The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-14
BOB TAYLOR ON "SENTlMENI." ;"
Candidate for United States Senator In Tennessee Says It's Good Thing.

In a recent speech at Nashville, Former
 Governor Bog Taylor of Tennessee said:
 "I am arraigned before the bar of pub
 lie opinion upon the charge that l am
 too sentimental to be a United States sen-
 ator-that there is too much humor and
 too much music in my soul to meet the requirements of that high and dignified
 office.
 My only plea to this charge Is that I
 was born that way, and that I was raised
 in a land of sentiment. Far up among the
 blue mountains of Tennessee, where the
 morning first smiles on the hills and where the rivers are born, I first opened my eyes to the light of day and heard the first songs of sentiment from lips that that now are dust There, where the tall and silent peaks forever point upward to- ward the sky, I first dreamed of God, and the bright wings circling about them taught me my first lesson of liberty. And when destiny led me out into the world. I gathered up all my songs and stories of the country folk and the farm, and all the sweet associations of my youth, and I wove them into a web of sentiment, and eA million people, little dreaming, as I en-
 deavored to point men and women to the better and brighter side of life that was making a gulf between myself and the goal of my ambition. But now after the snows that never melt have fallen upon ! me-after all my humble triumphs on the platform and the hustings-after a long period of service to the state, I awake l to find frownlng giant of intellect stand l ing with his weaver's beam across my path and shouting: There is no room in the high court of statesmanshp for senti- ment: in the Senate a smile is uncon- sttutional'
 T learn from the lips of scorn that I am in too low a plane-that my ideals are wrong, and that if I would wear the mantle of a senator I must breathe mal- ice and bitterness into human souls and greet the common people with frowns; but fellow citizens, I would rather give up my hopes and aspirations tonight and walk out from this campaign into obscurity and oblivion than to choke this fountain of sympathy for the common people that bubbles in my heart like a spring.
 Take sentiment away from humanity and what have you done? You have blown out the light of hope and love in every heart, and every home. You have quenched the spirit of the church and of civilization and left mankind in eternal darkness and eternal death. But for the warm gulf stream of sentiment that rises in the equator of Gods infinite love and flows around the world, human life would be stripped of it's beauty and it's bloom and human happiness would lie cold in death on the frozen bosom of despair.
 There is not enough of sentiment. in | this world; there is not enough of it in l the capital of the nation; there is not enough of the sentiment of humanity breathed into the laws of the land to shield the weak from the oppression of 1 the strong. There is not enough of that pure and holy sentiment of patriotism ip | the bosoms of our statesmen, which diff | fuses the blessings of liberty to all alike with special privileges to none and which alone can link the nation together in the common brotherhood of man. If there were more of it in the heart of the senior senator, he would not now be sneering at those who have it. and curling his lip with scorn at the songs and dialect of the old time darky of tho south. which are woven like threads of silver into the history of the grandest civilization that ever four ished in this world. In my lectures have told stories in the negro dialect, but they
 were stories of a generation that has
 passed away. They were stories of the
 old black mammy who soothed prattling
 chivalry to sleep with her lullabies and
 dandled upon her knees the babyhood of
 the greatest spirits the republic has ever
 known and taught them the music of her
 dialect. They were stories of the faithful
 old man. servant of Dixie, who worked in
 inc ne,ds by day and slept by the door at
 night. to feed and guard ''ole missis and
 de chiilun," while his master was far
 away on the battlefield fighting to per-
 petuate his slavery