davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03
SOME CONFLUENT. STREAMS-By Re-

one compelling force has been the state church. Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian or what not, they have no real fellowship with the dominant denomination, no rec ognition indeed as churches. Hence they have for these past 15 years been perfect ing a federatiye organization in every county and district throughout England, and latterly throughout Wales also known as free church councils. AS an instrument with which to withstand what might seem the undue authority of the parish priest, this council system has been of comfort to many a village Hampden, and to many humber folk as well. Be- yond all it's evident uses to further the political liberties of rural England, and to educate the people in things pertinent thereto, it can easily be seen that in things intellectual and spiritual such a local organization has linked the most re- mote region with the centers of life and power.
 Men like the Rev F. B. Meyer, world traveller and evangelist; Sylvester Horne pastor recently elected to par liament; Drs. Campbell Morgan and J. H. Jowett, are treadng the same road as Hugh Price Hughes and Joseph Parker once trod with them or before them, a,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas tPeter), and I of Christ" Here were evidently four distinct sects in the Cor inthian church which was founded by Paul himself.
 One of the earliest, most powerful and most troublesome of the sects which agitated the early church were
 THE JERDAIZERS.
 They held that Christianity was only an offshoot of Judaism; that the cere- monial law of Moses was still binding upon all Christians; that circumcism was necessary, and that even Gentle converts were subject to the Mosaic ritual. It was to settle a dispute raised by this sect that the so-called "Apostol- ic council was held at Jerusalem. See Acts KY.
 An extreme party of the Judaizers ob- tained the name of
 THE EBIONITES.
 These went so far as to reject the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and to contend that he was the son of Jo- seph. Unitarianism, you see, is not modern.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

one might say. associating intimately with the best prime old waited southern fami- lies spending his days amid the mingled perfumes of the yellow jesamine and the fried fan., and his nights down by the old bayou beneath the live oak, where the Spanish moss and colored voters hang, hardening to the mellow plunk of the old banjo and the merry view-haloo of the informal lynching party, or words to that general tenor. And now he's come north! wonder If he, too, Is going to invade the Broadway al-night cafes and cheer when a Hungarian orchestra plays the medley of southern airs as arranged by a German. the same as all the other true southerners from old South Church and old South Bend and old South Brook lyn?
 Well. 1t all goes to show" said The Shirt, that sectionalism Is a dead card There's no yawning chasm to divide the south and the north any more except in Senator Heyburn's face when he opens her up to voice ringing protest. And I'm glad of it. l need the rest
 My young friend, goodby and good night. You'll never see me again and I hope that nobody else wil.'
 It waved frawed wristband in my wen- erql direstion and began to fade way eral direction and began to fade away Ing there alone. Its limp tattered tail& Tapped pathetica1ly in the little night breeze. Ii slid into a bar of moonlight N fiickered wanly for a moment and wasN zone. But I caught still the lingering. echo of the air it had been humming. The, air was Dixie Land" C
 stood in reverent silence. I had pan ticipated in a historic occasion I M attended tha farewell appearance of TIC Bloody Shirt.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

the church is that Moses wrote the Pen tateuch." But if one thing is surer than another in the realm of these debatable things, 1t Is that not one educated min ister in ten believes that the evidence of Mosaic authorship is above the level of tradition. Nevertheless the stream has swept beyond this whirlpool of debate and quite absolutely refuses to come back and bubble there again. Which is to say that the question of Mosaic authorship Is dead. We'll what of 1t? If scholar ship has flung that rock across the cur rent and if Protestantsm has split her stream laundering over it. debating it, angry at its challenge, are there no heal
 ing, unifying forces at work? No sooner indeed. have we survived the crash and the whirlpool than we meet another stream. sweet, strong, compelling. It Is tho Federation movement, which has within the past few weeks made notable progress as 1t blends into a placid bosom these whirling currents.
 For one thing, it is remarkable enough that the old world and the new are be- ing blended into common religious ex- perience. The Welsh revival had It's echoes in Welsh communities on this
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

impossible for us to decide today which books are of apostolic authority.
 In making up the collection. some books were found of whose apostolic authority there was no question. Among these were the four Gospels, Acts, Romans First and Second Corinthians. Galatians. Ephesians, Philippians First and Second Thessa- lonians. First and Second Timothy. Titus, Philemon. First John and First Peter. In this list we find the works of two evangelists who were not of ''The Twelve" But these two writers are known to have been apostolic assistants, and according to the unanimous testimony of the earliest church fathers" Mark wrote under the direction of Peter, and Luke under that of Paul. However this may be, there is no sound reason for doubting the genuineness. nor the author ity Of either Mark or Luke We know that they both accompanied Paul on his mis- sionary tours: and if there had not been abundant evidence of their authority the single fact that they were not of "The Twelve would almost certainly have ex- cluded them from the canon: for we know that the earliest collections were made with caution and that the claims of the several books were canvassed quite freely.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

