Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1909-06-30
like day god and saw the dangling

4 r
moose, the mark of infamy and civili-
zation's badge of barbarism? His
mind was clear, the blood of youth
was coursing and leaping in his veins.
He had built his castles in the ;,ir.
Life was before him and earth
around him, with It's untasted joys,
its unknown sorrows; mother and
home and loved ones ,wore not far
away. But this boy gave them all for
his honor, and looked death in the
face without murmur and without
tremor The minutes flew, the
clock struck, the moose Is adjusted !
the black cap is drawn, and the slen-
der figure. unspotted with sin, is
writhing and twisting between earth
and heaven. The bells ceased ring
ing, the red currents stopped and
congealed In their courses, all motion
ceased-death had come, the bark
was out at sea, and the breathing
miracle into silence passed"
The Man and His Death.
How can spe !; of this man and
his death? What power can come to
me to tell Of the pathos, the deep
meaning of 1t all? 1t is above and
beyond the power of words 1t rises
from the earth and reaches heaven.
AS looking upon the restless pillows
of the ocean, or the blue of the sky,
the mind cannot formulate it's mus
ing or express the thoughts which are
stirred, but falls back weary, detected
and mystified, and all the philoso-
pliers of the world, all the cults, all
our faith, cannot help us to under
stand. But the sea and the sky are
so familiar that only once and anon
do their mysteries come upon us with
profound and conscious force, accen-
tuating our smallness in the divine
plan, leaving us like children in the
dark, without hand to guide
So 1T is with the life and death OF
Davis. They are familiar to every
body in Tennessee, the theme Of
orators and the subject of verse. But
at last when the mind, chaste of all
fugitive thoughts and purged of all
grossness, views the scaffold and the
rope, we see at our very doors a
scene which for human grandeur and
sublimity reaches the ultimate of
human conception, and in the sweep
of years will grow to yet more splen-
did proportions. No one with brush,
or chisel, or pen, with thought, or
tongue Of eloquence, is able to reach
and describe the heights which this
boy trod when he gave his innocent
young life that day. Blind Homer,
who sung the story of Troy; Milton,
who told Of the loss of Paradise;
Shakespeare, who sounded every
depth and touched every shore of
humanity, nor all the other masters,
can nothing add and nothing take
from the simple majesty which clothes
the death Of Davis.
On Calvary the Son of God died
| with cruel nails driven through his
| quivering flesh, the crown of thorns
pressed down upon his agonized
brow, and since then the cross has
been the Christians sign in every
land. And which Of us has the right
to say that If He who created the
earth and the sky and every living
thing on sea and land, whose mys-
teries battle, but whose providence is
over all, could give the Son of Mary
to teach men how to live could not
also give this son Of Tennessee to
teach men how to die?
A Beautiful Conception.
Before concluding l wish to invite
your attention to what seems to me
beautiful and most appropriate con-
ception Of the committee who had
charge Of this work, and who have
30 unselfishly and patriotically per-
formed their labors. The figure of
Sam Davis, when the veil Is lifted,
will reveal the genius of the sculptor
and will stand, as will be observed,
on a pedestal and surrounded by
marble quarried from the hills of
tennessee, in the centre Of heart
shaped enclosure, suggesting at once
that his name and memory live in
the great heart of his native State,
from whose dust he came and to
whose dust he has returned.
This spot will be sacred evermore
to those who love the pure, the true,
the brave, for it is dedicated TO the
knightly tenants of the soul. Let
mothers bring their childr haro 10