davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

sions. There is very little comment in any of them. Analysis of character, discussion of motives"-.so dear to the modern historian and novelist-are almost foreign to the spirit of these writers. They confine themselves almost exclusively to the task of telling what the several char acters said and did, and the reader is left to infer their motives from their say ings and doings. The evangelists do not argue 10 prove that Pilate did wrong. They use no harsh epithets in their statements of the conduct of the priests and scribes. Suppositions are not in dulged in; opinions are not expressed: personal feeling is absolutely suppressed; l; and thus and therefore we have the naked, solid facts. unencumbered with speculations of any kind. And these char acteristics make the evangelists the best witnesses in the world; so that the gos- pels are the best attested histories in ex- istence.
 In Isaiah, 44th chapter and 18th verse, Jehovah is reported as saying of Cyrus: He is my shepherd, and shall perform
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15
HALE AND NAMELY Sauoydrd.

a fine speech and his mind was stored with a good deal of information. He lived and died a bloodyshirter. Old Joe Wheeler said he would not fight; but he looked and talked the fighter, at any rate. Wellington said. the pup pies would fight
 In october. 1884, Blaine's special went out of New York city early in the morning and Boutelle was on board. He picked up the New York Tribune and after reading the leading editorial he threw the paper down. stamped on it and cuSsed Whitelaw Reid, it's editor, as only sailor could cuss. Blaine sat with amusement on his face and a twinkle In his eye, and when Boutelle had exhausted himself the "Plumed Knight" quietly said;
 Charley, I wrote that and had It printed double leaded''
 Boutelle collapsed.
 But to get back. Hale was to Blaine his ablest and most trusted lieuten- ant-what Crittenden, at one time. was to Clay; what Randolph. at ope time was to Jeffer&oR; what Hayne was to Calhoun; what Choate was to Webster. and to go across the water, what Can ming was to Pitt; what Grey was to Fox: what Windham was to Burke; what Collingwood was to Nelson. Hale had what Blaine had not, calm, se- date. sage judgment. A far less bril- liant man, he was equally as able, and with a judicial temper. Hale would have been in the front rank of his profession had hc stuck to the bar. He would have made great judge on the bench.
 Hale entered Congress at the age of
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15
XVTITIIIN a few hours of one anoth- W CT two great outstanding 1rit-
 w ish men crossed the Range and

XVTITIIIN few hours of one anoth-
 \x/ CT two great outstanding Brit
 w isb men crossed the Range and dipped their feet in the River. Fame had come to one by what is so foolishly called ''the accident of birth.' To the other 1t came as the result of moral worth and rich gifts and Christian convictions. The one was an emperor and king whose face was stamped upon the missives and the money of millions. The other was an old Baptist preacher not less a king than he whose loyal subject he was. He, too had his stamp on millions of lives. the inn press of the King of Kings. One was Edward VII the other was Alexander McLaren-"McLaren of Manchester" as he was called.
 We may reverently imagine these two souls meeting in that mysterious re- zion just beyond the outer courts of this physical life, and journeying forward to the Presence that makes all things clear and that pronounces infallible, absolute estimates and doom. They go forward the kin spiritual and the kin temporal, capitalized by the tender democracy of death, ushered along by those spirits who are sent to minister unto such as shall be heirs of salvation"
 Surely, a strange pair. these! The one soul tall and stately and large eyed, well accustomed to spiritual conflict and self
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

