davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03

, intellectual exchanges. At the age of 20 he became citizen of Missouri, and the following year he was admitted to the bar of that state. In later years his powerful arguments in Congress a against the fourteenth amendment to the federal constitution extorted from Jeremiah $. Black the extravagant compliment that profounder exposi- tion of the American polity of govern ment had never been made in either branch of the American Congress. At the age of 27 Knott was returned to the house of representatives Of the Missouri legislature. Impeachment pro- ceeding was instituted against an of hcial of the state government and Knott was appointed leader of tie board of managers selected by the house to conduct the trial. In the Forty-fourth Congress he was leader of the board of managers, who ac- cused Secretary of War Belknap at the bar of the Senate. So greatly did Knott. then 27 years old, distinguish himself in the Missouri impeachment case he was appointed to supply the vacancy in the office of attorney gen eral of Missouri a position to which he was chosen by the people at the sue ceeding election.
 The war overturned the real state government of Missouri, and Knott re- turned to his old Kentucky home in 1869 and opened law office at Leban- on. In 1Se7-until 1870 Kentucky chose congressman in the month of August after the term began on the preceding March 4-Knott was elected a mem be rof the Fortieth Congress All or the Kentucky delegation were demo- crats, and all but Matt Adams, who had been a major in the Union army were denied their seats. It was in times when thrift and loyalty swere twin when nothing was odious but treason. Finally. in sheer shame, all the Ken lucky delegation, but John Young Brown, were seated. though they stole | John D. Young's seat and gave it to Sam Mckee. Brown was not allowed | to take the oath, for a speech he had made in 1861 against secession. Fact. Among the Kentucky members were James B. Beck, who subsequently be- came so distinguished in both houses,
 and Elijah Hise, next to Humphrey Marshall, the most powerful intellect the Mississippi valley ever produced, if may venture dogmatism that IS fixed belief in my mind.
 MT. Curtis says that Knotts repu- tation for wit and satire rests on no other foundation than the Duluth speech, that The never made funny speech before since" Before the l Duluth speech. the session before, Knott
 , made the speech against the appropria- ton for paving Pennsylvania avenue | that surposses in humor and fancy the Duluth speech as far as the Duluth speech surpasses 5. s. Coxs reply to Gurley. Here are passages After citing what the government had done
 to beautify the national capital, Knott I continued:
 If any gentleman entertains doubt on this point let him walk through
 Lafayette Square. Let him swing
 !! around the circle south of the presi-
 dental palace. or stand on the 5plendld
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03

in rising or descending, especially in de- scending.'
 If Professor Baldwin had been deliver ing lecture in political economy upon the subject of taxation he could not have chosen a better illustration of the inl- portance of preserving what Mir. Glad stone once called ''the even keel. When the taxation in a state reaches a height of safety. height which is just sufficient to pass the state over the obstacles of ex- penditure, the political aeronaut should seek to preserve the equilibrium recom- mended by Professor Baldwin, or if any change is to be made 1t should be made gradually and slowly
 In defining the word tax the lexico- graphers say it is "an enforced propor- tional contribution levied on persons, property or income, either by the author ity of the state for the support of the government and for all it's public needs, or by local authority for general muni- cipal purposes" A tax is also described as "a disagreeable or burdensome duty or charge" It is in the latter form it
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03

esplanade in front of the agricultural department. Let him sniff the fra grant air that hangs over the puplc gardens. Let him look at the broad promenades paved with immense flags of polished sandstone; the wide and commodious drives sweeping round up an easy and graceful radius with the true line of beauty. Let him tread the sinuous footpaths laid with an elastic concrete of white sea sand, bordered with shrubbery that would have lent new charms to Calypso's favorite bow CT, winding away in the Cretan laby- rinth.
 Let him do this, and he will find that the government has taken care so Tar as 1t is concerned, that no stain shall pollute the satin slipper of the faVorea beauty as she glides along In slyph . like 1oveliness; that no speck or aust shall settle on the costly laces or her gorgeous robes as she reclines in ec- static languor upon the downy cush . ions of her splendid carriage; that even the perfumed zephyr, as he steals from beds or rare exotics, shall not kiss her velvet cheek too rudely, nor the danc- ing sunbeam taste the delicious 1ra- grance that exhales from her honeyed lips, while the toil-browned daughter of the honest, hard-working, taxpaying farmer, or mechanic, or Indiana or Kentucky, in her homespun gown, in- nocent of crinoline or train, must
 "skelpit on through dub and mire.
 Despising wind, and rain, and fire"
 Whether that fancy surpasses the indignant pathos of the apostrophe to France in the Duluth speech is matter
 car, rf.., be two impressions that. for rollickins humor. the following passage in the Pennsylvania avenue speech finds no parallel in the Duluth speech:
 But, MT. Chairman, I have heard one reason very frequently urged for the passage of this bill, which candor com pels mo to admit, almost convinces me. that we ought not only to appropriate this sum of s1S0000. out any other amount that might be necessary to re- pave Pennsylvania avenue at the very earliest possible period of time, and that is that it is much used by the horde of office-holders that throng the tn thoroughfares of this city in numbers almost equal to the hosts which were hurled with Lucifer from the battle ments of heaven. For, sir, If there Is A being on this earth for whose com fort and convenience l entertain the profoundest solicitude; if there Is one whose smallest want stirs my sympa- thetic soul to it's serenest depths, IL IS your office holder. your public 1unc- tionary. When I see one or that noble army Of martyrs bid adieu to home and all the sw eets Of private life, TOT Wnich he is so emjnenrly fitted by nature. to i1nmolate himself on the altars or his country's service for four long years, Homer's touching picture of the last sad scene between the noble Hector and his weeping family rises before my compa ssionate Imagination. When l see him plunge reck lessly into an office of the duties Of which he is profoundly y and denantly 1gnorant, am reminded
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03
BY F. I. MONKS.

