davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

gone by. We depend less for this pur- pose on acts of legislature and more upon the wide and generous spirit of candor and the amende honorable. It has been recognized that Dickens earned millions that many of his descendants, who are living In penury, ought to be comfortably well off. So, thus late in the day, every reader of Dickens, everyone. indeed. who owns a single copy of any of his books, is being asked to tax himself voluntarily, to the extent of 1 cent for a stamp for each such volume, and paste that stamp in that book. Most of us have from 10 to 40 volumes. which almost leap from their shelves, crying to be so stamped. have learned that the stamps are avail able in Birmingham and the booksellers will be glad to furnish them. The pro- ceeds will go, in full, I believe, to the fund promoted for the welfare of the heirs of Charles Dickens. If we all re- ligiously pay this tax very handsome result will be achieved but not a frac- tion more than is the rightful due of the heirs.
 "Brainsl' said Joseph Parker, who will pay me for my brains? Fool You cannot buy brains."
 We cannot. But somehow men man age it so that the cheapest thing on earth Is still the human brain. Not even yet does the world fully recognize that a copyright is in its nature transferable piece of property which no more diminishes in value with time than the demand for the copyrighted
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

asked the Quaker if he had ever seen, or smelled or heard. or tasted his soul. The Quaker replied that he had not. Well, said the materialist. do you believe you have soul?" The Quaker. in turn. asked "Didst thee ever see, or hear, or taste or smell thy own brains?' No"
 Then dost thee believe that thee has any?"
 The reply was somewhat personal one; but it was worth at least as much as the objection.
 There are new births in nature. The hairy, ugly. creeping caterpillar Is changed into the beautiful, winged, joy ous butterfly. It has new tastes. new desires. new aspirations. It is new creature. It has been born again and henceforth lives a new life.
 If we are born again we shall show il in our lives. We shall not content our selves with orthodox breeds, or with con fesisons of faith. however sound. We shall not content ourselves with putting our religion upon paper, and carrying none of it into our business and our dailH life. If a man sits down to a business calculation and figures himself wealthy on paper, this will not pay his debts. He may make himself millionaire on paper and yet be a pauper in his pocket. Sc In religion. Your creed will not save you A new life in Christ must be your hope
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

CUTS in Thackerays "The Newcomes." There comes a time in the unfolding of the long story, when the author thinks it proper to thin out his characters. So, he makes Lady Glenlivat depart from his pages by the way of death. Her demise is published in the newspapers, as we learn in chapter XVIII of the second book. But on the story rolls. There comes a crisis when the Lady Glenlivat is again needed. So, forgetting that he had killed her off, Thackeray brings the old lady to the social reunion that pre- cedes the marriage in chapter XIX, where she is in as good health "as ever thank God" She then proceeds to play her part in the future of Farintosh. This | mistake Thackeray seems not to have 1 discovered for himself. But, the story appearing serially In one of the month lies, the error was detected by someone else and reported to Thackeray. It was | too late then to explain. Therefore, he | let the novel run through the press to its close. Then. in an epilogue, he charges the mistake upon Pendenns. But who was it speaking through Pendennis? And If he blundered, who was responsible? Thackeray, is the answer to both ques- tions The question has often been | asked Did the people who rose from
  die again?" My answer is, do not know. Did Lady Glenlivat die again? I answer. positively do not remember. I'll be glad if the reader will tell me on a postal card.
 Dryden has made a curious mistake In his drama that deals with the love of Cleopatra and the wonderful fidelity of Octavia. He takes Octavia to Egypt, where she and her children come into the presence of "the stary-eyed sorceress of the Nile.' The truth is, that Octavia never went to Egypt at all.
 Leigh Hunt made a strange error. which the average child in the higher grades of our grammar schools might correct. In his poem, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer are the lines: Then felt like some watcher of the skies
 When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez. when with eagle eyes,
 He stared at>the Pacific"
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

John Sherman was low-tariff man on everything but wool. He had just de- livered that speech in which he de- nounced those manufacturers who profit cd by protection as "robber barons' like those of the Rhine in mediaeval times. Three republicans of four will tell you that Henry Watterson invented that simile, some say it came from Frank Hurd, but 1t came from John Sherman, and the speech is In the old Congress sional Globe, for I have there read 1t. Allison of Iowa was bitterly opposed to protection of all sorts, and David A. Wells, the abest man of the lot, was an out-and-outer against protection.
 So it was on the question of loyalty that the republicans rejected Canadian reciprocity then, but after awhile the G. O. P. became insane on the tariff question, owing, possibly, to the fat that was fried out of the 'robber barons'' with which to buy elections. Look at Adam county. Ohio. It is just as bad in rural New York. If Teddy
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