ing this view to such an extreme as to do away with the necessity of an atone ment by a Divine Savior, and hence to get rid of the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ Man will never believe in a greater Savior than they think they need. Some one has said that the Uniyersalists believe that God is too good to damn them: and that the Unitarians believe that they are too good to be damned.
 The Marcionites were right In holding that the Christian was free from the bur dens of the ceremonial law; but they were wrong in teaching that Christ had abol- ished the moral law. This landed them in what Is now known as "Anti-nomin- anism."
 The Gnostics were right in regarding God as pure spirit, but this did not war rant them in their conclusion that matter was the source of all evil; for the scrip lures teach, and our experience confirms the teaching, that a perverse will is the source of many. If not of all, our trans gressions; and there is no reason for believing that satan himself is corporeal
 Now. when these and other contcnding sects began to disturb the harmony of the early churches, it became matter
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

formation of single church out of these numerous denominations, to be known as the United Free Church of England-' On each notice-board he hopes to see that name, with whatever necessary in- dication may be required for denomina- torial purposes as Methodist section. Baptist section, etc.
 The proposal met with n hearty re- sponse by other denominational leaders, and the con mttee is no doubt busy con templating their task. It ought not to be hopeless. Already the council has acted together in things as difficult sending out some years ago catechism for use in all their Sunday schools Already the strong men of one denomination are as much in demand outside as in it, for platform and pulpit work
 So that 1t seems as though that most virile thing, English Professionalism. has bounded over obstructive rocks, finished it's confusion and disquiet, and settled down to a sober unity of ecclesiastical life which cannot but exert the widest. nest wholesome influence on the strenu- ous nation whose own democratic homo geneity is compelling this next step for ward
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

commercial ruin. What Is 1t? Tn plain English we said to Germany that if she made a commercial treaty with another nation that we did not like we would punish her for 1t by fining her merchandise 25 per cent additional at our custom houses. Germany answered that she was ready for the trade war that meant. So did France give like answer. and in both cases we receded. predict the squabble with Canada will be settled in the same way.
 And the Payne-Aldrich bill was thus impudent in face of the fact that we had a reciprocity treaty with Cuba that would have made excuse for any other nation to put a maximum to us. The insolence of our tariff was never so well illustrated as in the maximum and the minimum of the Payne law; but 1t is impotent, dead letter.
 As for Canada. there ought to be ab- solute free trade with that country. Every argument that can be brought for tariff between Ohio and Ontario would serve for a tariff between Ohio and Tennessee. If free trade between
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

cabins of the black people, each with a garden attached and all on the fresh ly swept street" The nursery was there, where the black infants were manners. I never pass a negro of that generation now on the high way that he fails to lift his hat in self-respect and I rarely pass one of the new" time who seems to know the first rights of man. The overseer's house was in the vicinity of the quarters. The mule and cattle sheds, the ms chanic's shops, the chapel, the tall gin- house were also there. MT. Yancey said In his Faneull Hall speech, in the cam paign of 1860, that one might drive through many adjoining plantations in Alabama and not find spriE of grass in the thousands of acres of cotton.
 Agent Ravesies wrote to the secretary of the treasury of the fatal difficulty the Bonapartists encountered in procuring water "They have dug to great depths and found none he reported John c. Calhoun visited St. Michael's parish in S140, where he, with his sons and sons in-law owned the Tulip Hill" planta- tion At private dinner given In honor of him he startled the company by ex- claiming: "Gentlemen. you have the best watered agricultural country in the United StGtesr' How so?" "At various short 0lSlaNCeS DelOW lue cuFluSes ue eX- plained, there lies solid soft lime stcne You may locate your pools of water cut from this rock, where con- venience suggets. and you may have as many and as capacious pools as you desire know of no country where equal facilities for supplying water are to be found with what you have heve." The eeologist of Alabama. Dr, Smith, reports that the subtcrranean supply of water in the canebrake region 10 so abundant as to bc accounted phenomenal. The cane brake is, nevertheless. a dry country, ip the fact that there are no lakes, no ponds. no perennial streams. The runs there. dri.aninated creeks, are drains only. f~ inter rains. Tn suTmer the bed of c., Is fry. Re the cause what t may,
 tho better days of the republic" the later prevalent disease. tuberculosis, was practically unknown among the negroes of the plantations. Cases of the disenee among the white people there were cx- tremcly infrecuent, and the origin was never supposed to be local. Tn Greene
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

