The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1902-05-29
ARP AND HORRORS.
Bill Says The Accounts of Disasters
Make Him Sad
THEY SEEM NOW TO INCREASE.
Says All Hearts Should Openin Sym.
pathy For Those Who Are Mourn.
ing For Dead.

1t is utterly impossible for a man to
grasp the horrors Of Martinique. Every
individual case has its heartrendins
anguish and there are 10000 of them,
and 800 more at St. Vincent. Here are
300 in the coal mines near Knoxville
and 5000 mourners outside, and every
day tells Of some new disaster. The
world seems to be getting used to ca
lamities and terrible things. They are
now big part of the battle OF life and
II we are not reconciled to it we do
not stop a moment to ponder the suff-
ering 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 l read the pitiful story OF
Captain Freeman, of the Roddam, as
he told it at the hospital at st. Lucia
while tenderly lying upon pillows MS
face and hands charred and blackened,
his flesh raw and his eye balls bloody,
and how one after another Of his crew
sank in a fiery death until there were
seventeen OF them dead upon the deck,
and this was the only vessel OF the six
teen that brought away living soul.
Oh, it 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 tale to tell If they had lived
to tell it. 1t is good for us that we
cannot know but a small part OF the
horrors Of Martinique and st. Vincent
and on the seas and rivers-one case
is enough. One case Of mother trying
to save her child on burned boat on
the Mississippi river a few weeks ago
saddened US all, but the memory OF
such things soon passes away and we
forget 1t until another comes. Only last
week the papers told Of man, brute,
who got angry with his little boy OF 6
years and after slapping him to the
floor picked him up bodily and raised
him above his head and dashed him
diwn and crushed 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 lit.
tie boy, believe, is In heaven, but the
poor heart-broken mother has to stay
to keep guard over the other three
Merciful Father, when will these things
cease to be; when will woman learn
that it is better to live and die single
hos - oh hotn haroa1f 70 xuhica
character for loving kindness has moi
been established in the community
Girls, let me beseech you to take no
chances. Be shop girl, typewriter
a seamstress, book agent or anything
that is pure and honest rather than the
wife Of a heartless brute and the moth
er of his children. Take no chances
The young men Of this generation are
a 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 l was ruminating about these
horrible disasters and the grief that
follows in their wake. Death Is not SO
terrible thing. Very often it comes
in mercy and is blessing. A peaceful
death to the aged is a triumphant
chans, c-the end of trouble and the be-
ginning Of happiness. But it is the time
and the manner of death. Fitz Greene
Halleck never wrote more beautiful
verse than this apostrophe to death:
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke
And crowded cities wall its stroke;
Come in consumption's CHASTITY form,
The earthquakes shock, the ocean:
storm;
And thou art terrihle-the tear
The groan, the knell, the pail, the bier;
And all We know or dream or fear
OF agony are thine"
1t looks like some Of these awful
things are getting close to us. These
Windward islands are on our side OF
the world, and not so far away. Even
now the wind Is blowing their ashes on
our coasts, and the earth is quakins
under Florida. The explosion Of the
coal mines at Knoxville is the first hor-
ror of that kind in our Southland, and
no pen can picture the scene OF those
- -.