Those days of the mid-century were abominably dishonest Few authors re- ceived what they earned; fewer still of those whose books circulated beyond the Atlantic. Charles Dickens was, after all, nearly as popular in the States as on the old soil. But the copyright laws were as nought, and popular English authors were pie for the plate of the publishing pirates. Hundreds of editions of Dickens, complete or incomplete, have been con- sumed in the years since 1S30, for which no publisher paid a cent to the author. In England the copyright laws were a little more fair, but far enough from be- ing perfect Dickens himself took part in urging upon the government in 1S42, the justice of prolonging the right of a man to profit by his own brains, and the petition issued by Thomas Carlyle in 1889 was of great influence in the right direc- tion. The 60 years limit asked for was not granted even then, but only 42 years, after which time the most personal of all conceivable property was the possession of every exploiter. For seven years after an authors death his children might be req ana clotneo py tne proceeus UT HIS work and genius. After that they might take their chance with the rest. The chill dren of land-thieves were secure in their baronial halls to the hundredth genera ton, every acre tied so that they could not sell 1t if they would. But the chill dren of a creative benefactor of man. kind had practically no hold upon the things that he had made.
 Ours, however, is an age for the redress of wrongs, as truly as was the century
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

it's parent. We understand what Is meant by a family likeness" Even among the lower animals we know that there Is something in blood" Farmers attach importance to their breed of hogs and of sheep. In the pedigree" of horses Ca higher class of animals) the law becomes still more pronounced. Now the higher we go in the scale of creation the more important and striking are the results of this law. In man we md its climax.
 Nobody expects to find very stupid chill dren from highly intellectual parents. Honest parents are not apt to have thiev- ish ci...uren. Whenever you hear a man say that there Is nothing in blood" ask him If he would as soon marry his daugh- ter to the son of a thief as to the son of an honest man. All this prating about the essential equality of the races" whenever done by man who has any brains, Is done for a purpose. He knows when he says 1t that 1t is not true, and that the laws of natural birth are against him.
 Now as in the natural or physical birth, the offspring partakes of the nature of the parent even so in the spiritual birth The fruit of the spiritual birth will be a spiritual being-a new man in Christ Jesus. The world has right to expect a spiritual life from every one who pro-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

Our first lesson is the alphabet. We call this simple. But after a boy has learned the names shapes and powers of the let ters, suppose he turns upon his teacher and asks him, Where did these letters come from at. first? Who made them? What is their history?' Now comes the difficulty. Nobody can answer these questions satisfactorily; and thus we see that on the very threshold of human learning, we meet questions which puzzle the wisest. Indeed, it may be truly said that in very important sense there is not scholar upon earth who knows his B Cs. Without being deterred, then, by the difficulties of the subject, let us
 learn what we may about the teachings of our text. In the Saviours converse ton with Nicodemus, He gives two illus
 trations, one intended to throw light
 upon the nature of the new birth and the other to remove objections to the doc- Urine. We will, therefore, discuss the na- ture of the change. Jesus gays That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and
 that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit This sounds like mere truism, but it means something or the Saviour would not have uttered the words. We know something of the laws of hereditary de- scent. We expect the offspring to be like
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

when was I there? Only few years ago. Now, what time is historically repre- scented in the play? I answer: time when the oracle of Delphos spoke, name ly. two or three hundred years before the Elizabethan period. Now. let the reader turn to Sir Edward Sullivans Shakes peare and the Waterways of North Italy" and he will find that under the rule of Ottocar, 1255-127S, Bohemia stretched from the Adriatic to the Baltic The "Winter's Tale was taken from an old novel. many of whose facts Greene had recovered from an ancient story, doubtless, in which we read, Egistus provided a navy of ships to sail into Be- hemia." Suum cuique tributo
 One of the writers most conspicuous for his mistakes. is our old friend Thack- cray The wonder Is that more were not made when we consider the cloud of sor- TOW that hung over his home for years. In my copy of Thackeray, on the margin of the fifth chapter of the first volume of ''The Virginians.' some years ago. drew an attention mark" The place is open before me now. Opposite my mark l read: Tt was over the black sheep of the Castlewood flock that MT. Ward had somehow the most influence. These wool ly lamblings were immensely affected by his exhortatons, and when he gave out the hymn there was such a negro chorus about the house as might be heard across the Potomac See the mistake? He meant to say, 'the James," which was only eight miles distant while the Po- toinac is at least 120 miles away There is story to the end that Thackeray did not write this chapter; but I believe he did, and that his geography only was at fault. Thackeray makes George War rington give an account of his escape from Duquesne. The escape was made in the autumn, and George tells of his fall ing in with some hunters "who were mak- ing sugar from the sap of the maple" Now it was right enough to say that Warrington fell in with some hunters, but it is a mistake to say that they were making sugar from maple trees. for it was autumn, and our friend Thack- cray should have known that maple su- gar is made in the spring, when sap Is rising. and not in the fall when it is de- scending.
 But more remarkable blunder than that to which I have last adverted, oc-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15
CANADIAN RECIPROCITY-By Savoyard