for secretary of the treasury in the old mans cabinet of which Webster was Secretary of State.
 Doubtless it is true that William Pitt Fessenden was Maines greatest son. Nearly as intellectual as ENans. he was as pure a man as Thomas R Rayard or William L. Wilson. or HapN e. Turner. Certainly he was the greatest senator the republican party ever had ip Congress-, greater than Conkling, even; or Morton, or Sumner. or Chase, or Seward. He succeeded Chase as secretary of tf.e treas- ury in Lincon's cabinet Had he been chosen to that station in 1861 there would have been no greenback; the war would have cost about half what 1t did. and doubtless it would have been brought to a conclusion at least a year earlier. He would have made a great president. He saved his country when he defeated the partisan scheme to inn each Andy Johnson.
 Maine was born sister of the republic 90 years ago. For S5 years of that time she has been represented at this capital by at least one commanding figure, often by two, and now and then by three. Evans came before Sprague left, Fessenden came before Evans left, Blaine came be- fore Fessenden left, Hale and Reed came before Blaine left, and Dingley, whom left out of my computation. came wnlio Hale and Reed were here.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

jus of the Hebrew tongue plays along the keyboard of Anglo-Saxon speech, and the church Catholic forgets all else but her redemption, l have nothing to say The final volumes of the Propositions" believe are now in the press Was there ever, since the days of the fathers, such a. zeal for Scripture as is shown in these voluminous expositions that have sold so well, or the once enormously popular Treasury of David'' and Sermons of Spurgeon or the Peoples Bible,' by Jo- seph Parker? How very modern the an- cient Bible is. thanks to such men. For more than GO years a great preachers shaping the destiny of millions of lives. directly or indirectly For 50 years an un- crowned king in Cottonopolis, influencing profoundly all it's curic lifel For three- quarters of a century a Christian, man and boy whose single aim it was to glorify God in simple Scottish loyalty. Here surely strength, virility, crea- tive force. But there were no fields of wild oats to be harvested. And so, With all reverence for the man who wore the regalia, I catch myself wondering which was the lSinglier king. and even whether grouped with Alexander McLaren, Ed- ward Guelph could have risen as he rose o'er his dead self to higher things and
 become "every inch a king" In any event they pass on and on It Is together that they go and is the sturdy. tenders hearted, independent Cromwelian soul whispering secrets to the other as they approach the City of Eternal Dawn?
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

ositions ar inconceivable and yet who can doubt that one or the other is true? Nor is this reasoning dependent upon the as- sumption of the existence of personal creator. It is perfectly valid upon the strictest principles of evolution" and Charles Darwin could no more have an- sVered it than could Charles Sturgeon. A priori, it would have been impossible 10 conceive of the Introduction of moral evil into d world under the government Of an all wise all powerful and per- fectly holy God But here sin is. We shall not help the situation. either moral- 1y or logically, by denying sins exist enee. with Spinaza, nor by denying Gods existence with Lucretius, who could not believe that so disordered a world came from the hands of wise, powerful and benevolent Being. The great German critic. I.fssing. is credited with the thoL ghtaul and striking remark that we ought not to be surprised that the Bible tells us some things that are beyond our coroeption for what sort of a revelation would it be If it revealed nothing?
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

S3, when Blaine was speaker, and Blaine gave him ample opportunity to exploit himself. lie was well equipped and had all the strong points of 9 debater except eloquence; but he was a. capable public speaker. and in those days rathcr garrulous. I will say this for him right now, lest l forget 1t, and the same is true of old Joe Can non: He was always for economy In appropriations, and those two men have saved to the public treasury many million of eXtravagant or corrupt expenditure. That Is the converse or what the fishwife of Billingsgate said of herself in Humphrey Clinker
 When Thad Stevens died old Ben But Ter was the chief republican on the Congress, indeed. He led the, coh orts of hate from the north against the prostrate south In the infamous period of reconstructiona and why? During tho administration of Frank Pierce But Ter licked the boots and fetched and carried for Jefferson Davis, the dom- inant factor of that administration, and now he was turned a gigantic uriah Heep.
 Hale supported all those infamies, as did his chief, Blaine, ostensibly. But it was a time of passion and the south was to be put under the heel of the tyrant because of the matchless valor of her sons on a thousand bloody fields.
 In 1878 there was greenback ep- idemic in Maine. Hale more than any other man I ever saw in public life looks and acts the aristocrat. He was born on the wrong side of the Wa
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