eeeded in our revolutionary war be- cause majority of the people of Eng land wanted them to succeed and re- joiced over every rebel" victory Had England been united then, as she was against the Boers some six score years later, the result would have been diff ferent
 When the treaty of peace was made Wedderburn wanted to throw in Can ada" and John Adams was for taking 1t: but Washington suggested that would make q difficulty with France, who would demand Canada as indemni- ty for the aid we got from her.
 If the French flag had remained in Canada--if Cape Breton and Quebec had been French victories-our fathers would not have rebelled in 1776, though the taxation had been ten times what 1t was.
 But Canada. before this country IS half done with this world will be mighty nation of teeming millions of freemen, talking our tongue, and Illus tratlne that the Anglo Saxon Is the only world-conqueror
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

| the state and Screamersville sat on the spot where Linden, the capital of Marengo county, now Is. The name Linden was chosen in compliment to the French, and the county was called Marengo for the same reason. At that time Ezekiel Pick ems moved his law practice from Cahawba to Screamersville or Lindon. He built an office and lived in it. The structure was of light pine poles that required little expense in labor to cut, notch and set up in house form. The floor was of split puncheons. the roof was of clap boards weighed down by poles, the door was of clapboards No nails had been used when the lawyer took up his resi- dencc in the house. This was the earliest law office in Marengo.
 The government at Washington heard of the impracticahle effort of the Bonapart- ists. The original contract with the
 '1ombeckbee association was amended. On February 19. 1881, Congress passed an act providing that all allotments of land in the French grant, nor then paid for by October 31 next following, might be reduced from g the acre to .25. and that the minimum acreage of the allotment might be changed from 230 acres to 15O- The date of final payment was also ex- tended one year.
 The governments compassion was fruit
 less. Aiglesville too. was abandoned. The remains of the village. at least few years ago. were to be seen on the planta- tion of Col. Norman G. Vim. china tree and some other signs of former oc- cupancy was there. North of Demopolis across the slough some level. loamy land was found supposed to be more fav- orable than other lands adjacent for the cultivation of the vine. but before the ex- pertinent had ripened the Warrior in flood covered the spot. and all was abandoned.
 The fame of this wonderful bed of an inland sea, and news of the Bona. partists sad experience and enforced abandonment of their grant, spread abroad. Young slave masters from the Atlantic states hastcned thither with their inheritance In black toilere. Tho rapidity of reclamation hardly has a parallel in the wilds os America. We saw in the previous chapter the dates of Agent Ravesier letter from Aigle- ville. to the Secretary of the Treasury. 1887. The agent then spoke of the matchless splendor of rarely unbroken forests and tho utterly impracticable
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

county. on his plantation on the Warrior, pr. Robert w. Withers in the fortics, bored seven overflow wells. The waters were delivered upon turbine wheel, which ran different kinds of mills. This is supposed to have been the first of ar- tesisn well water for turning machinery anywhere known.
 The eminent agricultural reformer, Ed- niund Rufhn of Virginia, made a study of the canehrake soil, or soils. at an earlv period, on the spot When the blow has finished the winter preparation for cotton and corn, looking over any one planta- tion the gase is met by a peculiar pie ture, like an old woman's quilt Within the limits of hundred acres, or even less, the blow has turned up black soil, gray. red, yellow, in spots of indefinite measurements. MT. Ruffn would stand wisfi one foot on gray land, for example. hetivily charged with lima, and one foot on yellow or red land, which when anal yxed showed no trace of lime. '.The bald prairie" much oftener found in the other pr airie lands of the state than in the canebrake, appeared here also fin one or two-acrc areas. occasionally several acres So little productive soil had formed on these bald prairies. even 70 years ago, thot only coarser weeds grew there. At thls tirnc the formation of soil has 50 in- creased that the dwarf cedar grows thickly upon such spots. w
 The long ,divining wand" of the pe- culiar institutions of the southern states hung propitiousiy over the great plains behind the Chickasnw gallery" The dense forest, which the Bonapartists could not pay the government for. in 14 years, at g the acre. nor yet at the re- duced price Of $.&. was bought by the young slave masters at SIS up to >25 and oven upward to tsS the acre, rapidly con- verted into large fields for the plow and hoe. and to occupancy by some of the highest culture and the most refined hablts of American socisty.
 The log cabin was there. the pioneer settler lived In t. but he save to 1t a character not until then, or since then. progressed by 1t in the wilds of America The pantheon floors of the canebrakc log cnhin were covered by heavy csrpetinG. even when the foot of heavy chair would sink between the disconnected puncheons. Ageinst the hewn red cedar lo9 waMe rat the handsome plano. and %il around hung family pottrajts by the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

