davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

ed to much. as a spiritual force. Dean Swift after dabbling in party poll itics on both sides-whig and tory and to very little purpose on either side-complained that he could preach nothing but pamphlets. Bledsoe. I suspect, preached argumentative essays.
 When he was layman in the Epis- copal church, he was decidedly Low church" in his views. On one occasion he was arguing with Rev. pr. Mason of Raleigh, a strict High churchman." Why. Dr. Bledsoe." said Mason, high things are always better than low things. A high man is better than a low one. Even high cabbage is bet ter than low one" "Is that sop said Bledsoe Tt certainly is." said Mason. i've raised both kinds" Well" said Bledsoe T don't know much about cab bages and as you have raised both kinds. you ought to know. and if a high cabbage is better than a low one. then that is the best argument I ever heard on the side of High church."
 Long after the campaign of 1S40, Bledsoe abandoned his federal politics, and became one of the ablest and best equipped of all the advocates of states rights. His little book. "Is Davis Traitor. or Was Secession a Constitu- tional Right?" is by far the ablest discussion that I have ever seen, in anything like the same space. Mir. Davis confessed that he used it freely in preparing his work on "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Govern ment."
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10
WHEN THE BREACH WAS CLOSED-By Edwin Carle Lnsey

and they said never word. child rode behind one, holding with both hands to his coarse shirt. After a while the horse men debouched into small open, then trailed diagonally up the side of the neu- tral spur. Before the lonely cabin upon its top they drew rein. swung themselves to earth, and hitched to different limbs of the same tree. Long Jake reached the door frst-it was his daughter. Wild Bill and the little messenger followed closely behind, and they all went in. The tallow candle on the shelf above the cot gut tered and shed a yellow. unnatural light around. No one had thought to snuff it. Wild Bill walked over and with his horny finger and thumb pinched off the charred wick. The candle biazed up afresh. With the heavy tread of boots on the oaken floor the young mother opened her eyes weariy. She saw her father standing at her feet, worthless; a little distance away was the ancient enemy of her house.
 Dad she said. in faint voice, ..come ere"
 She raised her right hand and beckoned feebly. The gaunt figure obeyed, but still stood, awed, and not knowing what to do.
 ''Petes dad, 1 want Petes dad, too!' moaned Rosie, with the auerulous vail of a child.
 I'm here, gal!'' he said, but through the gruffness in his voice ran strain of pity.
 The sufferer looked up. and smile came to her face.
 ''You-Wild Bill Skidmore-an' you, dad its time to quit kllin'. The blood the same now-here's the fusti She placed her hand on little knot in the bed clothes near her breast His blood is your'n, dad, an' his blood is yur'n, Wild Bill. I'm goin' to die, I'm feered, but yo' mus make up fust, fur the sake uv the hoy!'
 She stopped, with Pete's shaggy head bent low over the hand he held
 Slowly her free hand wandered back to the knot fin the bed clothes again
 .'We'll call i'm Buckley Skidnore," she said.
 N wei lay down the gun frum this night" spoke Long Jake, thrusting out big, hairy hand.
 Wild Bill took it.
 ''So holp us God,'' he said.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

on Big Goose he said, holding her gaze by the sheer mystery of his will, " II I want ye to marry me, n holp stop all this bloodshed. Thar's no use in it, m people cn jist as well live peaceable' "Dad'll never let me come back" she whispered; "yo don't know Long Jake!' vision of his owl stern sire flashed across Pete's mind, but he persevered doggedly.
 N eff they won't, won't we be enough fur each other? But soon or late, they'll come 'roun' Will ye go? Will ye go with me?"
 With sudden fierceness he gripped her hands and leaned toward her.
 Where. Peter" she afsed. bewil- dered. M
 Away, fusti Then wet come back. n eff they won't take us in, thars the middle toe uv Crowfoot, n nobody c'n keep us from buildn' house h livin' thar, Rosie, won't ye come?"
 "When?--'N not say goodbye?"
 They'd lock ye up till some O you people killed me- Now Rosie: now; My hoss s out wonder, n he's big n 
 "Y-yesr' she sobbed, and fell for ward, trembling upon his breast
 All that night over the yellow noun tain road a big horse travelled with q double burden. Morning found the fugitives in a small town. and by noon they were we'd
 Then the foolhardy nature of Pete asserted itself again. Leaving his wife safe in another part of the mountains he rode with one companions stranger to the parts-back to Crow foot, up to the cresto of the central spnr which no one owned There he waited while he sent his friend on an embassy to his father, Wild Bill, telling him he wanted to bring his wife there and live with him, as he had always done. The old mans answer-'Tll see i'm in hell fustv Then the messenger went west ward. bearing word to Long Jake Buckley that Pete and his wife would like to come and live with them. Long Jake said
 I'll kill i'm. damn i'm, the fust time see im!' When these respective re- plies had been received Pete. not at all astonished nor disconcerted, began the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10
STANLEY AND DALZELL-By Savoyard