licenses be high or low. He adds to- gether his rent. working expenses and the cost of his license; to these he adds a percentage for profit, and the whole amount is spread over his years business. The public has paid his rent, his work ing expense, his business license and his profits and with the result both are satisfied. It takes business man a year or more to learn the true standing of his business under a certain set of condi- tions, such as the cost of labor. rent and license, and having once asoertained that fact he feels encouraged to invest his money and extend his field of operations, but if he is confronted by the possibility of bigger rents, higher license and in- creased cost of labor he hesitates. if he does not altogether abandon the idea of making improvements.
 When landlords agree to rent business premises for periods of at least five years at a fixed rental and the city fixes the license for five years intsead of annually, there will be a prospect of business reach ing that state of equilibrium which Pro lessor Baldwin says Is the state of safety.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03

K MARION COUNTY is in the heart MI of Kentucky. Within her bor- 1VX ders the bear grass" begins, moving to tho northwest, and the Npfue grass'' ends, coming from the north ana east. In Marion county, too, the 'Pen- nvrile, starts on it's journey to the south and southwest, and only a step over the Casey county line, to the southeast, the mountains kiss the blue grass. In the heart of Marion county, situate on beautiful plateau, is Lebanon,
 Whom ne'er town surpasses
 For honest men and bonny lasses.
 At Lebanon resides in serene retire r,ent in the enjoyment of all the felicity that comes to the man of splendid in- tellect and brilliant imagination, J. Proc for Kott. the scholar, the orator. the poet. the durist, the statesman. l am induced to write something of this man, because of some slovenly stuff MT. William E. Curtis has given the public concerning him in recent syndicate writ inrs- A MT. Dexter Marshall also dropped into more or less fiction on the
 
 sama subject some weeks ago, dignify- ,np the Pat Donan claim to Knott's 8 bumor and declaring that the Duluth speech finished Knott's\ hopes as a law yer Here is what Curtis says:
 bill granting tract of land to the Pavfield and St. Croix railroad being un- der consideration, MT. Knott, inspired by ,ts opponents, made witty and satir- ,cal sneech. which is unsurpassed in con- sressional literature. It is a singular fact that the Kentucky representative ,,tation for wit and satire rests upon m other foundation. He never made a funny speech before nor since, althousn he was known for his good stories ana his ability as a mimic. An eccentric and brilliant Irish adventurer named Pat ronan. who was connected with news naners in the northwest at different times. a,wavs claimed to be the author of the snaech. and MT. Knott never took the trouhle to make a formal denial. It is entirely probable that Donan. who was emnloyed in Washington at the time, in the interests of rival project, gave MT Knott the suggestion and the infor- nation upon which his speech was based, h,,t Donan claims that he wrote 1t and that Proctor Knott committed 1t to men- orv from his manuscript
 However that may be the speech stands as a model of wit and satire. and what was intended to be ridicule has since bacorne prophecy. MT Knott christened Dnh,th as ''The Zenith City of the Un- salted Seas" he describes its unlimited resources to ironical terms. but, strange to say. the development of what was then ina rinarv wealth has become an actual, taneible fact. Mr. Knott's speech reads vsrv strangely in the light of the present prosperity and commercial activity of the city.
 county. Kentucky. in 1880. He is a, self ted man. and the scope of his learning embraces most of the liter Ist,.rs that has value in the nars of
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03