side. But beyond all that the Welsh re- ligious genius became a common heritage, largely through that revival. Our slow and stolid phraseology began to scintil- late and leap as it caught the electric passion of cymric mysticism and music. The value of psychic susceptibility be- gan to be scientifically grasped, and beneath all the clashing of the waves on the beach men trained their ears to hear the chanting groundswell of national and racial consciousness
 In the presence of that vast tide what were the questions about Moses and Dan iel and Isaiah? Just chips floating amid the foam! They did not serve to keep apart the Welsh churches In the time of national contrtion and renewal. And be- because the whole Protestant world has been enriched by the Welsh experience these questions have been allowed to drift to where forgotten things gather for the burning. Better a new revival than an old heresy-trial.
 Hence also the international hunger of Professionalism. The blended stream Is carrying every year more and more American preachers into oldworld pull pits and more and more English, Scottish,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

sustained his ruling by a majority of two or three. It was an appeal from the first ruling he made counting a quorum Can non intended 10 resign, and I doubt not that he will ever regret that he was dis suaded from it.
 Of course 1t would have brought legis- lative chaos if old Joe had resigned Doubtless he and his would have made Champ Clark speaker, and Champ Clark would have been the biggest fool in the world to have accepted It. Clarxs play and his party's play would have been to make Victor Murdock speaker, explain ing that 1t was an insurgent victory and to the victor belongs the spells.
 That would have split the republican party wide open and every regular. with q particle of self-respect, would have re- signed his committee assignment Mur- dock then would have appointed the com mittees. or delegated that office to the new committee on rules In the final vote, that on the Burleson resolution to declare the office of speaker vacant, all the in surgents but nine played a miserable part. After cussng old Joe as thousand sorts of a reprobate they again voted for him
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03
TRIMMING HIS CLAWS-Bv Savovard

rules; neither Is your proposition in or der: but anything can be made to order by majority of this House. If you will vote with us to reduce the infamous taxa ton of schedule K 90 per cent, then we will vote with you to humliate old Joe. If you refuse, it remains a family quar- rel among the regulars and the 1n- surgents' on the republican side and we shall sit mute as the dog fight pro- ceeds, cheering both sides. Why the devil don't you insurge? 1 offer you a chancer'
 Had Clark said that March II on the floor the country would have understood it. and it would have electrified the coun- try. But he let the opportunity slip, and now the insurgents are set right with their insurging constituents and the thnig may cost the democrats the next Con gress
 I was disappointed in old Joe. It was a mistake to yield to the importantly of his friends. His only possible course was to resign. When Tom Reed was in a like situation he wrote his resignation as a member of the House as the roll call progressed, but tore 1t up when the vote
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

attempt of the immigrants, by their own hands or by the help of German laborers. to reduce any considerable part of 1t to the use of agriculture. This was about eight years after the colonists had taken possession.
 The purchasers of the allottmenfs of the Bonapartists began to move upon the scene about 1925 and for ten years later. By the year 1850, say in 25 years of occupation by the young planters, so general had become the the main or northernmost road, from Demopolist to Uniontown, 22 miles, there was left standing only patches of woodland, not aggregating more tyan five miles in length along the road way. Remote from the road each plan tation had limited acreage of of re- serve fire wood, but the distraction of the great wealth In timber had been ruthless and highly improvident.
 In 20 to 25 years the magnificent wooded canebrake wac converted into vast plantation, the most inspiring rural prospect, perhaps. ever seen, some 500 square miles. Estate joined estate. broad, undulating, roads connecting all There were no precipitous hills but there were no long reaches of level land. The surface was left with the imprint of the upheaved and tossing waters, as the volcanic action below threw them southward toward the gulf Remains of oyster shell and oth- CT inhabitants of that description yet are turned up by the freedman's little blow, but in evidence of evolution 50 much as proof of the passing of Mr. Abraham Lincoln over the conditions Canebrake roads were perfect, when dry There was never jolt of the tra A- eller's wheel His horse was jaded not with up hill and down hill straining. More over. the travellers eye was never, for moment, wcaried with mo- notony of scene. The aspect reached all around him in every direction, four i've. six miles, green pastures upon q thousand crests. long lines of black toilcrs, moving along cotton rows with the precision of an army with ban nors, their weeding hoes glistening in the sun like bayonets. Upon q cenfral elevation eat the green enveloped home of the master. At convenient distance was the quarters" the white
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-03

Tennessee and Ohio is good for both states, then it follows as day the night that free trade would be good between the Dominion of Canada and the Re- public of the United States.
 About sixty years ago we entered upon trade reciprocity with Canada to the material profit of both countries. Our big war came on and 1t appears that Canada was a southern sympa- thizer. though she furnished thousands of soldiers to the Union cause. Not long after the war between the States that reciprocity treaty expired and Canada sought to renew if, but our Congress said Canada was a rebel In our war and refused. After many years Canada got to the place where sine could get along better without us than we could get along without fer. She was thoroughly independent, and that is why she Is talking so sassy" to the Taft administration about the Payne maximum and minimum this moment.
 And that recalls a scrap of history. Washington and the other fathers suo-