turer all he is out because of the duty on lumber. The same is true of wool, of lead, of zinc, of iron ores, of coal, of everything. We democrats have been doing some tall lying for 50 years and upward if the consumer does not pay the tax.
 The republican party is in the pre- else situation in 1910 that the demo- cratic party was in 1894. l was talking with a leading republican statesman the other day, a national figure, whose name I withhold for obvious reasons and he said that daily he conferred with men of both factions of his party and that the chasm is constantly widen ing and the bitterness daily increas- ing. He closed this way: Tt looks like your nartv is coming to its senses at last and if you have the sagacity to nominate Harmon he will sweep the country cleaner than Grover Cleveland did in 1892
 For years we heard a deal about the reorganization of the democratic party. Now 1t is the c. O. P. that
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

Everybody knows that it was stout Balboa that Hunt had in mind: but this name of three syllables, could not be squeezed into the metrical foot, and now that 1 think of it. perhaps. it was not a mistake History was sacrificed to poetic measure probably.
 Milton writes of 'the burning mari. vaulted with fire; the beach of that en- famed sea- and forms who lay en- tranced thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Valombrosa." An. what rhetorical uses those infiamed leaves afforded me in the distant past, when aspired to be an orator, and failed. The | red-leaved vale of Valombrosa was a
 vast Inferno; the scarlet leaves jostled
 and tossed by the sweeping winds was
 a dreadful picture of the fiery sea into
 which the star called eWormwood'
 should some day be cast: the universal
 motion of this wild sea of fire suggested
 the restless wrthing of lost souls, while l the ever-fowing brooks symbolized the unceasing roll of the ages. In those days, l now think. my sermons were as cruel as they were crude. There are no such autumna leaves in vallombrosa as would suggest a sea of fire. The trees for the most part are pines. and their leaves are the tenuous pine e-needes, which, as we all know, fall but scantily in autumn
 Sir Walter Scott bends the facts of history to his own sweet will, or brushes them aside and ignores them at his pleasure. This statement may be ver- fled by any reader of his novels and TO- mances. One of the least of his mistakes, and this does actually seem to be a mis- take, occurs in the romance of Quentin Outward. An important and conspicuous character in the story. as my reader will remember. is the bishop Of Liege, Louis de Bourbon, who was suddenly murdered by De la Marck. Sir Walter makes the bishop an old man: whereas, during the unfolding of the story he was only IS years old. according to the historians.
 Yet. when Sir Walter comes to explain Gin note) the time of the death of the bishop, he says, that he has "antedated the time by 15 years" Thus he makes the bishop old when he was young and younger by 15 years at the time of his death than he had been in his life.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

but who today would try to keep a sick man from the happiness that Dick ems, or any other decent humorist could bring him?s We do not take our re- ligion quite so sadly as the English century. I think we can fairly say that to modern men God Is so much more of a friend as He Is less of an ogre than to the people of yesterday. And tho meaning of that word scripture is a little more elastic to us than it was to them. Sunday reading is not all of Young's Might Thoughts" or Hervey's ''Meditations Among the Tombs." Rev erend doctors of divinity write charm the Ttragedians and-shall I say it-- of the famous comedians of the past and present.
 How much of this alleviation of our congenital lugubrioushess is due to Charles Dickens? Surely much, very much indeed.
 Dickens was born less than three yeats after Gladstone There was a picture in my childhood's home, The Empty Chair at Gad's Hill," and the date, 1870. There was the study. the lamp, the chair; but he who had made them fountain of joy to unborn mill lions was gone, gone in the early sum mer of that fateful year. Not yet an old man, almost in the full tide of a great productive capacity and working power, he had turned from magic to the Last Reality, and strong, reticent men did not scruple to shed tears
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

