The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-21
The Little shepperd of Kingdom

-
 Come.
 A book full of the strong life of the Tennessee Mountains. Redolent with the faint perfume of wild mountain gardens. with the perfum eof camelia, rhododen- dron, and laurel, feeting odorousness that is more volatile freshness than frag- rance.
 A book buoyant with the crisp. clear at- mosphere of the hiiltops.
 Just such people as MT. Fox describes liva today in the valleys and coves about peaks and spires of the Cumberland as on Lonesome and Kingdom Come, people noble, unafraid, unaffected, unassuming. gentle by being natures own gentle peo- pie.
 Mir. Fox has written a strong story of those heal t-rending days of '60- O4, more in the border States than in the cotton belt and shore States. For Tn Kentucky 1t was really a war of brother against brother. MT. Fox has given the story of this division with truth and with deep sympathy.
 Chad holds to himself the warm, eager interest of the reader from the moment we meet him on old Lonesome, talking frankly to God.'
 q reckon you know it, but I'm a-goln' to run away now, God! haint nothin' but a boy, but got to ack like man now. I'm a-goln' now. I don't believe you care much. I don't want you 10 think I'm complainin'-fer I aint. But Thy ways is nscrutable-leastwfse. that's what the circuit rider says-an' l amt got word more to say. Amen.
 With that simple creed: ''I got to ack like a man, now" Chad hews out his career With superb strength and reca- tude and independence he holds the anec- ton of the reader.-and of Margaret even till as Major Buford, U. $. A., ne finds himself able to live out the spirit of '76 without disunion of brothers or dls- unions of friends and lovers.
 Never was a sweeLer, more wholesome love story told than that of Chad ard Margaret No less living and well drawn arc the supporting characters of this book. Old Joel, the patriarch of the caves, is one of natures great men, gen erous, just, full of advice and help-and prejudice. Aunt Nancy, his wife, is d typical mountain mother, rearing in sim pie mountain ways her own brood Of tall sons and daughters, and taking to her heart and hearth the waif and the out cast.
 Malessa, a nameless unclassified flower of the forest, is like some aromatic herp of the wilderness with healing in its leaves. living and blossoming, but to give it's life for the life of another. Major Buford is a noble type of the old Southern planter, the same grand ola man whether found on broad cotton acres, in the Virginia tobacco belt or in the bluegrass of Kentucky. We snail not see his like again. They passed from the world with the great days that made them what they were.
 The story of the old Buford In the mountains buried in his periwig is no exaggeration. There Is hardly neigh borhood of the Tennessee or Kentucky mountains that has not held, or perhaps holds today, its inhabitant of gentle birth and culture Some soul tired of the weariness and dissatisfaction that civili- zation brings gone back century to simpler ways in Natures own primeval forests. Every mountain neignDorhooa harbors such men. The mountaineers tell of their kindness and wisdom and helpfulness, but the summer visitor and the tourist never sees them. When the mountain trails open up to lead the way to summer resorts the emigrants from civilization move farther on into the wilderness
 Caleb Hazel is the typical dreamer who never reaches his ideal heights. lie is the fated climber who pointing others upward himself is chained by meager
  neath Yet such natures preserve strength and a sweetness in the midst of love and deprivation, virtues that the buxom Smilas always fail to find.
 The men who lead our forces in those days of stress and storm are well drawn. Morgan is shown on his black horse in many a stirring picture, Morgan whose deeds of daring set all the South to sing ing ballads of his bravery in those great days
 The pictures of General Lee. the truly nohlest man that ever lead any nations wars. are heart rending as truth itself. and heart stirring as all truth Is: Only once he saw his great chief-the next morning before day, when he rode through the chill mist and darkness to find the headquarters of the command ing general-two little fires of rubbish and two ambulances-with Lee lying on A blanket under the open sky. He rose as I drew near, and the flrelight fell full on his bronzed and mournful face. He looked so sad and so noble that the boy's heart was wrenched-he rode back the pitiable way through the rear of that noble army of Virginia-through ranks of tattered, worn, hungry soldiers among the broken debris of wagons and aban- doned guns. past skeleton horses and skeleton men,"
 t"Behind at Appomattox, Chad was Wlth Grant He saw the surrehder-saw Lee look toward his army, when he came down the steps after he had given up, saw him strike his hands together three times and ride Traveller away through the profound and silent respect of his enemies and the fearful worship of his own men,"
 The story of Renfrew the Silent, who left home and people all. so that he might live his life out under the Stars and Bars would seem the fgment of a TO- mancer's brain. But this exact story has been going its rounds through the news papers, I read it with thrilling heart some little time ago in The Montgomery Ad- vertiser. Captain Martin Schuyler, an ex- Federal cavalryman. on his tour of the world came upon an island of the Navi- gator group in the Pacific where from a natives fishing boat waved the Confed- crate flag.
 The story was told of the man who had lived with the natives twenty-five years beneath that flag that he had unfurled at his landing He had bequeathed on dying his treasured emblem to the natives and they faithfully guarded his bequest.