Brutality is a synonym for fun. So says the savage whilst gloating over the agonies of his victim. So thought and thinks Dante's demons in Inferno, as they pile on the fagots for fresh arrivals in that hope-left region. It passes belief that any, save creatures of this debased and abnormal type, could take delight in suffering, and, least of all, in those of their own kind. Recent developments, however, in our two “national nurseries” for soldiers and seamen forces the reluctant conclusion that innate propensity in the baser sort or inflicting pain when solely a one-sided game is not modified by fortuitous station or a little superficial culture. The brutish instinct of the son of Aurelius, whose chief delight on the verge of manhood was to torture flies, naturally paved the way as his great fathers foresaw in his successor, to Commodus, “the execrable,” torturer of men. As easy the transition from the torturer of “plebes” to the tyrant of peoples, when opportunity places it in his power. Eliminate the whole cowardly, detestable brood as fast as the vile nature is developed.

Fifty years ago, says an old man, the older cadets would have a little harmless sport out of the newcomer by jest, gibe, or harmless boyish pranks, rarely, if ever, transcending the gentleman's bound of courage, decency, and inborn gentility. There was a tradition then, still current on “The Point,” old Senex continues, which may have had much to do with putting a curb on vulgar, upstart pretension. But to the story, be it purely apochryphal or mostly true, and the last is my diagnosis, having ever believed that “the boy is father of the man.” The tale is told as it was told at the time, half a century ago.

Back in the “twenties,” so the tradition runneth, quoth “Senex,” there came to the academy a stalwart son of Kentucky, country born and country bred was he, but high-strung and self-reliant. Modest and reserved he was by high home culture and gentlemanly instinct, but punctilious to a hair's breadth in questions involving his inherent rights. Of course the lad was unknown to fame. The world had never heard of him up to that day. It has heard of him ever since, and will continue to hear whilst fame has tongue and men have ears.

On the night after his arrival he was waited upon by a visiting squad of soldier cadets on a little “fun” intent. Soon one of his visitors passed him the lie, for specific purpose of provoking excuse for ulterior proceedings. He got it, for the next moment he was in a recumbent position from a blow between the eyes. Of course, such an unheard of presumption, a plebe striking an older cadet, could not be atoned except in blood. Such the predicate laid down by outraged dignity, to which the offender was more than acquiescent.

“Yes,” was the cool reply, “I'll fight your whole posse in detail, in any way you may elect, if you will only promise ‘fair play.’”

With both sides so very accommodating, of course the preliminaries were soon arranged.

Place, Kosciuske's garden. Time, just after reveille in the morning. Weapons, muskets loaded with fifteen buckshot each. Distance, fifteen paces.

One of the young gentlemen kindly voluntered to act as the plebe's second. They met according to agreement, and at the first fire the older classman fell. The younger proceeded at once to reload his own gun with the deliberation and nonchalance of a juvenile rabbit hunter.

“What are you doing, Plebe?” Don't you see you have killed your man?” exclaimed his “friend,” in evident alarm.

“Well, if he is dead, a little more killing won't do him any hurt,” was the calm reply. “Wake up your dead friend and tell him for me he had better proceed to do what I am doing, for I'm resolved to have another shot or two before this funny party breaks up. Here are three honest cartridges, not firecrackers. Select one for your dead friend, and another for yourself. I will keep the third. All three as well as the one in my gun barrel are charged precisely alike. Of this you must take my word, but rest assured there's lead in each. Go and report what you have heard, and let me know tile decision of yourself and friends.”

There was a hurried interchange of opinion in that mimic “council of war” when that plebe's mandate for a plebiscite became known. The story runs that the “dead man” evinced more vitality and a more pacific spirit than any other in that conclave of fun-seekers and merry-makers. They do say that after he came to life he talked with a fluency and volubility until then dormant in advocacy of acquiescing in the bullheaded plebe's demands. They do say, too, that he had a most eloquent seconder in the late “second” of the second party of the second part.

“What do you demand?” was the answer brought back by the messenger.

“An ample apology from each and all of you for your ungentlemanly treatment, and a promise to abstain from such in the future.”

“I am authorized to say that such demand will be complied with by all of us,” was the prompt rejoinder.

For once the hazers were hazed, and innate cruelty taught a lesson which was borne in mind for many a day thereafter.

