton, one of the most brilliant of South Carolinas coterie of brilliant men. The occasion was at a banquet in the city | of Charleston, and when he was Governor of the State, a position he filled from l 1880 to 1892. It was during the intense excitement of the nullifcation peroid, and, being an ardent advocate of that policy, he used the words in question to emphasize his position and to arouse those who sympathized with him.
 Naturally, it is with the most respect full reluctance that we venture into the arena of a discussion so important and profound. Great issues are involved The authorship of Beautiful Snow is mere trifle in comparison. Ranging from St. 1 Paul to Ben Hill, 1t constitutes question which may well agitate the entire civil ized world. But if the Post has no other virtue, 1t has that of courage. In the cause of human enlightenment and exal- tation, We stand ready at any moment to bare our bosom to the slings and ar rows of the dastard foe, and, speaking from that proud, If dangerous. emnence, we make bold to suggest that the Hon. J.
  tered the impassioned words in question. | He was then a member of the House of Representatives and the speech in which he indulged this flight of eloquence was delivered during the winter of 1S76-7, when the Hayes-Tilden contest was raging in Congress. The Hon. Henry Watterson had just offered his justly famous propo- sition that 100000 unarmed Kentuckians' should march on Washington. The whole country was on fire. MT. Tilden had steadily refused to countenance anything l like violence. His supporters were in despair. And then 1t was that MT. Black burn thundered in the House, calling for fearless. patriotic action and summoning every Democrat to the imminent, deadly breach
 This, in our opinion. Is no time for 1 faint-hearted whispering and la-de-da fo- rensics. Senator Jo Blackburn is the man who made that fiery proclamation, and he did it in the vortex of a tragedy which has no parallel in modern times. It is late in the day-a quarter of a century l afterward-to revive the question of au- thorship. Has 1t come to pass that no in 1 famed orator of our day can utter a thrilling sentence without having some moss-grown bookworm looking for its counterpart in myths and chronicles of | octo