in a death grapple. Had war been de- clared and waged for a year it is nor ally certain that British rule would have been established in our coun- try. Jefferson prevented that war, and by that act he saved the Union.
 MT. Dalzell had the temerity to chal- lenge the conduct of Jefferson in the acquisition of Louisiana and asserted that the thing was accomplished in spite of Jefferson. And now it was that the Lord delivered the accom- plished Pennsylvanian into the hands of the brilliant Kentuckian. Stephen A. Douglas, in reply to Seward, did not tower above his adversary more gigan tically than did Stanley over Dalzell. It was this part of the speech that showed what a genius for research IS possessed by the gifted orator from the Second Kentucky district. It is too long to quote. One must read it en- tirely to get proper conception of 1t. It is not at all remarkable that MT. Dalzell was content to allow that the debate is a closed incident. Every intelligent onlooker in our political Vienna should read Da1zalls speech and then read Stanley's reply.
 When Stanley came to discuss the duel between Burr and Hamilton he put an entirely new phase on the con troversy. Hamilton was a believer In the code He was on the field as Laurens' second in the duel with Gen. Charles Lee. He sought quarrel with John Adams that could have been set tied, according to his ideas of personal honor, only on the field. He challenged James Monroe, and would have fought him if Aaron Burr had not lent his good offices and composed the differ ences without a hostile meeting. On the field of Weehawken. he delayed the giving of the word" till he could wipe his glasses to make his vision clearer. and yet we are told that his intention was to fire in the air. For years he had assailed Burr. and for years Burr held his peace. Hamilton's eulogists tell us that he accepted Burr's call to the field because the standards of those days made it imperative that he should do so. To that Stanley made this in eXorable retort:
 I agree that we should not judge the duelist of that day by the standard of this. But there is no logic by which
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

violently, with a scared look on her face,
 "You-you're a Skidmorei" she answer ed, but there was more of fright than repulsion in her voice.
 'Im Pete Skidmore Your name s Rosie. ain't it? I seen yo' at the dance on Big Goose"
 'How-wny-'
 "Oh, I 'uz aroun I come to see whut' 'uz goin' on I'm not 'feered uv any mani"
 She looked at him and believed it to be true.
 You mustn't talk to me-" she faltered; "Tm BuclSley.'
 'I know yo air. but love don't take no count uv sich things. Come, an les talk it over, Rosie They's no use bein' foolish"
 He was standing close by the gravo then. and he stretched his hand out over it as he spoke.
 "Its foolish to keep on killin' each other" he said earnestly. Les you an me marry an put stop to it all
 She looked in a desperate way at his strong frame then his sterdy eyes caught hers and held them.
 Come, Rosie" he said again plead ingly.
 She gave a shivering sigh, then put her hand in his across the low t<>,and which one of his house had caused to be made.
 ''I can't I can't!" she said, but all the time he was gently but forcibly dcawing her toward him.
 Her feet passed over the line marked by the fresh earth between them and she stood beside him.
 'S'pose any uv lem d see!" she moaned. "S'pose dad d see; he'd shoot mel
 Don't be 'ferred, Rosie" said Pete, soothingly; that's nobody to see, n if thar wuz-he drew forward the rife which he had been holding behind his back with his left hand. ''I c'n cut a tur- keys head off at a hund ed yards!''
 "Don't!' she said, with a gesture of protest. I'm so tired uv Twin this way" He led her silently to an uncouth stone sarcophagus which the whim of some Buckley had caused to be reared over the bones of slain ancestor. Drawing ner down beside him upon this, he leaned his rifle against the crude stones and faced her again.
 q loved ye that night when I seen ys
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

you can pardon the acceptor of a chal- lenge and condemn the sender. By that barbarous code he who was charged with an infamous offense could not clear his skirts by proving his falsity. To prove the charge false and fail to resent it was to aggravate the imputation of cowardice, in that day more odious than vice or crime. The same perverted public opinion which necessitated the acceptance forced the sending of a challenge.
 Could a retort be more conclusive? If Hamilton was a martyr of the barbarous code when he accepted it necessarily fol- lows that Burr was also a martyr when it required him to send the challenge.
 IT there is a weakness in Stanley s speech, it is not in the facts he prsents or the argument he constructs, but in the exuberance of his language. He is em- barrassed with the riches of his vocabu- lary. John Marshall, the great judge, and Samuel J. Tilden, the great states man, were necessitated to grope in the dark for words and they gathered the simplest. Daniel Webster and John G. Carlisle did not have to grope for speech, but they chose from a multitude of words the simplest, and that is why their
 