History tells of another plebe in the dim bygone who, single-handed, “held the bridge” against advancing hordes of normal brutality. Who will say that the incident mentioned does not entitle the later plebe to kindred plane with that since held by “the brave Horatius?” The sportsman's intuition on discharge told the boy that there was only a blank cartridge in his gun, and missing his target, a pair of legs, at short range settled it beyond doubt, hence his resolve to try “phlebotomy” as a curative for cowardly practical joking. It has been seen how it worked.

It may be asked whence the obvious and admitted degeneracy in the tone and esprit de corps of the Military Academy of late years.

“Fifty years ago,” continued Senex, “the West Point corps of cadets was the most truthful, chivalrous, high-toned body of young gentlemen that could be found in the world. Truth, courage, regard for the rights of others, especially the weaker—in a word, inborn and cultivated manhood—developed men, heroes, and gentlemen, surpassing for the time of its brief existence any other school that the world had known in that regard. In those halcyon days; I had a cadet friend (one of many) to whom I was deeply attached until the inception of the war between the States, he espousing the Northern and I the Southern side of the great question at issue. The estrangement thus produced continued for many years thereafter, when by mutual consent we met again on the old tramping-ground. War questions were, by tacit understanding, ignored, and we were in our middle manhood—boys again—roaming over familiar scenes and recalling old friends and incidents of the early manhood days. He had been a ripe and ready scholar, and graduated near the head of his class and been a close student ever since. As a consequence, almost on emerging from the section room he had been called to fill one of the most important chairs in the academic staff, and he filled it creditably. In one of our turns about evening parade, I stopped and put this direct question to him:

“‘Tell me, amigo mio' whether the same high sense of honor pervades that line that did in our day, when the slightest suspicion of prevarication or falsehood, even to avoid suspension or dismissal, would consign the culprit to the category of ‘the dogs,’ Anglice, ‘social pariahs?’

“His answer follows, in effect: ‘It grieves me, old fellow, to tell you no; so far from it, indeed, that a bare-faced lie on lesser inducement entails but little loss of caste among his fellows.’

“‘To what do you ascribe this woeful deterioration?’ was the next query.

“‘Partly to the demoralizing results of war, but more to the loss of a typical sectional equipoise as counter-balance.’

“Be his diagnosis of ‘cause’ correct or otherwise, nevertheless, conceding the predicate, and it is easy to account for the continued downward grade culminating in the abyss of infamy for the culprits now being developed.”

Macauley asserts that lying is common to all inferior races, and heaven-given to protect themselves against a superior race. If so it be, what more natural than the transition to the individual man of like base instinct from liar to torturer. The Hottentot, the Indian, and the “heathen Chinese” are masters of each accomplishment. The man with a white hide rarely proves a laggard in any field of competition on which his ambition prompts him to enter.

The following address on President Jefferson Davis was delivered before the young people of Fayetteville on the ninety- fifth anniversary of Mr. Davis' birthday, by Colonel Wharton J. Green. It was published in the Fayetteville Observer by request of J. E. B. Stuart chapter Daughters of the Confederacy, and a copy has been sent to The Observer with a request for its reproduction in the columns of this paper.

“My young friends, and old friends, too, pardon a few prefatory remarks, and I will tell you in brief why we are here to-day to honor the memory of ex-President Jefferson Davis, and to make it plain, you have only to be told what manner of man he was too that we honor him because he first honored us. He was an earnest man, and as old Tom Carlyle tells us, no other kind of men ever achieve anything fit to live or worthy to survive in this world. He was a studious, a reflective, a God-fearing man, ever tenacious of his own rights and those of his people, but ever ready to concede as much to others, which constituted him a just man. He was a typical and representative man of a class embodying the grandest civilization and most finished society that the world contained, now fast becoming extinct, and which when it does, the world can never know it's like again. Such was the “old South,” which witlings of “the new” are prone to deride as having been deficient in “Push” and appreciation of material or commercial prosperity. Correct they are, for that class was so old fogy as to have a marked preference for sterling, old-fashioned gentility over the garish substitute that has come to the front under the effulgent new order of things subsequently. This man was an illustration of the first, the purse-proud aristocracy of the last. Like the old Greek, he did not know how to play the lute or dance the Pyrrhic (or the “german” either), but he knew how to make a small State great, for he was of a race that turned out men, “high-minded men,” and not mere physical and intellectual dwarfings, or moneyed mountebanks.

