The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-08-28

of this and that and the other thing. come broadened. The elective system"
 is in vogue. Great educational leaders have come to the logical and right con clusion that what is meat for one brain must be poison for another Charles Sumner was one of the greatest men America ever produced, but it was simp- ly an impossibilty for Charles Sumner to grasp mathematics. As a result of this deficiency Sumner, one of the greatest of all Massachusetts scholars, was un- able to graduate from Harvard college. When my father graduated from college Howard Crosby, then a professor in the New York university. declared he was the finest student of 'beles lettres" who had ever studied within the walls of New Yorlk's great institution of learning. But, though my father was strong in cer- tain studies, he was very weak in others. Among his weaknesses was his inability to grasp q foreign tongue. For years, he wanted to go forth, as did my uncle John as a missionary to foreign lands He was, however, deterred from this pur- pose by the do him) almost insurmounta- bit difficulty of becoming proficient in d foreign language.
 Sometimes there is born child, as was Edmund Clarence Stedman, with a brain of myriad possibilities As an American poet he treads closely upon the heels of our greatest poets. Yet Stedman the poet Is also Stedman the Wall Street bank er as he was also Stedman the famous war correspondent But such minds as that of Edmund Clarence Stedman are God gives to man but one first class tal- ent and not ten. The reason Theodore Parker became the great power he vas in his day was because, as he said "Everything that I ever saw or did I ground up into the mental grist for my sermons I was born a preacher and can do nothing else but preach" When U. s. Grant drew his sword as commander of the American armies, he carved out for himself one of the greatest names in American history, but T. S. Grant made failure of everything on earth he ever attempted except the vocation of sol dier. Many a soldier has been a fail- ure as a statesman; many statesman has proved his utter incapacity when he tried to command an army
 Beecher and His Father.
 The limitations of brain power can be well illustrated by comparing the mental makeup of Henry Ward Beecher with that of his illustrlous father. Lyman Beecher, one of the greatest ecclesiastical leaders of his day. The famous pastor of Plymouth pulpit was In every sense a prose poet. He spoke, he thought, he liy- ed in symbol and picturesque verbiage The songs of the birds. the beautiful wardrobes of the flowers, the autumnal sunsets, the beehives, the snow banks the murmuring brooks-all had to him a message Lyman Beecher was made of angular Puritan granite. He was in ev- cry sense logician and polemc. Like John Calhoun, he was sklllful in argu- ment Grant his simple premises and you must grant his conclusions He appealed modestly to the brain as gray matter and not to the artistic sentiments.
 It was a great source of sorrow to Henry Ward Beeecher that his father never loved nature as he loved 1t. 1sy- man Beecher loved to hunt. He loved the woods for game. l,it not for the flowers. He never loved flowers as flow CTS. Facts always had to be presented to him as bare unbreakable rocks cloth ed in garments of green and in Josephs coats of many floral colors. One day, much to Henry Ward Beecher's surprise, he saw his father standing before a beautiful picture. It was hunting scene but the son prized it for the beautiful colors such as are always found in the