 ing l think it the duty of every parent to require his bright boy to read. re- read, and read again to the dozenth time, or more. Robinson Crusoe" and the "Pilgrim's Progress" to acquire a sim plicity of expression. Swift Is another author that should be thus cultivated, and also King James translation of the Bible.
 But those fond of the brilliant, the ornate, the exuberant, the splendid, can find it in these passages with which Stap- ley closed his speech:
 For centuries neither the telescope of the astronomer nor the researches of science could solve the mystery of that misty light. that glimmering gossamer encircling the black brow of night: at last the spectrum revealed in this nobula unborn worlds, held in a shimmering gauge; revolving masses of incandescent gas, cooling through the passing cycles of time, growing denser without. shrinking within. forming smoky concentric circles. a whirling luminous fog, congealing into molten rings drawn by their own gray ity into rude globes, and these spinning spheres shaped by the plastic hand of Divinity. like clay upon q potter's wheel, into planets and their satellites, new solar
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

erection of a cabin on the neutral spur of Crowfoot. He didn't intend that any one should drive him from the spot where he was born and raised. When the humble shelter was finished he brought Rosie to it. and there they be- gan their life of loneliness.
 The act of the two young people, in- stead of placating hardened con- sciences, seemed but to embitter the more the hearts of the outraged fami- lies. They lived and moved upon their upon the central spur never had vsi- tor. It's inmates were let alone; that was all they could ask. Were they ir want? No one knew. Were they sick No one cared.
 It was at this stage of affairs that a wandering preacher came among the Skidmores one day. He had heard of the could not employ it to bring about a reconciliation between the two ia ,tions The Skidmores grew angry and would not listen. But the preacher was determined man He got them together one evening and fired the straight gospel at them from a stump in the yard. He did not spare in- vective. and he did not say Hades when he meant Hell He did not broach the forbidden subject but he talked all around it, and sometimes he brushed against it. Wild Bill sat on chair be- side his door with his tribe around him. and took 1t all in. The language he lis- tened to was plain; he understood 1t.
 The next day the preacher moved over to the Buckleys, and there his special subject was again tabooed. But that night the Buckleys came, big and little. to lis- ten to him, and after the talk was over Long Jake wondered to himself If what the fellow said was true. The preacher went to the lonely cabin. Pete aud Ro- sic were willing and waiting for friend ly move. The preacher told the,n to grasp every chnnce for making up the fuss; that he hS 1 sown good seed and he hoped the fruit ould come in time. Then he sought other fields.
 In the rugged bosoms of each of the feudst patriarchs strange thoughts were struggling into form. Kill or be killed'' had been the motto for years. Forgive
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

by murder. '. Sixty Of them served 72d years in the penitentiary-an average of 12 years each.
 Cost of maintaining paupers- ,25e Expectations by thieves cost. S8.4od Cost of maintaining prisoners. ..... 2S,00d
 IOtal ...tt...... ..-ttss.. sloi'o31
 An amount sufficient to keep a hundred orphan children for twenty years-and all the result of a little neglect at the right time. A few dollars might have saved them. The same thing, on small CT scale is constantly occurring around us. As an economic question, it is cheap CT to prevent crime than it is to punish it. Let everybody lend a willing hand to make the Masonic Widows and Or phans' Home one worthy of an order so ancient and honorable as Free Mason- ry is.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

4 MONO the modern Biblical critics "A there has been no lack of differ 4 A ences of opinion as to the charac- ter and the conduct of Elihu, the young est interlocutor in the book of Job. By some of the critics he is discredited as a conceited upstart, utterly incompetent to argue the great questions which are discussed by Job, and his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar
 Upon these mysterious regions it is not my purpose to enter just now and yet will venture the opinion that Slihu was no upstart, but a brilliant and eloquent young man, not a few of whose sayings are well worthy of serious attention.
 He introduces himself with modest apology for showing his opinion; and In this apology he is reported, in our au- thorized version of the Bible, as saying that "Great men are not always wise. Now, in getting at the real meaning of this statement, we must note that the word always" which King James men here print in italics, is interpolated by the translators; and that the phrases great men" and great man. are seldom or never used in the Bible in the sense which we attach to them. "A great man" in the Bible. usually if not always, means either a rich man or a man who holds some conspicuous official position. And so when Elihu says that great men are not wise" he Is laying down the very sound principle that a man may be rich. or that he may hold high official po- sition, and yet be lacking in wisdom.
 But even in our modern sense of
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