He came of a race of modest mein, but assertive manhood, one that knew it's rights, and knowing, dared maintain. One that evolved heroes, sages, statesmen, and grandest of all gentlemen, in more prolific outcrop than any other of like time and count has ever done or will do, henceforth and forever. I repeat, after mature deliberation and due reflection, and after being a close and untiring student of history through life, that this man, Jefferson Davis, first and only President of a short lived but immortal Republic, when history comes to be written, as it should be, will loom up as one of the world's grandest characters, the peer of Aurelius, Washington and Lee (grandest triumvirate that the world has known). Can praise or appreciation go higher? From the day he mounted his pony, as a little lad of seven years old to ride through three great States to matriculate in his first public boarding school, he showed the stuff that was in him. Thence on to the end of his glorious and most eventful life, if he ever fell short or proved derelict in any duty devolving upon him, after filling the highest positions under two great governments; and one, the most trying and exacting ever occupied by mortal man I cannot recall it. Did ever man go to render his final account with such a balance sheet as that before? If so, close historical research has failed to bring it under my eye. He was never over elated by success, and for near three score years, he had his full allowance of it nor was he ever unduly depressed by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and in his declining years, he seemed to be a favorite target for the shafts of the fickle jade. He received the praise and plaudits of the impartial world with same sublime poise and ‘equanimity,’ that he did the gnat stings of a petty tyrant, whose chiefest delight was to inflict the torture that he could upon his helpless victim. See latent retort of scorn:

This withering scorn of one of the immortal poets in speaking of a low, base, depraved nature, might be supposed to have been his thought whilst undergoing the instinctive brutality of this crawling creature. And here comes in the reason for selecting this spot as the place of our meeting. On an invalid couch and within sound of my voice lies a noble sick lady. For over twenty years she has hardly left that bed of suffering for a day at a time. Her admiration and veneration for this world hero surpasses that of any that I have ever known, except my own. When refused and denied by his resplendent jailor the commonest necessaries and comforts of life, even down to a sufficiency of bedding, after that solace of an old soldier, his pipe, had been taken away from him, it occurred to this truly good woman that a thick, warm quilt might lessen his sufferings, and thereupon she made one and sent it to him post-haste. Her unpretentious life has been replete with beautiful little benefactions and Christian charities, but none has reached the standard of this. I am prepared to believe on the glass of cold water basis that for this one good act alone, when she knocks at the golden gates, there will be but little question of admission on the part of the gate-keeper. Never was gift more thankfully received, as evinced in his loving inquiries about the donor on the occasion of my last visit to him, six weeks before his death. Young ladies, if I had been born of your sex and hers I would rather have been the maker and giver of that bed-spread to that poor, suffering, but immortal man, than any Zenobia, Cleopatra or Semiramis who has figured in history. Hence, although I had about resolved never to try and speak in public again; nevertheless when her request came for me to do so on this occasion, it wasn't in me to say nay. And so Mrs. Jessie K. Kyle is solely responsible for the infliction you will undergo to-day. And yet mock-modesty does not forbid the remark that, in some respects few living men are better suited to the task. :Few knew him better or longer, and none honored and revered him more in life and death. Truly can I say of him what I published of another in The Boston Herald, in a letter written from Rome some five and forty years ago. It was the spontaneous outburst of a young patriot of demoniac fury about to burst over his own beloved land: “To-day we stood on the spot where stood the bridge defended by ‘The Cocles’ in the brave days of Rome. Well do I recall the day, when as an unsophisticated country school boy I first perused the enchanting story, and I thought then, as I think now, that I would rather have been that bold plebian with naught to commend him of which we are aware, save a strong arm, a stout heart, and a free, unfettered spirit, backed by a patriotism paramount to every other consideration, than all of the Alexanders and Attilas, Totilas and Tamerlanes, Cæsars and Bonapartes, who have been the curse of their kind, combined and consolidated in one grand legitimate cut-throat. That was penned by a mere boy near a half a century bygone. Let him substitute the identity of another Horatius, another for the captain of the gate, a Cocles for a Cocles (blind of one eye), or, to make it plain, Jefferson Davis for Horatius, and by my conscience I stick to what was then uttered. Yea, verily, rather be that frail, half-blind man, the later on “Captain of the Gate,” and “Holder of the Bridge,” at times like his prototype of antiquity, almost single-handed, and ever with an “eye single” to his high and holy trust, than the whole aggregation of great captains only, have reddened the earth solely for selfish aim and greed of gain. My last interviews with this superbest of men that I have ever known, and I am prepared to believe that the world has ever known, came on invitation to visit him, only six or eight weeks before he left us. Perhaps the invitation was not accepted by return of mail, and I didn't put in an appearance at “Beauvoir” as fast as steam would take me. But such inference is improbable, and not true to the record. The three or four days passed in that charming abode are amongst the most delightful in recall through a somewhat eventful life. The great man was there in his beautiful, simple, every-day domestic life, and so was his devoted wife, and loving and most lovable daughter, “Our Winnie,” who bore before and thence on the proudest title ever worn by woman, save one, and wore it with honor and without reproach, a title transcending even that of queenly Cornelia, of “daughter of the Scipios and mother of the Gracchi,” her throne far outshining those of “Ind or Orme,” or that of any other Oriental sultana or imperial princess of Rome, for whilst they might sit on one of ivory and gold “the Daughter of the Confederacy” had her's enshrined in the hearts of heroes and the wives and daughters of heroes. John Gordon, I thank you for the soubriquet, so worthily and appropriately bestowed on this fascinating young woman. Let none other ever carry it.

