The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-06

number Of day-long loafers. light
 shower was falling but the Club did not seem to be talkative as usual. The Sheriff was reading Who's Who, and
 Why" in the Saturday Evening Post, when he put down the Magazine. and
 broke the silence with the following:-
 of the fellow who writes list of
 tle Great Men of all Time leaves out
 Henry J. Willingham, of Elmore, the
 Superintendent of Education, he will
 have to settle with me. I shall take 1t
 as personal insult and will jamb that one-horse historian down into the
 sidewalk" fercely remarked the sher- iff pulling, in belligerent way, at his
 dropping mustache.
 Henry Jay is entitled to a whole
 side in the Hall of Fape, and I am fgoing to see that he aint swindled out
 of 1t. Newspapers are full of pictures
 of baseball players, football heroes with scrambled hair. congressmen. un-. dertakers o-by-four governors, and great criminals, but nary tin-type of
 our own Henry Jay It's rank dscrim- lination-and l am alarmed tired or II. l 'The subject of these remarks se- | lected Sin-klur county Alabama, as
 the proper locality to be born in,-- which didn't injure Sin-Klur none, Tar idifferent-for the chief glory of that l proud old county Is in having produced l the warmest Courthouse fight In h1s- tory the largest amount of hard-boiled eggs. and Henry Jay Willingham. One :! day when this interesting infant was 1 lying fiat of his back in his trundle bed, admiring his tsie-tootsies, and feeling around to see if he had q regu- 1 lar assortment of features, he discov-
 cred large gash in his face, where an | ordinary mouth should have been To-
 ted, and he, then and there. made resolve that. come what might, he | would make that chasm useful to him | in his life work. Carrying this Grand Canyon, and his worldly effects, over | to the unfettered county of Clay. he be- gan new and better life;i his whole taxable assets consisting of Blue 1 back Speller, seven hound pups, and a razor that was brought over by Sebas | tien Cabot. when he discovered Nova Scotia, in 1497. Henry was not Plu- | tocrat he was not Midas. he was not a John D--not by dams height. If | salt had been two cents barrel Henry couldn't have bought enough to pickle | d jaybrd, in those by-gone days those dog gone days.
 He accumulated poverty. but while he wore no clothes to speak of. he did wear a smile as wide as that delta in his face could make it. and he taught school, and broke young bulls to blow, until he had a muscle on him like rope walker.
 During the years that Henry jolted learning into the minds of the husky
 boys of Clay county there were several exciting occurrences, the stars fell, there was a cyclone or two. a comet ap- peared, the Brewer and Thompson con- gressional race came off. an earthquake shook 'em up a few, the Back Tax Com
 missioner raised tax values, and a Horse-swapper's convention met. but none of these were sources of fervid, permanent thrills like Henry teaching a school in Clay. Previously the husky boys of that Mountain county had been in the habit of threshing a school teacher, ducking him thoroughly, and then advising him to emigrate: but Henry made preparations for these lit- tie accidents. He borrowed a good sized wolf-trap, a pair of brass knucks. a bull dog pistol. and he opened school with prayer holding a Bible in one hand, and stout hickory sapling in the other. Regularly for a week, those of the scholars, who were able to walk. disentangled Henry from the hair, and other prominent features of some mus cuar youth whom Henry had walloped into a state of pulp. He terrorized the smaller scholars by threatening to pin their ears back, and swallow them whoe-one look at the Assures in Hen ry's face convinced the stoutest-hearted kid that he could do it.
 Tn months time Wednesday | night prayer meeting was an exciting scene as compared to Henrys school, | and the cause of Education began to i spread in Clay, equal to butter on hot | batter cakes Fillmore county heard of it and that country yearned for Henry | There wasn't nothing much in Fillmore | county except the head of navigation, | seed ticks. and the. penitentiary, so they needed Henry down there, as | great popular attraction. The River l cuts yawning gulf through the noun | tain at Wetumpka, and Henry settled l there because the gorge at that place re- sembled the cleft in his face. He settled | the naughty boys of that county in a | few shakes of sheeps tail. Every | body liked him. When Henry smiled 1t | was like fog lifting out of a deep val | ley. The State of Alabama demanded | of Henry that he go up head in the Ed | ucational department. and today he is | sitting with his feet up on hls desk, in | the Mausoleum at Montgomery, eating | goobers by the shovelfull, and spread ing that gash in his face whenever | pay day rolls around I tell you, fel- | lows. Henry J. Willingham is a Lally- paloozer.--he is a product of our own | soil, and he can handle the gas faster | than a Gasoline Engine can pun. O he's | d Daisy!" and the Sheriff blew his nose. violently, paused for breath, and looked | around with a glare as if he dared any l man to dispute his assertion.
 "Er-Yes." said the Country School | Teacher. Clay county, St Clair and Elmore are sorter snuggled up against | the hills but they are all bully, good 1 counties. Somehow there is a charm l about living on the edges of these foot hlls--a charm never shaken off. The old story of the fellows who got to the | land of the Lotus Eaters. and just | couldn't ever leave it. is verified here in Alabama, every day. I once knew n | couple who left a small village in the | green hills of Vermont. and came to Alabama in their young married days. | and went to work to make fortune, | but they always said just as soon as the fortune was made they would go back Home. They could never be ham py among the pines and honeysuckle of their adopted state-dear old Vermont was the place for them!-if they could | once more get back to the snows, and | the granite hills of their blessed old home, there wouldn't be another thing on earth to wish for In twenty years they found that they were rich and