Josiah and those of Ezra, his case is al- together irrelevant; and it Is hard to say which of the two propositions is,most i'm probable All the eviden e known to us points to the conclusion that Job was not a Hebrew. and that he lived long be- fore the days of Josiah.
 The synagogue, of which we read so often in the New Testament, is conspicu- ously absent from the Old Testament No one of the prophets is ever spoken of as preaching or teaching in syna- gogue. The only two sacred buildings dedicated to Jehovah were the taber- nacle, built under the administration of Moses, and the temple, which was first erected during the reign of Solomon When we come down to the time of Christ we find the synagogue worship fully es- tablished as an Israelitish institution, and we find Christ and the apostles regularly taking part in that worship. Yet there is no definite information as to the origin or the history of the synagogue service before this period. The general opinion among modern scholars is that the syna-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

all my pleasure, even saying to Jeru- salem. Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, thy foundation shall be laid." The divine recognition of the service of Cyrus is no warrant for the opinion that Cyrus was good man. or that he was worshipper of Jehovah. Some inscrip- tions of Cyrus, recently discovered, give no evidences that he knew or cared much about the Jews. He seems to have had sense enough to see that deporting con quered communities en masse, and settling them in the territory of the conquerors, was not tine best way to build up a state: and so he gave general permission to the exiles to return to their homes if they desired to do so. The Cyrus Cylinder after giving some account of the wrong treatment of the gods of Babylon says: "'He dhe god Merodach) pitied them; he searched all lands and sought out right eous prince to take him by the hand. He called Cyrus by name and proclaimed his universal rule" And we find Isaiah saying, Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus whose right hand
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

ter. He was intended for a British lord of the time of the Stuarts or a French count of the time of Louis XIV. And in 1878 a stonecutter beat him for Congress, his only defeat And thus the housing owl killed the tow ering falcon in her pride of place. You ought to see the vest Hale wears in the summertime.
 But three years later Eugene Hale was the successor of Hannibal Ham, lin in the United States Senate, of which body he has been a conspicuous and leading figure for 20 years.
 Next to Evans, Tom Reed was tho greatest intellect Maine ever produced. and he was what Evans was not, a respectable man. He would not sub init to the domination of Blaine and was always an insurgent in the camp. He believed he was a greater man than Blaine and he was right. Certainly his mind was finer and assuredly hl8 character was better.
 They did not speak-Reed and Blaine and there were years that Reed de- bated long whether he would shove Frye out of his seat as senator but ultimately he determined the House was his place. Later he was urged to head and said "The chariots of tha gods swing low but once for any man."
 He left public life disappointed man. as all of them do and as Halo does. He was humiliated when his party preferred the weak Mckinley to himself. He never got over 1t. Tom Reed would have been grand Pres ident-almost in Grover Cleveland's class
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