In the welcome of this historic but unpretentious family, the head of which was a hero in three wars, and the architect or formulator of the most phenomenal republic of all times, were passed three of the happiest and best improved days of my life. From the worthiest of the disciples of the great Calhoun, a little teaching could but come to a would-be disciple of his, in our little daily talks. A single recital of one incident, to illustrate his wonderful nerve, power of endurance and celerty of thought and grasp, is here reproduced: “After the Rifles had repulsed the attack of the Lancers, it soon became obvious that we would soon have to receive another charge in overwhelming force (Buena Vista), and I realized that a change of line of battle was all important. Shortly after the necessary order was issued, and in process of execution, we came suddenly on a gulch or chasm, apparently about fifteen or twenty feet across, and of about the same depth, and sides almost precipitous. There was no chance to flank it in time for the occasion, and so it had to be crossed. I had to clear it en volt, a leap. Ordinarily, I would have had confidence in my mount to clear it, for he was of blood and mettle. But that day I had but one spur available. But crossed it had to be, so giving orders for the command to scramble down and up the side as best they could, I went back some fifty yards for purchase or impetus, and went for it at full tilt and cleared it in fine style. In the instant that I was in the air, I saw beneath a four-mule team with the driver in the agonies of death. A minute later, my men were crawling up the bank and we were soon in line and prepared to receive our visitors in a proper manner. The old soldier's face lit up with the fire of youth and old-time conflict as he told the story, and there was no brag or bravado in the recital. Behold the heroic man in the supreme moment of decision before taking that perilous vault on the success of which hinged the issue of the day and the fate of an army. This is the man whom scullions would fain degrade by the pusilanimous spite of expunging his name from national monuments and memorials, which owed their being to his patriotism and genius. A little illustration to show the folly of puny and puerile spite to reverse the reading of history. One day, in strolling through the Dogeana, or Ducal Palace of Venice, I came into the famous gallery of portraits, containing the life likenesses of all the sovereign Ducal of those immortal “Sea Kings,” all save one, which was an empty frame draped in black. On demanding the meaning of my guide, the reply came, “That panel, Senor, is the one for the best known (for, like you, every stranger asks this cause of the vacant space), and many think the most illustrious of the Dogeanic line, that is he who “tamed the Turk,” and curbed Florence, Pisa, Genoa and Amalfi, not to name the new city on the straits with its imperial upstarts of the Palæologi and Commeni stocks! The speaker was a Venetian. Opposite thereto, in the Supreme Court room in Washington, are arranged with like precision as to detail all the Chief Justices of the United States of America, all save one, and yet some there be, and their name is not meagre, who hold and maintain that the aforesaid vacant frame lacks a suitable head in the chiefest of the justiciaries of the antecedent high- sounding cognomen. No! Roger B. Taney and Jefferson Davis are there to stay, as will that of the good old Venetian, Marino Faliero, despite party pique and partisan malevolence, and the expunging chisel or wipeout brush; they are there to stay. Pigmies all bear it in mind that it is an easy thing to do, to efface or obliterate figies of giants. Better let this kind alone, for your puny scaling ladders and expunging tools can never reach the tip of their beard.

