The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-10-21
TRIBUTE 10 JUNGLE REOfUs."
President Roosevelt Pays High Com
pIiment TO Mr. Harris.


Atlanta, Ca, Oct 21.=''So far from
asking that you be lenient in your
judgment of public men, l hold that
you are recreant to your duty if you
are lenient. Do not be Ienients but do
be just, said President Roosevelt in
an address at the luncheon in his
honor at the Piedmont club during his
visit here. The speaking began When
John Temple Graves. editor of the At
lanta Daily News, addressed the presi-
dent in q personal welcome as a. man
whom it is a delight to meet aside
from his official character
Colonel Graves referred to the
president as "GeOrgia's most Illus
trious grandson" which the president
received with a broad smile. In clos
ing he spoke of the president as a
man in whom the statesman is great
er than the politician and the man
greater than the president"
Marching Through Georgia.
The auusion brought rounds of
cheers as the president arose to reply.
The president said, in part:
"Mr. Graves and My Hosts. It is
almost unkind to greet a guest in a
speech to which it is impossible that
any guest should adequately respond.
Gentlemen, surely it must be almost
unnecessary to say not alone how I
have enjoyed the day, but how deeply
touched and moved I have been at
your reception OF me as Georgia's S de-
scendant. [ told Governor Terrell I
had kind of ancestral reversionary
right to his chair because the first rev.
olutOnary governor of Georgia. was
my -great-grandfather Archibald
Bulloch, after whom one of my boys
Is named. No man could meet with
such reception as you have given me
today. no man could see your city,
could see your people, could address
such an audience as I have addressed
and not be d better citizen afterWard.
Now L am going to very i'll repay
the courtesy with which I have betn
greeted by causing for q minute or two
acute discomfort to a man of who
am very fond-'UncIe Remus.' Presi-
! dents may come and presidents may
go, but Uncle Remus' stays put.
I Georgia has done great many things
for the union but she has never done
more than when she gave Mr.. Joel
Chandler Harris to American Iitera-
ture. 1 suppose he is one of those lit
erary people who insist that art should
nave nothing to do with morals and
viii condemn me as a Phiiistine for
not agreeing with them, but I want to
say that one of the great reasons why
L like what he has written is because
after reading 1t I rise up with the pur-
pose of being a better man. man who
IS bound to strive to do what is in him
/ for the cause of decency and for the
cause of righteousness.
His Opinion of "Unele Remus."
Gentlemen, I feel too strongly to in
dulge in any language of mere eompli-
ment or mere hattery. Where Mr.. Har-
ris seems to me to have done one of
5 his greatest services is that he has
written what exalts the south in the
mind of every man who reads it and
yet what has not even a flavor of bit
/ Iefness toward any other part of the
/ Union. There is not an American any
4 where who can read Mir. Harris stories
/ who does not rise IN a better citizen
/ for having read them, who does not
rise up with a more earnest desire to
/ do his part in solving American prob
/ lens Alright. cannot too strongly ex-
press the obligations 7 am under to
/ MT Harris. and one of those obliga-
tons is to feel as a principle that it Is
my duty, which. if have transgressed
/ have not transgressed knowingly
never as an American to say anything
that could be construed into an attack
4