The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1907-09-20

/ 4 VI u, tuS AdiuOuS LOluOu COZ GOWN ~
ent Of the New York Tribune. Tbis
week it has sparked with gay colors
under a dull sky and hGttered with
! the stir and bubbub CT milienary
celebration. High above the abbey
! tower the British flag has been
proudly waving, the little market
| square where the statue Of Palmer
ston stands has been tricked out with
bright streamers ard evergreen,
every house or shop has joined in
the holiday masquerade, and rusty,
| rheumatic greybeards and spry, mis-
| chievous urchins have been thrilled
with the pleasurable thought that at
last after a thousand years, some
thing is happening in the lower Test
| Valley more exhilarating than the
splashing of trout in the shimmering
waters or the twitter of birds among
| the wild clematis hedges AS the
hour for the pageant has approached
and the performers and spectators
have formed in long, struggling pro-
cession through Broadlands Park,
with its beeches, frs oaks, yews, lin
dens and hazel underbrush, the cen
! turtles have been jumbled together in
fantastic medley. Saxon warriors
and Danish spearmen, agile monks
red and black and ruddy faced nuns
in blue and white, ecclesiastics in
scarlet and abbesses in sombre sim
plicity, Plantagenet courtiers with
knightly armor and brilliant trap
pings, pleasure loving cavalier troop
ers and long faced Roundhead psalm
singers have sauntered together
across the meadows or been cheek
by jowl in the siXpenny drags, and in
close touch with the storied and pic
turesque ages has been the prosaic
twentieth century. with its motor
cars and carriages filled with country
house visitors, with wayside hawk
ers. Of post cards and programmes,
with pushful American tourists, out
footing the sluggish village rustIcs,
with with mounted police pranclng
up and down the roadways. Glorious
days indeed are these for this Eng
Sleepy Hollow, when its legends are
pieced together and re-enacted, and
when royalty opens the show in the
person of Princess Louise, and the
shillings and sixpences are rafting
in every serviceable till!
The scene Of the pageant is the
greensward on the banks Of the sill
very Test, where Palmerston used to
stroll during restful holidays An
immense, covered grandstand faces
the river and behind it are twenty or
thirty tents where costumes are
changed and tea and cakes are
served. Among the trees on one
side is the model Of an ancient Sax
on gateway with fanling walls, and
down stream in the opposite quarter
the open air theatre is fringed at the
wings with woodlands, out Of which
Danish invaders and Puritan soldiers
are to emerge in due time. 1t is a
lovely sylvan scene without the illu-
sions and exaggerations Of paint, and
while the sky is gray and overcast
with menace of rain, there is album
dance of light for the glints of color
in armor and costume, and there is
brave array of holiday spectators in
the crowded stand On the lower
tier of the amphitheatre of seats is
an orchestra of seventy musicians,
and before each episode the chorus
of $50 singers, habited as monks in
red and black and as nuns in blue
and white, troops to the front to eX-
plain in slow refrain and impressive
harmony what is about to happen.
This is a classic feature adapted from
Greek drama, which fills the pauses
between acts with melody. and while
the monks and nuns are chanting the
scene Shutters are at work behind
them clearing and refashioning the
open stage What is at the outset
a woodland glade with the river
sparkling in the background is trans
formed for several episodes into
convent garden where screens of
eyergreens are trundled in on wheels 1
and pieced together as long hedge
beside the gateway and Ranked with
terraces of flowers. For the later
episodes these screens are shift
ed again so as to leave a free
field for civic functions, the Skin
nishing of the civil war and the final
tableau, when the 1900 representa- |
tives of a thousand years are grouped
about the symbolic figure of the
Genius of Romsey.
With the exception of Palmerston's
residence in the Broadlands estate
and Florence Nightingale's home in
Embley Park, the old town has no
history except the legends of the ma
iastin Nnrman cnnyentual church and