erature The class was studying Shakes
 peare's "As You Like It," and came upon
 the lines:
 And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
 Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
 Sermons in stones, and good in every thing"
 Said the iprofessor: "Shentlemen, dis is
 one bad translation. De poet wrote, "Und dis our life finds human tongues
 in public haunts where trees grow, dat is, in parks; sermons is found in books, and stones in running brooks, as everybody know"
 | Lord Bacon made many mistakes in his various works. and remarkable to re-
 late, the Identical mistakes are often | found in the plays of Shakespeare. It is
 not my purpose to explain the coinci- dence I leave this to the reader. Lord l Bacon speaks of "the king in a hive of
 bees" Doubtless he got his idea from l Virgil. who, in Georgies, ", says the
 bees have king. Strange to say, in
 King Henry V, we find the same state
 ment of the bees: They have a king
 Everybody now knows that bees have no king. In 'The Advancement of Learn ing Bacon makes this mistake: "Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be re- garded wherein he saith that young men
 are no fit auditors of moral philosophy" It was not moral philosophy of which Aristotle said this. It was political phil osophy. Yet the same mistake Is made in "Troilus and Cressida,'' where we
 read: "Young men, whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy The plays of Shakespeare contain many errors There is one, however, charge up to Shakespeares account an error that he never made.
 It is said, that Shakespeare made the awful blunder In "A Winters Tale" of giving a sea-coast to Bohemia: and we are told by certain wise old owls and nu- merous literary Pecksniffs, that, Bohe- mia, as everybody knows. is inland and has no sea shore; therefore, great blum der was made. This criticism is as old as Ben Jonsons fame. Of course, Bo- hemia has no sea shore. have person. ally travelled from one end of the hilly land to the other, and I saw no sea- But
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

remonstrance. Pip. old chap, You'li do your self a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it. Pip"
 What's the matter now?" repeated my sister, more sharply than before.
 If you can cough any trifle on 1t up. Pip, I'd recommend you to do it. said Joe, all aghast. Manners Is man. ners, but still your 'elths your elth.'"
 Then after the exasperated Mrs. Joe has knocked Joes head repeatedly against the wall in the effort to reach the mystery of these remarks, Joe goes on:
 You know, old chap, l Bolted my self when I was your age-frequent- and as a boy I've been among a many Bolters, but l never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ant Bolted dead"
 Poor Pip gets a dose of "tar-water'' but presently carries his purloined pro- visions to the waiting convict. But we, without the tar-water accompaniment have been "Bolting" Dickens at mur- derous rate these many years. Shall we not affix a stamp in every precious volume. an act of contrition and avow- al that so far as the modern con- science is concerned. It's mercy 1t ain't Bolted dead" We owe our thanks to the Dickens Society, whose eminent names are the best conceivable guar antee that the project will be com pleted with good sense and good faith. The Dickens stamp. If you pleasei Yes need A. The evtra three are fer David, and Little Nell and Pip just for Joe's sake.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

WYE are all human, which explains w many things. Among other
 W things thus explained is the is human, runs the old saw which had its rise in the long ago, and is as true in these days of advanced culture as it was when fewer advantages were afforded the race. Mistakes are common to kings and peasants, to the literate and illt- crate, to writers and to readers, and to geniuses as well as to folk of common place abilities.
 Some mistakes afford occasions for laughter and nothing more; such are the mistakes in speech of Mrs. Malaprop, in the Rivals" and pompous old Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothng," and many others in fiction who have their counter parts in actual life. On the other hand there have been mistakes that involved great issues and were followed by un- speakable disasters and indescribable sorrow. There is another class of errors lying between these two. They excite our sense of wonder and curiosity, and we are apt to ask the question. How could such blunder have been made We then go about mentally to analyze the conditions and the state of mind that made the mistake possibility.
 have often thought as have others, that James C. Blaine when a candidate for the presidency of the United States, was defeated by man of his own party and himself The man of his own party was a minister the less ministers have to do with politics the better) who. at g gathering of national importance hoped that Blaine would defeat the democratic party, composed of rum, Romanism and rebellion" It was the death knell of Blaine. It was worse than a crime; it was blunder." But it gave Blaine the opportunity of his life. Had he not made the mistake of silence; had he only re- proved the minister and said, You sir have permitted your religious bigotry and your sectional hatred to form your alliter- ative sentence with which I have no slm- pathy,' Blaine might have saved himself But the blunder of the minister was fol- lowed by the blunder of Blaine and all was lost.
 The incident just related reminds me of one that occurred long ago, in which
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15

t<TNxCEPT man be born again he
 cannot see the kingdom of
 - God'-John 3:3 Peter tells us in one of his letters that Paul had writ ten some things which were hard to be understood. The remark is true also of some other portions of scripture. The subject before us Is one which involves difficulties It may be asked. Why dis cuss 1t then? Why not confine yourself to things which are simple, and which we can all understand"
 To these questions. plausible as they may seem to be, there are two very sat isfactory replies. First: Nobody ever be- comes educated who never grapples with difficulties. If you keep your boy al ways coming over his A C's he will never be educated He must have hard lessons or his mind will never be de- veloped.
 The distinction usually made between simple subjects and difficult ones is often, nay generally, distinction based upon a superficial view of the subjects compared The real difference between what is called simple subject and what is called "diffcult one is that in the one the difficulty Is apparent on the surface; and in the other 1t does not appear until we look beneath the surface. For instance: