The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-01-19


marvellous instrument to make earthly
existence more pleasant no promulga-
tion of truth of science by means of
which disease might be eradicated, or
iof "A doctrine, no publication of fiction
history, poem or song, no birth of mil
Itary genius. no declaration of terrible
war-nothing of the future can be more
startling or more epochal than those
things which have happened since the
birth of Howell.
Why then is not the mighty loneli-
ness of the globe trotter the inheri-
tance of the aged? Why is 1t that
Howell still lives other than mere
physical life? Why does he rejoice in
the sunshine and in the day, why in
the laughter of the children and the
song of the birds, in the flowers and
the trees and the landscape, In his
friends in the passersby and the rural
stories which they stop to tell?
For life is old to him who has grown
old with the world. When first his ewes
beheld the light Of day, the tallest
building in America was of second
story There We're no steamboats, ply
ing the rivers, no massive vessels cross
ing the Atlantic in a week; no steam
engines pushing their way over the
prairies and connecting the extremi-
tles OF the country with an easy span;
no wires stretched across the universe
| by means of which a sentence can race
today in trice from city to city. state
to state, and under the waters to for
| eign climes; no wires bearing the voice
of man, plainly for hundreds and hun
dreds of miles; no street cars humming
| their courses through the crowded
thoroughfares of cities and over the
hills and far away; no instrument
which above the seas could reach uu
and pluck from the air the message
which, thousand miles away, was
turned free as if carrier pigeon with
none to guide; no lights, which at an
Ihour, burst in brilliance without the
sound of the mechanics touch. or the
sight of his hand. there were none of
these when Howell came into the
world. And today. they are every
iwhere and so accus toned has man be-
come, that he discusses them no more
than If they were the air he breathes
or the skies which stretch above him
And in an hundred yearsi
| Napoleon's martial tread jars the very
heart of Europe. the guns of Waterloo
thunder, and the Isle OF Elba, the silent.
fearful rock of st. Helena, the parlia-
ments of the world in fearful wran..l,
and the armies OF the world in dreadful
conflict; Lee and jackson and Grant and
Meade at the head of bleeding battalions
| in America; the noise of battle and the
| roar of musketry, the shout of men. ana
the tears of women and children; great
diplomats and Politicians shaping en-
pires. Gladstone, Bismarck Webster
Clay, Talleyrani, Disrae,i Lincoln; Hugo
writing Les Miserables," and Dickens
his humble tales which have touched the
hearts of tens Of thousands, and Scott and
| Thackery and Hawthorne: the gentle Ten
nyson with his "ldylls of the King" and
Shelley, Keats, Southey. Browning,
Wordsworth, Burns, More, and the great
| est, Byron; Chateaubriand, Noltaire de
Stael, de Maupassant, the story teller, and
| Edgar Allen Poe.
| In an hundred years!
| The world has moved: the germ theory
| advanced and sustained, the composition
| of the blood discovered, the use of the
| Xray, the use of hypnotism as curative
agency, the injection of serum, discovery
of the typhus germ, and those which Iro-
duce lockjaw and cholera, electromagnet-
ISM the stethoscope invented, quinine
| first used as a medicine, homeopathy pre-
serted, Jenner puts the ban on smallpox
| and dies. bacteria discovered, and the
! @cillus of tuberculosis, and in "The
| Origin of Species" Darwin presentes his
theory of evolution which still endures
and grows in strength and in its tenure
on the minds of the people
The development of America in an hum
| dred years!
| When Joseph Howell came, the war of
| 1872 was still liz progress and the battle
| of New Orleans had not been fought: the