The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1902-06-27
Horrors Of Past Few Weeks Make
Barlow Man Sad and Medltative,
TaElR ENORMlTY CANNOT Be GRASPED
Calamltiss Seem Nov to Increase and
Our Hearts Should Go Out In
Sympathy to Afflicted
Humanity.


grasp the horrors OF Martinique. Ev
cry individual case has It's heartrend
Ing anguish and there are 10000 OF
them, and 600 more at st. Vincent
Here are 800 in the coal mines near
Knoxville and three thousand mourn
ers outside, and every day tells Of
some new disaster. The world seems
TO be getting used to calamitles and
terrible things. They are now a big
part OF the battle Of life. and II we
are not reconciled to It we do not stop
a moment to ponder the suffering and
crime that Is going on. No, we cannot
take It In and the head lines in the
daily papers are all that we have time
or inclination to read. Last night my
wife and I read the pitlful story of
Captain Freeman, Of the Roddam, as
he told 1t at the hospital at st. Lucia
while tenderly lying upon pillows, his
face and hands charred and blackened,
ais flesh raw and his eye balls bloody,
and how one after another of his crew
sank in fiery death until there we're
seventeen OF them dead upon the deck,
and this was the only vessel Of the
sixteen that brought away a living
soul. OF, 1t was horrible and filled our
hearts with sorrow and our eyes with
tears. But this was only one case and
there are thousands who would have
had as pitiful a tale to tell If they had
lived to tell it. It Is good for us that
we cannot know but small part of
the horrors of Martinique and St Vim
cent and on the seas and rivers-one
case is enough. One case of a mother
trying to save her child on a burning
boat on the Mississippi river few
weeks ago saddened us all, but the
memory of such things soon passes
away and we forget it until another
comes. Only last week the papers told
Of a man, brute, who got angry with
his little boy of six years and after
slapping him to the floor picked him
up bodily and raised him above his
head and dashed him down and crush
ed the life out of his little body and
his mother picked him up a corpse,
while the life blood spouted from his
mouth and nose The recital made me
sick and sad. The little boy, l believe,
is in heaven, but the poor, heart-bro-
ken mother has to stay and keep guard
over the other three. Merciful Father,
when will these things cease to be;
when will woman learn that it is bet
ter to live and die single than to chain
herself to a man whose character for
loving kindness has not been estab-
lished in the community Girls, let me
beseech you to take no chances. Be
shop girl, typewriter, a seamstress a
book agent or anything that is pure
and honest rather than the wife Of a
heartless brute and the mother Of his
children. Take no chances. The young
men of this generation are hard lot
not more than two in ten are fit to
marry. Count them UP in your own
community and ask your brother about
them. How many does he know who
he would be willing for his sister to
marry.
But | was Eliminating about these
horrible disasters and the grief that
follows in their wake. Death is not so
terrible a thing. Very often it comes
in mercy and is blessing A peaceful
death to the aged is a triumphant
change-the end Of trouble and the
beginning of happiness. But it is the
time and the manner of death Fitz
Greene Halleck never wrote a more
beautiful verse than his apostrophe
to death;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke
And crowded cities wall It's stroke;
Come in consumptlon's CHASTITY form,
The earthquakes shock, the oceans
storm;
And thou art terrible-the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pail, the bier;
And all we know or dream or fear
OF agony are thine"
It looks like some Of these awful
things are getting close to us. These
Windward islands are on our side Of
the wor,S, and not so far away. Even
now the wind is blowing their ashes
on our coasts, and the earth is quak-
ing under Florida. The explosion Of
coal mines at Coal Creek is the first
horror Of that kind in our southland,
and no pen can picture the scene of