Tombstone epitaph., 1917-04-22

William Henry Harrison! Vincennes was 11S years old; the man thirty eight There had never been anything commonplace in the existence of place or man. Each had already had a his tory whose telling must move the heart more than with trumpet.
 The face of the man was the face of the soldier-strong. resolute, proud. indomitable. But 1t was likewise the face of the man of the people, the man in whom they trusted for his calm patience and his warm friendli- ness. With what unfaltering devotion had they come to rely on himi And how the men anS women of the wilder ness, seeing that tall and martial fig ure pass, paused to mark that long. grave face. the eyes deep-set under bIshy brows on either side the lengthy. humorous nose, and smiled in love and deep regard in answer to the slow smile of the wide and kindly mouth. What had he not done for theml He was a warm admIrer of the democratic Jefferson and he was an aristocrat of the new territory. Steeped In the classic scholarship of the Old Dominion, the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, at eighteen he had chosen to leave be- hind him the culture of the older states and to plunge into the rude but generous wilderness. At twenty-eight he was governor of the Indiana terri tory. At thirty, master of an empire | of 15O acres, ruler over a prov Ince twice as large as England and Ireland, larger, indeed, than all of France.
 Within the ten years following his | appointment as governor, the negotia- | tor, with absolute power, of treaties which added to the new nation fifty millions of acres, a domain large as | England and Scotland combined. At thirty-one, holding in his hand for five months the destinies of a tract of 25O,OO0 square miles, an imperial | province greater than any other one | man ever controlled in the history of the United States, before or since Opposed to him the great protago- mist of the tragic drama of the savage, Tecuunseh. Ruler of five Indian tribes, master mind of the great Indian con- federacy of another score of tribes. Chief of 5000 warriors, ranging over 100000 miles of territory. Harrison had policed the same terri tory with exactly twenty backwoods- men, Twenty men to guard an empire. | They threaded their ways through the wilderness from St. Louis to De troit They reported to him at Win cennes.
 On this enormous stage the curtain is about to be lifted on the titanic duel of the West.
  The group of men, lolling in the shadows by the Jefferson house, began to speak Of the latest dispatches from the East. News had just come that the younger Wellesley had driven Mas | sena's French columns off the field of Fuentes-de-Onoro, adding to the lau- rels gained at Talavera and Busaco. Napoleon was beginning to wonder at this Englishman. The Little Corpo- ral himself was snarling at the Rus sten bear; the White Car was dis OOeying his commands to starve the trade of England by closing The ports of the Continent. England, diiven to l desperation, was seizing American sea- men on the pretext that they were Englishmen, and forcing them to serve against the French; and still the gov ernment at Washington kept up its endless attempts to stop these insults by words, words, words.
 The little group of Westerners un- der the stars of the wilderness felt themselves hopelessly remote from the world of leadership; their affairs seemed petty and narrow. David Lar renee alone, gazing silently over the broad prairies, misty under the newly risen moon, and remembering the crowded cities of his native England, suddenly saw how great a prize the ample lands would be to her and saw as in e vision of what mighty stature were these backwoodsmen who held the land for America.
 | The feeling of apprehension which had been growing all summer seemed to have reached an uncomfortable pitch. It was inevitable that something should happen.
 In the skies of early September a comet gleamed, a miraculous portent
 But nothing happened.
 The men and women continued their speculations as to TecuT.eh's where. abouts and intentions. They invented new theories each hour and every other hour they turned old theories over and over till they were thread bare and people got tired of hearing