The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1915-03-25
PAGE EIGHT
A Most Interesting Letter About
Old TimpS
Old Times.


My mind wanders back to old times and scenes.
! born your home and old McDufiey
county has warm spot in my heart. Although
1t has been many years since / and met the
people, at time could claim kin to large
portiSn Of its people, but in tie hustle of the
moving tines have drifted away from my birth
place and boyhOod home, and friends, and have
met and amalgamated with different people.
Some of the old timers I RECALL JAMES WILL
SON the man who, when my father returned from
the civil war, a manned and broken product of
the war; took him to his then scanti1y filled safe
and opened it and said: "Smith haven't much
left, but long it lasts L will you don't
want for anything" I have carried Jim Wilson'S
image in my mind all these years. and the big
white house on the hill; how it and it's inmates
of 1875 have had special place in my memory
and will SO long l live.
JORDAN WHITE, the man who published the
first newspaper I saw whose paper
into my home for twenty years. The last time
/ ever saw him he was on the night express going
back to Thomson" He gave up the editorship
of daily newspaper to go back he said, to
where he belonged the child of his brain-hs
McDUFFIE JOURNAL.
Time will not allow me to mention all, but
there are many more I could recall whose lives
seem to me stood out big and noble. quite
small them hut l was not too small to remember
and carry with me through all the years the good
traits and brOtherly feeling that shown and
lived by those who came in contact with in my
childhood days, and I never pass through that
old town I do not look out on those old scenes
with reverence, and there comes to feeling
For there in twelve miles Of Thomson, in her
childhood home, lies my mother, with all her
family. Worn out and layed to rest at a time
when life should have been sweetest to her.
see her now as she toiled and labored that her
little ones might have the actual necessities of
life, and at the age Of A, worn and broken, she
gave up the fight. There within few miles,
in lone grave, sleeps the father with two of his
children, who after many weary years of toll,
worn out and disabled and discouraged, he took
his own life and that of two of his own flesh and
blood. One Of those bore your name | have
never seen the spot since the day put them
there but in my minds eye 1 it every day
My first political experience was aroused by you
in the Coquitt-NorwoOd campaign. I had
vote at that time, but I could read and heard one
of your speeches at Norwood, Ca, where you
told the story of the Sunday-school boy and the
peckerwOOd.
years old of the number who cast
vote for you in Richmond county to put Geo. T.
Barnes out Of politics, and later J. c. c. Black
You still have my best wishes and admiration,
even though l had never had tie to draw on.
But, Mr.. Watson, I have drifted not only away
from my boyhood home, but from any political
faith, l stood for much political abuse and
persecution on account Of my first political beliefs
and principles.
I now have found that I meet the same sneering
and persecution as when I was one of the WOOL
hat boys.
Whatever I am charge to you. You started
thinking. My experience and what | have
seen has led me on, and l see promise in the
old political parties as I have both in full
power at least twice. and if there is any difference
in the two parties l fail to see it.
I note what you have had to say against the
Socialist but / can't bring myself to believe you
really believe what you say against them.
hear preachers say the same things you have
said, and have put the question to them singly
and had them to admit the whole teachings of
Socialism was just and would be bound to bring
better conditions of living, but they still persist,
when taken a whole, that the Socialist are
awful bad. / can more help being Socialist
than l could help being a populst at one time.
In fact when I was a Populist l began what