The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-10-18

things that made for purer, higher human life.
 There is not a finer character in all literature than John Iray who, in school house on the crest of a hill, in- structed the Lexington urchins in the eighteenth century and, unharmed, fought his desperate battle with the in- vading panther.
 1t Is here we find colonel Romulus Fields and his faithful Peter Collins, two gentlemen of Kentucky"
 Of Colonel Fields, MT. Allen says that ''he. represented a fair type of that so- cial order which had existed in rank perfection over the bluegrass plains of Kentucky during the final decades of the old regime"
 Perhaps of all agriculturalsts in the United States the Inhabitants of that re- zion had spent the most nearly idyllic life, on account of the beauty of the climate, the richness of the land, the spa cious comfort of the homes, the efficiency of their negroes. and history combined to make them a peculiar class, a cross be- tweens the aristocratic and the bucolc
 They were as simple as sheperds and as proud as kings, and not seldom exhibiting ! among both men and women types of character which were az remarkable for pure tender noble states of feeling as they were commnhplace in powers and cultivation of6inihd.
 It was, ,upon this luxurious social growth that the war fell as killing frost and upon no single specimen with more blighting powers than upon Colonel Fields. For destiny had quarried and chiseled him to serve as an ornament in the barbaric temple of human bondage. There were ornaments in that temple and he was one A shareholder. with south ern sympathies, man educated not be- yond the ideas of his generation con- Vinced that slavery was an evil yet see ing no present way of removing 1t. he had of all things been a model master
 As such he had gone on record in Ken lucky, and no doubt in a higher court and as such his efforts had been put forth to secure the passage of those milder laws for which his state was distinguished. Often in these dark days his face, anxious and sad. was to be seen amid the throng that surrounded the blocks on which slaves were sold at auction; and more than one poor wretch he had bought to save him from separa- tion from his family or from being sold into the southern plantations-afte sending far and near to find him a home on one of the neighboring farms | In 'fhe Reign of Law" that classic tale of the hemp felds is David. with lofty ideals and noble purposes and what was better, living up to them. It has been said that no American wri- ter has ever portrayed an American of the best type. If MT. Allen in his artis- tic conception of Judge Ravenal Morris in his best book. "rhe Mette of the Pasture" is not the best type of the American ever given 1t is the finest por- trayed of the character of the southern gentleman.
 Wonderfully wrought as are David. John Gray, Gordon Helm and others in this community of gentlemen, it is upon this character Judge Morris, that Mir. Allen concentrated his tenderest and most artistic effort, and puts into his mouth, in the days when wisdom was with him and peace not far distant, these words: "l wish to God that some vir- tue. say the virtue of truthfulness could be known throughout the world as the unfailing mark of the 1merican-the mettle of his pasture. Not to lie in bus mess, not to lie in love. not to lie in religon-to be honest with his fellow men, with women, with God. That would be fame for ages"