\ FIERY few of even the most pro- N nounced infdels have ventured to
 find fault with the personal char acter. or with the moral teachings of Jesus. The Reverend Minot J. Savage, the head and front of the Extreme Left'' of the Unitarians, has seen fit to criticise some of the utterances of the Sermon on the Mount as tending to inn providence on the part of those who ac- cept these teachings unreservedly; and he insists that we must take thought for the morrow" MT. Savage's exegesis, however is so manifestly at fault here that his criticism need not now be con- sidered.
 MT. James MIL the father of the more famous John Stuart Mill took the pains to teach a1is son that Christianity was distinctly immoral and wicked. But such apostles of infidelity are extreme and ex- ceptional, and even John Stuart Mill came to believe that no man, however skeptical could find better plan for regulating his life than so to live that Christ would approve his life.
 MT. J. S. Mill, however, in common with his father, had his objections to the morality inculcated in the New Testa- ment. and one of the most noticeable of these objections lies fin the fact that the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03

Kentucky. in 1871 or 1875, when Mr. Justice John M Harlan was the republican can didate for governor It was by the au- thor of the avenue speech and the Duluth speech. Judge Harlan was a candidate both years, and I am sure he enjoyed the humor of Knott as well as any one else. Knott is not a wit after the order of Tom Reed. There is no sting to his humor. It is all genial and never ma licious.
 Knott voluntarily retired from Congress in 1885, and was that year elected gov ernor of Kentucky. "Quinine Jim" Mo KenZie was Secretary of State and H. M. McCarty was assistant secretary Alec Grant had a position of some sort, and Robert Burns Wilson, the poet, was A daily visitor. During those four years the executive office building at Frank fort was the most pleasant place to visit in all this union.
 I think Knott expected to reach the Senate by the governors route. The Senate was his place-lawyer. scholar, thinker, statesman. sage, that he Is. IT one would know what a giant grip he has on political history and on political principle let him read Knott's lecture on Andrew Jackson-a wonderful production. He was a candidate to succeed Beck in the Senate, and was defeated by John c. Carlisle. I wish I had space to try to draw parallel between the public utteranoes of these two men-one as se- were as the Gothic. the other as bril- liant as the Renaissance. For some years Knott had the chair of civics at Center college but he retired to his old homo at Lebanon, and there lives with his books and his friends. Who that ever heard Proctor Knott relate 'Lige Pink ston's "Jedgment" of a certain disreput- able dog, ever imagined that this man would steal piece of humor from Pat Donan. or anybody else? It is the finest anecdote for rollickng fun in the Ian guage-as told by Proctor Knott when in the vein. do not believe that David Turpie himself could have picked a thing from literature to which Proctor Knott was n stranger What magnificent head 1t isl Big as bushel basket, round as an apple. and longer from the eyes up than from the eyes down. Proctor Knott. hadst thou not been a poet, and hadst thou not been cursed with the fatal fac ulty of lhumor, thou wouldst have ranked among the greatest speculative statesmen of the Angio-Saxon race'
 Chosen to the Kentucky constitutional convention of 1S90-'91. Knott offered this as the keystone of the bill of rights. and it ought to be printed in every school text book In the union:
 That all men are endowed by their Gre ator with equal rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, that in the social compact they engage tc hold these rights subject 10 just and impartial laws under which each shall be entitled to equal protection and equal privileges, and snail De equally liable to the duties and responsibilities thereby ia tlprefOrH ordained that arbitrary power over none shall be ex- ercised in this cOmnionwealth; that no privilege, immunity. exoneration. or ex- emption shall he granted to any man. or set of mon. that all others under like circumstances may not fully exercise
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03
JOHN PROCTOR KNOTT

