The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-07-21
CHAPTER v.

bODu lTltuuS WIN GuHCu GONett anu
Charlie McClay. That is a great
verse. I swear that don't know any
man, not even Ashland Beckett, who
cares for anything in comparison with
the love or affection of some woman
or other. But now that I have writ
ten that down it seems to me lie.
Now II seems to me that I like Ber-
rell better than anybody or anything.
Don't you have moods, when one
thing seems true; and later another
seems true?
Berrell has a beautiful soul. He
was the most loyal person in ITALIA
hassee. not even excepting Mr.. Ny
ers, the lawyer. whom I have picked
out to worship.
remember a walk we took one
moonlight night. The most beautiful
spot. perhaps. in the universe, that is
away from the sea. is at the south
west corner of Mr.. George Lewis
residence as one faces east or south
east when the moon is up and is full
and there are no clouds. There I
stood with Berrell He was the one
who stopped me. And I knew as
felt that vague constraint which per-
feet beauty afflicts the soul, the beau
ty of the immortal evening glittering
over the happy town in the most
beautiful part Of the fairest continent
Of probably the only inhabited star
from one end of the milky way to the
other Eve are in the milky way, re-
member), that it were good to live
forever in such company.
Berrell is socialist. His doctrine
seems a trife strained in the ITALIA
hassee country, in Tallahassee.
Berrell is a newspaper reporter
whom God intended for me to meet at
Tallahassee, so that my soul might
lean on the shoulder of BerrelI when
| was tired after q struggle to take
the stand I sought, as lawyer in the
legislature for the Ideal
The most significant thing at the
legislature was Berrell. If you were
blue jay mother contentedly sitting
in your nest in the top of an old oak
tree. and you occasionally felt a sue
cession of rhythmic jars that were
the strokes of an axe which was, lick
by lick, cutting into the oak tree, the
man at the axe intending that the
whole tree should come down and
give way to a different kind of tree,
guess you in the head of that blue jay
would contentedly hatch on without
thinking of the cause of the jars.
Now, the practice of Berrell in Tai
lahassee was one of those jars. A
powerful axeman is swinging a sharp
axe into the trunk of the oak tree,
his idea being to cut down growth
which, the rings on the tree will
show, is probably 100000 years old,
probably a million years; for its seed
may be in the parent nebula.
Poverty is that axeman.
Berrell has seen the bread lines in
cities; he has seen the daughters of
God and co-heirs of eternity with Je-
sus Christ picking scraps out of gar
bage heaps because they were starv-
ing to death, this in cities richer than
Babylon, the home of Rockefeller, and
the place where at an expense of ten
or twenty million dollars a Christian
church is being built. He showed me
a story he had written abort an act
ual Casa fellow who was depected-
in it because he was starving, when
the near-suicide was sandbagged by q
man robber who was starving.
Sometimes / think the axeman
hacking into the trunk OF our social
system is Cod. But there is no dan
ger of my being a socialist tilI>it gets
to be the band-wagon. II that ever
happens l will probably point to this
chapter to prove that I was a char
ter member o, you politician! Ber-
rell didn't seem to me as great as
think l am. But he seemed very
great l wish l could introduce you
to Berrell l brought him to Apa-
lachicola. He said it reminded him of
quaint fishing village on the coast
of Maine, or some sucn place. He
said it was the loveliest town in Flor
ida. The hull of the boat Captain
Romano is still building. and has
been building for the past seven or
eight years, struck him as the symbol
of the town. Buzzett's drug store,
which it took us ninety years to get
rich enough to build. this lovely store
took his eye. took him around
town in buggy with John and sister.
He almost converted me to social
ism: but the charm of this Il am back
in Apalachicola here) delightful town
where there is poverty but probably