| road to the shepherds cottage. Autolys GUS sings:
 Jog on, jog on. the foot-path way
 And merrily hent the stile-a;
 merry heart goes all the day. | Your sad tires in a mile-a."
 to strange hotel and met strange clerk behind a strange desk. This clerk was in the most unmannerly mood. My civil questions he answered with gross incivility. l was about to lift my grip and seek another hostelry. but second thought came to me. l determined to kill him. which I did. It was in this manners You seem to be in bad humor," quoth l. Well what more do you wantS' asked he. 'I want to talk with you,~ said I, smiling, and added. Here tako cigar, let's smoke.n 'I don't smoke" he answered l thought "Od fellow, 8 you smoked you'd be more sociabe" But had purposed to kill him, and could nu4 be turned from my determination. I bo- gan to talk with him; he was obliged tO make replies; I laughed at his surley mood. and by and by the rudeness melt- ed some. and the strange clerk behind the strange desk came from his fortificse ton out into the lobby. Then I stabbed him with a good natured remark or story. and he died. There was an immediate resurrection, however, and real man like myself. stood by me as we talke1 l laughed at him for his brusqueness | think he was heartily ashamed of hiu- self, and it is to be hoped that his rudo discourtesy, which certainly died at the time, has never come back to life to stand in the way of his possible prospen- ty; and yet, I fear me much, that rude. ness, like a cat has at least nine livea especially if it grow out of sunless na- ture. As Gratiano in ''The Merchant o4 Venice" asks, so do I repeat the ques. tion,
 Why should man whose blood Is warn
 within,
 Sit like his grandsire cut in alabasters Sleep when he wakes. and creep into the
 jaundice
 By being peevish?"
 To say the least of it, it is poor policy. it is bad practice and wretched philoso. phy and irreigious.
 My dear madam, I began by addrese- ing you, and in the same manner [ shall close this essay. close with c little stanza or two taken from song. It was sung by an old. old man (but this cannot apply to mel to an old, old lady (which cannot apply to you). She wac wont to look upon the shadowy part of life, but he sought to have her behold tho sunny benefactions of God and thus sangs "Oh. don't be sorrowful, darling; Now don't be sorrowful. pray. For. taking the year together. my deaSs There isn't more night than day 'Tis rainy weather, my darling, Times waves now heavily run: But. taking the year together. my dean There isn't more cloud than sun. We are old folks now, my darling; And our heads are growing gray. But, taking the year all round. my deaIs You will always find the May"
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

|, Doeberry. If we have the villain Iago
 portrayed, we have also the drolleries
 of Falstaff described; and so, the possi--
 bility of the humorous makes Shakes
 peare kin to the whole world.
 Thackeray wrote Vanity Fair" 'The
 Newcomes and Pendennis," but he could
 never have touched the heart of the
 world as he has in his great stories. had he not been able to write The Yellow Plush Papers and '.The Book of Snobs.' Dickens could not have written the pa
 thetic story of Paul Dombey's death had
 he lacked the humor that gave the world the account of the trial of Mir Pickwick
 and the forensic learning of MT. Buzfuzz. | Indeed, humor is as essential as any
 other quality of mind.
 |. Lord Chesterfield thought it vulgar to laugh, and boasted that no man had ever seen him guilty of the vulgarity of laughing; but the world saw him over whelmed many a time in parliament by | the humor of Horace Walpole, who had the heartiest laugh in all England Lord
 Palmerston also used to sweep everything
 before him in parliament byt he tides of hilarious laughter. Sunset Cox, form erly of our own parliament at Washing ton, was the Palmerston of America. There has recently passed away from all earthly scenes one of our greatest philosophers and the prince of humorists He was an artistic constructionst of phase of literature that shall live. His life-work shall prove a benediction to generations yet unborn. In his books shall many a heart lose. at least for awhile, all sense of the sorrows of life and be thankful for the philosophy un- deriving the humor of Mark Twain. His own life was wrought of material woven in the loom of sorrow and loss; yet was he as radiant as the sun of a cloudless dawn. To save others the bitterness of his own life he wrote as cherrily as if no thorn pierced his own heart. He was not only humorist. He was a philos- opher and. like Democritus, he was the laughing philosopher" At length, over come by the weight of years, the pathos of death in his home circle and an ac- cidental tragedy that wrung his heart, the gentle. philosophical humorist left the burdensome body that he had borne so long, upon the plains of Time, while he himself departed into the mystery of eternity.
 There is one thought more which I add to all the foregoing. The reader may re- member that Othello says. They laugh that win" Why should we not transpose the terms just at this place? Now let it read. 'They win that laugh" know that this is not what the dramatist had in mind but it is what I have in my philos- Opny or Ire, anu presoHl tie thoush' gratis to the reader. "Oh, give us the man who whistles at his work" said the philosopher of Chelsea. Give us the man that works with a smile on his face, with humor in his heart and with laugh ter on his lips. His work will be done the better for the merriment that is mingled with it. He who laughs will win. He will win patronage and promotion. He will win friends and admirers. He will hold out longer: his toll will be less wear ing and wasting because of his cheerful ness. and disappointments can be better borne. In the "Winter's Tale,' on the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

F we remember aright. it was of At
 terbury's discussion of the genuine A ness and value of the so-called Let ters of Phaluris' that Macaulay said it deserved the praise. whatever that praise might be worth, of being the best book that was ever written on the wrong side of question of which the author was profoundly ignorant. Moral: If you have made up your mind to write a book, don't put pen to paper until you have given careful study to the subject on which you mean to write. This may save you the trouble of writing at all.
 Tn one of our "BiblicaP' reviews we find an article from a professor in the Episcopal Divinity school of Philadelphia on "The Social Life of the Hebrews From Josiah to Ezra" In arguing the thesis that "a plurality of wives was compar- atively rare,' he cites Job. who possessed all manner of wealth and greatness, but he had but one wife, Now, unless 1t can be shown that Job was Hebrew, and that he lived between the days or
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

gogue originated during what is called 'aThe interbiblleal period" that Is. the period between the close of the Old Testa- ment and the opening of the new. In rough way we may call this the period from Malachi to John the Baptist. This opinion is almost certainly correct, and those scholars who hold that the syna gogue originated during the exile haes a good deal to say In favor of their view. It is, however not 90 well established as is the first opinion mentioned above; for it is conceivable that the synagogue was post-exilian, |. e., that it was not in ex- istence before the return of the exiles to Palestine.
 One of the most striking things about the narratives of the four evangelists is their reticence What they keep back is almost as remarkable as what they tell Take for instance, the records of our Lords trial. They differ considerably each from the other, in mere detail, and vet in every enc of the narratives the thoughtful reader finds striking omis-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-05-15

[ whole family, and many times In rall way coaches you have seen some run loving soul set all the passengers laugh ins, although they were all strangers tt hin, who smilingly brought with him ano passed around the sparkling potatlon ol nepenthes. One of our American poets has sung a sweet lyric whose first line runs,
 "Laugh. and the world laughs with you. and it is in harmony with the truest philosophy.
 Now, I do not mean that the serious side of life should be forgotten and that time is to be laughed away into eternity I agree not at all with the poet whose dust lies in Westminster Abbey, that "I.ifes a jest and all things show it, I thought so once, but now l know it.
 No: life is not jest. Booth Parking ton, in his story, '"rhe Gentleman From Indiana quoting Victor Hugo, says, '"The Parisians laugh to keep from weep ing" Life, all life. has it's times of weep ing, and in order to strike gracious balance by which life may become bear able and even enjoyable, God provides the lightness of merriment. He would have us laugh. lest we weep unduiy'
 Instead of fun discounting the se- riousness of life. the opposite is the case. It may be seriously questioned if men ever attain their highest possibilities without a sense of humor and its accom- panying music of laughter. Says Carlyle in his .Sartor Resartus," Readers who have any tincture of psychology knew that no man who has once heartily laughed can be altogether and irreclaim- ably bad How much lies in laughter, the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. Some men wear an ever lasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, strat- agems and spells, but his whole life Is strategem and treason In keeping with this same thought I mention that the mother of Goethe said, "He who laughs can commit no deadly sin" On the other hand. of the lean and hungry Cassius Shakespeare makes Caesar say: 'I do not know man should avoid AS soon as that spare Cassius. He loves
 no plays,
 As thou dost. Antony; he hears no music; Seldom he smiles, or smiles in such a
 sort,
 As if he mocked himself and scorned his
 spirit
 That could be moved to smile at any
 thing;
 Such men be never at hearts ease"
 It will be seen, then, that in the opin- ion of the most thoughtful. humor and laughter, instead of vitiating the best things of character rather accompany them. Shakespeare gives us the philo- sophie Hamlet. but the fun-lovins grace digger stands at his side. On the one side we have the rawlings of Lear in the storn on the other side of the gallery of his characters we have