The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1906-06-29
LOVE THAT BuGHTs AND KILLS
Bon Air Tragedy Shows All is Not
Gold That GIitters
Brown-Unreasoning jealousy That
Caused a Mad Man TO Do n Wild
ict-The Results of Malignant Hate.

hNSohN VI 11k
Bon Air is Il fourishing industrial,
centre, or, rather, a series of indus-j
trial centres, the company owning
three magnificent water powers one af-
ter another on a generous, never fail,
ing stream, and there ample capital
has erected three extensive, CON-
pletely equipped plants, turning ont
beautiful ginghams and madras, with
Other textile fabrics, such as yarns.
sheetingc, etc.
But it is only with the central plant
Bon Air proper, that We have to do in
this narrative. 1t is a charming littleI
town, to do in this etaoshrd ototataI
town, its population of course made uDl
mainly of employees at the spindles and
looms, and the company's clerical force
But life there, if toilsome, is o all
mean and sordid; nature has been tool
| lavish of it's gifts to Danish the aes-l
thetic from even the cottage of the
spinner, and very far must one
travel to find a prettier picture than
the broad lake in an amphitheatrc Of
gently declining hills crowned with
great oaks and lofty pines, which shei-1
ter the homes of the boss workman
the awkward young apprentice and the
old father and mother, whose trem-I
bling hands have lost their cunning at
the loom. The railroad runs just in
rear of the great hundred-windowed
building. which thrObs day in and day
out undo the whirr of its mighty ma
chinery, and the winding train, dartingI
its long, smoke-ribboned shadow over
the surface of the lake, is a pleasant
feature of the landscape.
On a commanding eminence, Distant
some hundreds of yards from the ham.
let, is the home of Haywood Brown,
part owner of the three large manu-.
factOries-a handsome house of red
brick with mansard roof, surrounded
by well-kept lawn, Conservatives, sta
bles, carriage houses, etc. Not long
ago, though we'll advanced in years,
he was a Stalwart man Of gigantic
build, with q strong, rugged face, en-
crossed in all his manifold cares and
weighty business concerns, and deeply
interested, too, in the daily lives of
the quiet Bon Air people-their joys
and SORROWS, the marriages of the
young n the deaths of b old. Now
the broad portals of the great house
were shut to the world; the windows
We're darkened; the old man came not
forth to his kingdom, but sat by his
desolate h~earthstone bowed, embittered
and broken-hearted-but all this be-
longs to another part of the story.
Bon Air was a factory village as
long back as sixty years ago, and
there worked Haywood Brown, mill
magnate and capitalist now, then al
boy II years old. first in the waste
room sorting loose cotton, then at the
I>spindle, then master weaver at the
loom. But cotton manufacture was I'M
its infancy in the south in those days,
and Bon Air consisted Of a ~ramshackle!
building, stocked with Anticipated ma
chinery, good for only an inferior class
Of goods, surrounded by operatives
houses a. drear and cherries as tneI
Ehuts of a penitentiary stockade.
Haywood Brown was a mill expert,
from the fine springs Of the activel
brain that studied and pondered over
ahe revolving wheels and flying bands,I
to the tingling finger-tips that touch-l
ed the bobbin and spool. They flleul
up his waking hours and peOpled hlS|
| dreams, as did the steam-kettle theI
shock head of young Watts, and thei
donkey engine that of George Stephen
son in the English colliery. All hisl
talk (what little he said, for he was al
very silent somebody was Greek tOl
his companions, but he worked and
planned, and bided his time.
Then came the civil war of 1876,
to find Haywood Brown still bendingl
over his frame away up in the woodeI
structure, where the silver of the lake,
and the green of the trees, and the|
blue Of the sky flashed in the sunlight
in vain for him. and the bobolink's
whistle and the mOcking-bird's CALL
fell in deafness. He was a grown
man now, self-reliant, self-contained,
thoroughly practical, to whom thel
snout of the southern patriot was an
empty sound; as we'll look for senti-!!
ment in a right angle triangle. His|
fellow-worken said that the ~unsociable,
plodding boy had grown into a hald
man. And he was a hard man: Hon
est, maybe, as the run OF men who arel
intensely selfish, with no loftier con-
ception Of the world than as the "oys-
ter" to be opened. Day laborer as he
had been for years on small wages,
he was reputed among his neighbors|
to be a warm man for his station in!
life, with not a little stored up for al
rainy day." and, as the war WENT
an this store increased HAYWOOD.
Brown lever kept a dollar OF confej-
crate money in his pocket longer thanI
the coming Of the opportunity to turnl
it into better property, and when thel
southern cause collapsed it was as-I
tonishing how much he had managed
to accumulate by thrift, economy and
prudent investment, made easy by the!
necessities of a hard-pressed people.
BY this time Haywood Brown wasl
married, having taken a wife from the
Ioo~ Sbof orooHo5 ord ovOouod ar hiSt