The Irish standard., 1906-11-17

ents were poor. his father being a
country teacher and small Georgia far
mer. His father died leaving young
Alexander the sum Of s4oo with which
to undertake the battel of life AS a
boy his body was so frail and he was
troubled 80 much by sickness that it
was not thought he could live beyond
his youth. Yet his hopeful and cheer
full disposition attracted sympathy
and his precocious intellect D., caused
some well-to-do ladies Of the Presby-
terian Church at Augusta to become
interested in his welfare and they
] raised a. fund to send him to college,
believing that college life might i'm
prove his body. The understanding
with his womanly benefactors was
that after graduation,he must pursue
the vocation of Presbyterian min
lister. y
He found that he was not fitted to
undertake the life work of a minister
and he desired to become a lawyer
He notified the generous ladies of his
change of heart and offered to pay
over to them his little legacy Of $4o0
and agreed to work out the balance of
his college board and tuition. They
agreed to wait for the money until he
could afford to repay the obligation.
He was chosen valedictorian of his
class, but his money was gone and he
was unable to purchase the regulation
graduation long-tailed coat. At the
last moment an old friend supplied the
coat. He was appointed a teacher in
the town Of Madison. Later he secured
employment as g. family tutor in the
home Of a wealthy planter, Mr.. Le-
conte.
Mr.. O'Neill loaned him books and
often by the light of Georgia pine fires
law. Without any other aid he gradu-
ated at the bar and he never forgot
o'Neill. In ten years he had grown
into the idol Of the people Of his dis
trict, and in 1s42 he was sent to Con-
gress as a Whig. He remained In
Congress for seventeen years, when he
voluntarily retired in 1853.
Catholics will: be Interested, in one
incident of Mr.. Stephens career While
he was in Congress the Know-Nothins
movement grew very strong through
out Georgia. When he offered himself
for reelection in 1854 he was told
that, in order: to win, he must put
himself on record as being favorable
to Know-Nothingism.s In a vigorous,
emphatic letter he refused to do this,
and, continuing, proceeded to arraign
the movement as un-American. His
district was amazed and numerous
threats reached him that If he as
sailed that secret order in his Au-
gusta speech, as he proposed to do, he
would suffer violence. Unterrified, he
went to Augusta and delivered a
speech against Know w-Nothingism and
anti Catholic intolerance that de-
serves a place by the side of Macaul-
ey's famous tribute to the Catholic
Church. One Of his positions was that
in a republic like ours, secret political
societies Of the kind ought to be, by
a national law, prohibited from exist
ing. His daring words did much to
check the movement in the South, and
he was triumphantly returned. The
speech itself can be found in full in
Clevelands life, Letters and Speech
es of Alexander Stephens.'
After his retirement Mr.: Stephens
lived at Liberty HALL a grand home
situated in a grove of, oaks, near Mil
ledgeville, where rich eand poor were
welcome, for he never forgot his hum
bel days. Here he lived on to see the
day when he was acknowledged to be
the greatest lawyer in the South. He
did not believe in Secession, but he
followed his people loyalty, as It
seemed to him, into the Confederacy,
after he had exhausted every effort to
prevent the severance Of the sover..
eign States. AS is we'll known, he be-
came Vice-President Of the Confeder.
ate States. The wonder is that in the
feeble, sickly body. there burned so
long the towering intellect Of great
soul-the intellect conquering for so
long earthly pains and physical ills.
Foresters Discuss Rates.
; Proposed readjustment Of the insur-