TY WO men rode down a stony gorge
 in the Kentucky mountains one x soft night in summer. They rode knee to knee, stirrup to stirrup, silent ly. The moonlight feH brokenly through the trees and vines all bushes. The men were far past middle fr-- rhe beard of one was gray and the beard of the other was white, but they rode sturdily and upright. Upon the crup- per of the horse on the right little girl was seated astride, with her arms around the man as far as they would go The men were thoroughly part of the wild scenery which surrounded and enveloped them Their clothing was of the coarsest kind; the unearthly glamour of the witch light falling over them could not hide their unkempt ap- pearance-the cir obvious scorn of per sonal seeming. But the horses were sleek and in good trim. Down the gorge, through the moonlight, rode the queer pair, stirrup to stirrup, never speaking.
 For more years than a person of that region could vouchsafe with any de- gree of accuracy there had been trou- ble. deep and deadly. on Crowfoot. Crowfoot was a trifurcated spur of the Cumberlands, and from one end to the otlier the ground was hostile. The Skidmores lived on the point further east and the Buckleys lived on the point further west, and the interven- ing point of the spur-completing Crowfoot-was without occupants. Wild Bill Skidmore was the head of his clan, and Long Jake Buckley was the head of his They had it from sheir fathers, and their fathers from their grandfathers, that years ago Skid more had wronged Buckley, or vice versa according to who was telling the tale, and that constant and con N.tinued bloodshed was the only means v redress.
 Dt was blackest treason for man Of khouse to look upon a girl of the
 .he clan with any feeling save that pst and hatred, and it was equal for a gtrl to accept attentions nh enemy to her blood. But all G Jlmundane arrangements fate \saop1l to scorn in her own good time,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

What were the policies of Alexander Hamilton?
 He would have had a President for life-he is elected every four years.
 He would have senators during good be- havior-they serve a fixed and definite term of six years.
 He would have the executive armed with an absolute veto-you can by two- thirds majority annul that veto.
 He would have muzzled free speech Jefferson opened the deliberations of this House toe the naked view and candid criticism of free and untrammeled press.
 He defended the alien and sediton laws they are repealed.
 He founded a national bank-it is demol- ished.
 All his cherished and vaunted schemes are gone glimpering in the dream of things that were" exploded fallacies, they litter the debris of history.
 I challenge the gentleman from Penn sylvania to give me one single solitary policy of Hamilton which was ever crys- talized into law that lived His policies are gone his followers are dead. There are only left his apologsts and his eulo- gists.
 If Jefferson had not come back from France when he did it is more than pos sible that the colonies would have sought the protection of England, and that would have resulted in return of allegiance to the British flag. When the French revo- lution came 1t. was hailed with approval by the best of the intellectual world, in- cluding Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. It was the revolt of liberty against des- potism, the long delayed triumph of light over darkness: but in the compensations of human affairs the atrocities of the terror were commensurate with the een- turies of enormties that privilege had perpetrated in France, and there was a revulsin of public opinion. Even Burke became the most formidable of all the ad- versaries of the revolution he had ap- plauded. Hamilton agreed with Burke, and so did far greater than Hamilton even George Washington.
 There was actual war between France and the United States, and numerous battles fought on the water between the two powers. Washington was again appointed commander-in- chief, and chose Hamilton as his chief lieutenant England and France were
The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10

and so it came about that after years and years of open warfare Skidmore loved Buckley. He was a hardh eaded, hardfisted fellow, young Pete Skid more.
 And Rosie Buckley was like a wild flower of her native heath. He saw her first at a dance on Big Goose creek. It was a Buckley dance, and Skidmore hadn't any business to be within miles of the place, but with characteristic deviltry Pete had fared over the intervening spur to have look at the festivities. Skulk- ing in the shadows at a safe distance he watched the scent and he saw that the life of it was one buxom, red-checked lass, with black braided hair and a merry laugh always on her lips. Before he left he heard some one call her name, so he knew who she was. Not many days later he chanced to see her again. He had swung down a ravine early one morning with a string of squirrels in his hand and his gun over his shoulder and so on to the dirt road leading to the nearest town. Directly before him was Rosie Buckley, riding by herself to market. She had not seen hin and he stepped back to the side or the road. Sne came JOgging on, singing as she came. Ten feet away she raised her head and their eyes met. She stopped singing, but rode on bravely, eye ing him coldly all the time. When she was opposite him Pete smiled and bowed. and when he saw the quick blood mount up to her face his heart exulted. After she was gone he stood a long time with out moving. looking at the trail her horses feet left in the dust
 He came opon her in the burying ground of her people few days later. He risked a greeting, flushing as he spoke the sim pie words. She barely nodded. then rode slowly away from him toward the west ern spur. whither he dared not follow. He hovered about the spot thereafter, lonely, and desolate though 1t was, and one afternoon she came again, blithe and happy. Pete, screened by some bushes, waited until she had slipped from her horse and had made her way through the weeos and matted grass to one of the newest sreses m the place, then, as she stopped to place some wild flowers upon 1t, he came and stood quite near.
 ''Evenin','' he said pleasantly.
 The girl stood upright and trembled