The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1907-02-28
The Old and the New.

In periodic winter discussions OF the
relative merits Of the baseball heroes of
the past and the present. 1t is the old,
old discussion between youth and age,
the imagination and the memory. In
youth we see with the dancing eyes of
fancy; in age we look with the steady
gaze of history, and yet Dean Swift
was not mistaken when he speculated
that it was better to prefer the imagi
nation, the womb Of things, to the
memory, the grave of things. Every
man of sixty looks back with fond re-
gret to the period of his adolescence,
and he can not be persuaded that the
world is half as good now as it Was
then, though if he could experience the
world of his boyhood with the years of
threescore we know he would find it
intolerable.
Hence it is, possibly, that the noblest
Roman of them all, old Comiskey,
thinks the st. Louis Browns of twenty
years ago greatly superior to the Chi
cago Sox of 1907, and perhaps he is
right; certainly he as right if his imag-
ination is not playing him the tricks it
is constantly playing with the rest of US.
Doubles Anson thinks as we'll of the
old White Stockings as Comiskey does
of the Browns, and that NewYork gang
Of fans of twenty years ago believe the
Giants Of history the greatest masters
of the greatest Of athletic sports the
world ever saw. Where is the man of
mature years who would not give half
his fortune for the taste with which he
enjoyed an apple in school hours?
No genuine fan ever lived who does
not hope in the future life to see Comis-
key, Anson, Kelley, Foutz, Ward,
Flint, Latham, Browning, the grandest
gladiator of them all; Caruthers, Ram
say. Hecker, McPhee, Mullane, Gore,
Williamson and scores of others con-
tending with Jason and his crew on the
green diamond of Elysian fields, and
beating them, too. Will Hercules be
better first. baseman thar Comiskey or
Auson? We doubt it. Would Castor
and Pollux beat Lajoie and Pfeffer at
secondg Surely not. Would Tbeseus
send ball farther over the fence than
old Pete? To be sure he would not
And so every fan with spark of patri
otism will root for our boys from the
moment Rhadamanthus and John Mar
shall, the two best umpires of the en-
tire staff, give the order, "Play ball.
But to return to the issue between
youth and age. Who has not read with
delight Edmund O. Stedman's son the
Doorstep" the walking home with his
sweetheart after conference meeting:
The snow was crisp beneath our feet,
The moon was full. the fields cleaning; /;
By hood and tippet sheltered sweet,
Her face with youth and health was
beaming.
The little hand outside her muff,
Oh, sculptor, if you could but mold it !
So lightly touched my jacket cuff,
To keep it warm had to hold it.
No doubt she was pretty little thing
and to the boy in his mid-teens the
loveliest and the sweetest, the purest
and the best girl in the world; but a
man of threescore might pass thou
sand such without remark. And thus
the good God makes tolerable our de-
parture from this life.
But Stedman is not nearly through
with his story. The best of it, the epi-
cure he was, he held for the last:
To have her with me there alone
Twas love, fear and triumph blended,
AT last we reached that foot-worn stone
Where that delicious journey ended.
She shook her ringlets from her hood,
And with Thank you, Ned, dissembled
And yet l knew she understood
With what darling wish trembled
A cloud passed kindly overhead,
The moon was slyly peeping thro' it
Yet hid its face, as if it said:
"Come, now or never! Doitl Doitl'
Ny lips till then had only known
The kiss Of mother and OF sister,
But somehow, full upon her own
Sweet, rosy, darling mouth i kissed hel
Perhaps twas boyish love; yet still,
? Oh, restless woman, weary lover!
To feel once more that first wild thrill
I'd give-but who can live life over ?
There is the rub-who can live lif
= over? But happy is the man who woult
consent to live il over. All too few o
us can say with one who, indeed, ha,
a stormy career, one of the creates
journalist of all the world-few Of u
a could say with truth what we're the sin
cere last words of William Hazlitt: /"
have lived happy life. "-Washingto
Post.
Solemn Advice on Choosing Husband.
Henry Arthur Jones, whose plays
"Mrs Danes Defense" and ''The HyT
ocrites, are now Attracting so muc