has reversed all the traditions of the past,
 as it has disappointed all the expectations
 of the present. A great and warlike peo-
 pie renowned alike for their skill and
 valor, have been swept away before the
 triumphant advance of an inferior foe like
 autumn stubble before a hurricane of
 fire. For aught I know, the next flash
 of electric fire that shimmers along the
 ocean cable may tell us that Paris, with , every fiber quivering with the agony of impotent despair, writhes beneath the
 conquering heel of her loathed invader Ere another moon shall wax and wane. the brightest star in the galaxy of nations may fall from the zenith of her glory
 never to rise again. Ere the modest v!o- lets of early spring shall ope' their beau- teous eyes, the genius of civilization may chant the wai1ing requiem of the proudest nationality the world has ever seen, as
 she scatters her withered and tear moistened leaves OCT the bloody tomb of butchered France"
 And to my mind. the most exquisite
 humor of the Duluth speech Is the closing
 paragraph. He had given some reasons for voting against the bill and then ex- claimed:
 "Ah sir you can have no conception of the poignancy of my anguish that I am
 deprived of that privilege. There are two inseparable obstacles in the way In the first place. my constituents, for whom I am acting here, have no more interest in this road than they have in the great question of culinary taste now perhaps agitaing the public mind of Santo Do-
 mingo as to whether the illustrious com missioners who recently left this capital for that free and enlightened republic would be better fricasseed. boiled. or roasted and in the second place, these lands, which l am asked to give away, alas, are not mine to bestow! My reld- ton to them is simply that the trustee of an express trust. And shall ever betrdy that trust? Never. sir Rather perish Duluth. Perish the paragon of cities Rather let the freezing cyclones of tho bleak northwest bury 1t forever beneath the eddying sands of the raging St. Crox,
 The exauisite humor of that passage "a in the reference to our commissioners to santo Domingo, sent by President Grant to provide a way for anfexins that re- public The commission consisted of old Ben NvaIe. Morrison R. Waite, afterward | chief justice. and President White of Cornell. The entourage embraced Fred Douglas and Boss Shepherds brother Ar | thur. A convocation of cannibals would debate a long time as to the best stew ! that could be made of such a layout. One of the greatest legal arguments | Knott ever delivered was his speech on the bill to restrict the removal of causes | from state courts to federal courts. In ] the middle of it he resoTted to hunpcr. It | was at the period when Bop 1ngersoll was delivering his lecture on the Mistakes I of Moses" Knott undertook to imagine | what foreign corporation knew about l those .'mistakes.n He convulsed tire | House, but he never put the speech in the Record.
 One of the most side-spitting speeches ! he over delivered was at a democratic
 barbecue at Pembroke, Christias count.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03
The Lazy Mockine-bird Mother.

From Harpers Magazine.
 In a day this completed nest of the mocking-bird mother held faintly speckled egg in it's glossy lining: anoth- CT, and another. until the complement orl five lay snugly together. This laying pro- cess seemed not arduous. Scarcely long enough to deposit the egg did milady re- main upon the nest. It was from choice that she constantly absented herself. Then at the call of her mate she was most prone to fly out into the maple to receive his blandishments and food-suppliesl But they are hardly absent" after all. Let any one approach too closely to the fort and a warning call came singing through tho air rush for home, and quick. soft supplication that we would do her and hers no harm for she was tho gentlest thing imaginable.
 We prophesied those eggs will never hatchl' but the temperature 60 in the shade) worked d miracle. and on the tenth day the first youngster broke the shell. two on the eleventh day. and on the twelfth five tiny young ones. gray-pink in color of skin. with punches of sost gray down sticking to them here and there lay. a palpitating bunch among tho twigs. It was curious how little brood ing they received. The old ones fed them almost constantly, but the naked lii tie fellows were not long at a time hid den in the warmth of the morher-b breast Scarcely .. note WAS heard In the nests yicinity-T do not recall one--until at sha end of the chapter, but both rrSS eyincsa their delighr by the odd huttSrins of wings A small gray shadow worla fit among the fiuttering of wings A small gray shadow would fiji among The leaves. would hang above the nest. and for many minutes at time simply atand thei~ raising and lowering his GOT bsri i,sif- spread wings. It seemed an act of puts loY.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03
BY SAVOYARD.

and enjoy, and that no pubi, shall be allowed to any on consideration of public servi formance of which shall be law"
 That ought to go with Linet burg oration, ono for the clos for the forum.
 What will become of the il referendum when this probe he which Knott inserted into education?
 If constitutions are intend thing at all. they are inten' protection of the minority. ] .s c~.ii- . mon saying, that populi, vox Del: { nevertheless the populace frequently con- init acts that are not only unwise. but essentially despotic, and of all the in tolerable despotisms that my imagination can conceive. the act of the state, reach ing into the bosom of the family of one of it's citizens, taking his child from its natural asylum, placing itself in loco pa- ! rentis, notwithstanding he may desire to educate it there, Is the most atro- cious."
 If l were sent to find the truest disciple of Jefferson among all living democrats. and should run across J. Proctor Knott. 1 I would say, Thou art the man." and my search would be finished.
 Copyright, 1907. by E. W. Newman)
The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-03

4 FEW weeks ago, when the Ala
 A bama State fair was being held A in Birmingham. Professor Bald win was one day explaining the principles and mechanism of his airship to a group of visitors in the tent where the machine was sheltered. A lady asked him dhow he regulated the height at which he sailed his airship; how he rose and how he de seended. While l remain in this partie- ular place." said the aeronaut pointing to a mark on the framework which hung beneath the balloon, the machine pre- serves it's equilibrium and sails at level height, but when l change my position the equilibrium is lost and the balloon rises or descends, according to whether 1t points upwards or downwards. 1 can [ stir without destroying the equilibrium, and when I do change my position l do so very gradually and slowly. There's little or no danger so long as the ma chine keeps it's equilibrium and sails at a level height, but there is always danger