The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-08-15

N the right-hand corner of The Age
 Herald's editorial page this morning appears one of the most beautiful poems in the English language. In "The Haunted Palace" of Edgar Allen Poe there is music--a perfection of rhythm rarely attained by any one of the poets but there is more. The poem bears
 message of sadness and despair that
 thrills while 1t depresses. Yet, the de-
 spair thus pictured in smoothly flowing
 verse has not the tragic intensity that frights the soul and leaves the spec
 tator quivering with rending emotions.
 It is rather a tender beautiful sadness
 twilight of the spirits. as it were. The
 recipient of this message from the poet
 feels his heart-strings vibrant with pity
 and tender sentiment but his mood Is
 that which creeps over him in the retro
 spective hour of the gloaming or over
 takes him in the dimly lighted nave of
 a church where world wanderers,
 weary with the rout, are prone to medi-
 tate over the lights and shadows of life.
 There Is the atmosphere of tragedy and
 the suggestion of a soul in agony. con- NCJCQ D5 iIlidStIy ptIltCL III COHCCpllOD. There is a theory that "The Haunted Palace is really biographical and that
 the once radiant structure from whic1 "A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh-but smile no more" is the mind of Poe himself, whose brood ing mood pictures the halls of his fancy, once peopled with spirits moving musi- cally" now given over to vast forms
 that move fantastically"-the morbid creations of insanity. Poe may we'll have feared that he was drifting to such a tragic fate. Yet, it Is a question if a
 person of a perfectly normal mind could
 have encompassed so much of the weird. the horrible and the morbid, while at the
 same time drawing pictures of magnif- cent gloom which will live as long as 1 the language exists. One would never l imagine 'The Fall of the House of Usher' being written by man, broad of I girth and red of face, whose thoughts were pleasantly occupied with the joys 1 of living.
 l After all was said and done the new bat 1 tleship Kansas was christened with q l bottle of clear spring water brought from | the spring of a man named John Brown. l who has his habitat in Camden county, Kansas. There is no particular signifi- l canoe in the name of "John Brown
 Whether this novel christening Is to be
 regarded as a feather In the cap of Mrs.
 Carrie Nation or Governor Hoch. is a question that the admirers of both per- ft,ot.a
 selves. Certain time-honored and senti-
 mental reasons demand that battleship I be anolnted with wine or good whis- key, but that is merely matter of custom. The Kansas, while denied the I pleasure of a bottle of champagne, was l nevertheless christened by a "deucedly | pretty girl''-N1ss Hoch-and is besides l one of the finest battleships afioat. | The Hon. Thomas F. Watson refers to l the Hon. William Jennings Bryan as a ''mere sophmorieal Sir Plausible Plati- l tude." It Is a privilege of our public men to thus speak facetously of one l another without doing the least bit of I harm. Colonel Bryan will not enjoy his l terrestrial loop-the-loop any the less be- cause Mir Watson calls him a Sir Plau- I slble Platitude and knocks his magazine ''dope," while MT. Watson is no doubt I feeling much better since he got that
 trenchant trick of termonology out of i his system.
 1 Phyllus. at one time a citizen of Gro l ton is said to have jumped ffty-ffve l feet but his feat Is not circumstance i compared to that of the 'Tottie Tiddle- | dywinks Comic Opera company" which
 jumped" from Chicago to San Fran 1 cisco last winter.
 | A New Jersey gentleman who lay down | on a railroad track for nap had his