The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1904-10-07
TWO MEN.
HENRY wATTERsoN IN CoURIER-JOUR-
NAL.

Within metaphorical stones throw
of one another-and some six year:
of time apart--the 14th of Nay, 1852
and the 9th of October, 1858, re.
spectively-up in New York state
the other in New York city-two
children came into the world,
Alton Brooks Parker and Theodore
Roosevelt.
One of them was, until a month
ago, chief justice of the supreme court
of the Empire state; the other is, and
for three years has been, president OF
the United States.
The Sth of the coming November
the people are to choose which of
them shall preside over the national
destinies the four succeeding years
from the 4th of March, 1905.
Which shall they prefer?
Of Alton Brooks Parker-whatever
else may be, or may not be written of
hint can be truly said that there
is nothing problematical about his
character, nothing bizarre about his
individuality. His intellectual life,
like the lives of Story and Kent,
stands recorded in his judicial opin-
ions; his personal life, like that of
DR.. Primrose, has lain chiefly Sin his
migrations betwixt the blue bed and
the brown" If he were not a learned
jurist, he would be a plain farmer"
If he were a country clergyman, as
he might have been, the lines of the
Deserted Village were a fitting cpl
taph-
Remote from towns. he ran his Cody race.
Nor s'er had changed nor wished to change his
place.
In the event that he lose the cleo
ton. his lot will be no poorer than
that of a man who dwells in an earth
Iy paradise, surrounded by all that
can make life happy; if he can win
it, he viii have to exchange the
charm of home on the Hudson for
the splendor and turmoil-perhaps
the disappOintments, certainly the
cares-of the White House at Wash
ington. Wisely, he has committed
himself to no more than single
term; the which gives a guarantee to
the country OF an independent and
disinterested administration of the
Office during four years, and assures
himself, at the end of them, the bless
ing OF one who can depart i'm peace,
having earned the adjuration empha-
sized in holy writ: We'll done, thou
good and faithful servant"
Judge Parker is a democrat; and to
have been a democrat in central New
York during the last thirty years
means. much.
1t meant, in the first place, a mind
not to be carried away by the pOmp
and circumstances, the shows and
trappings, of a triumphant party OIL
igarchism, led by an audacious patri-
clan and a brilliant egotist, like Ros-
cOe Conkiing. 1t meant a mind which
placed good government, equal gov
eminent, above all else, holding fast
to the written law, rejecting alike
the sOphisms of sectionalism and the
anurements of Ambition. 1t meant
the right-thinking, the right-feeling
American, who loves his country, and
his whole country, true to its free
traditions, its racial brotherhood, its
blessed covenant of states.
This man was the Son of the Soil,
sprung from yeoman seed, and had
learned his lesson of probity and JUS
tice from the great Tilden, like him.
self a farmers boy, who drank from
the well of pure republicanism deep
draughts of inspiration, who learned
from the chart of the fathers of de-
mocracy a wealth of legal lore, to
stand, when the time was come, hero
icly by the side of the law and against
the decorators of the law. He chose
the narrow, uphill path of duty He
rejected the broad, open highway to
preferment He was democrat when
it cost much to be a democrat.
And from, tbot 1ox- 70 The tl,-o,,c.I,