The last time that I was brought into contact with him was at his gorgeous funeral, all things considered, perhaps, the most imposing and impressive ever accorded to man, for it was a genuine outgush of feeling from the mighty concourse assembled, estimated as high as one hundred thousand, and everything was conducted in the plainest and simplest manner, as he would have had it, for he loathed vulgar ostentation, as all truly great men do. The mighty procession followed on foot from Virginia's historic capital to quiet Hollywood, where we laid him to rest, in, perhaps, the most beautiful spot in its hallowed domains, overlooking the James from about its highest point. On the march and at the grave, the place of honor was accorded our delegation, just behind the catafalque, and at the head of the grave. His lately penned letter in commendation of their State, written to the Fayetteville committee on the centennial occasion, called for no subordinate place. A brief space thereafter, and some of us helped to place the remains of his lovely, gifted, womanly daughter by his side. Her funeral fell but little short of his—and there they rest, this father and daughter, until the resurrection morn. Never higher type of the two has this world seen. Young gentlemen and ladies, their portraiture is given in brief to arouse imitation and emulation. Time forbids further elaboration. Boys, there was a man, a combination, such as we will never look upon his like again.

You will find the study of his life and character and that of the cause which he embodied, and those of the patriotic heroes who helped to uphold his hands in the hours of trial, more useful and instructive reading than the flashy trash with which the world is now inundated. Of this last class were such men as Lee, and Sidney Johnston, and Jackson and Forrest, and Hampton, and Dick Taylor, and Stuart, and the Hills, and the Lees (Steve and Custis), and half a million of other grand, self-sacrificing, patriotic heroes, some few of whom still linger superflous on the stage, whilst the bulk of them have crossed over the river and are resting in the shade of the trees. Its good reading, young gentlemen.

And, again, from a favorite old volume of long ago (Festus), we read: “He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.” All of this he did. And whilst in the quotation mood let me add another in conclusion. My wife found it in place in a little book of daily devotions the day we took the funeral train at Greensboro, May 30, 1893: “And thus this man died, leaving his death an example of a noble courage and a memorial of virtue, not only unto young men, but unto all his nation.” (2 Macabees, 6th chapter, 3d verse.)

Friends, one and all, let me urge you never to speak of him in the flippant style of New England South-haters as “Jeff Davis.” It comes with bad grace from a Southern tongue. He was either President Davis, or plain, simple Mr. Davis.

My young friends, this is the ninety-fifth birthday of one of the most remarkable men who figure in history, and whose name and fame should be held dear by every one of Southern birth, now, henceforth and forever.

I have been asked, as said, by our dear friend, Mrs. Kyle, who lies on an invalid couch near-by, and who honors his memory almost as much as I do, to tell you a little of what I know this truly good and great man, for both he was, and therein lay his chiefest claim upon our regard. How few fill the bill and honor the “letter of credit” on posterity as he. A truly good and a truly great man in combination! Grandest sight to men or gods it is—a truly good and a truly great man.

The world, according to common repute, has had five great captains by name and roster—Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Frederic, Napoleon. Great soldiers all they were, but not one of them could lay claim to the combination laid down of truly great and good. They lived and died before the days of Lee— the superb, the peerless soldier, who, by common consent of all competent military critics, fills the sixth place, and the needed combination. He, too, my young friends, God be praised, was one of us. But I come not to talk to you of mere soldiers to-day, though no occupation is more worthy or praiseworthy, when followed in a righteous cause, in a righteous way and for the rights of man. No other wars or warriors can be held strictly excusable in the eye of God and men. God be eternally praised, ours was one of that sort, and no cause ever had grander soldiers or more of them in proportion to opposing sides. Sidney Johnston, Lee and Jackson, with Davis as directing head, would sanctify, ennoble and glorify any cause left to the arbitrament of arms. We challenge any single war to match that immaculate quartette of immortals in chief command. Did any war ever have completer type of justification, not to speak of their great lieutenants down and through the rank and file, who knew how to die themselves and to teach others how to die for what they knew to be right?

No, it is not of the Confederate army, but of the civic chief, without whose contriving and controlling head and directing hand, that almost invincible army as it soon came to be considered, could not have been kept afield or afoot for six months, and probably not for sixty days. And yet for four years, under his superb and matchless manipulation, it did and endured more than any other army has ever done, Greek, Roman or English not excepted. Of course, after the formative crisis, it became a case of mutual dependence and support, the one on the other, the executive on the army, the army on the executive. Luckily for both and for the cause, neither rarely fell short in its allotted work. But it is chiefly of the executive, or to be precise, of the presidency, and of him who filled it, that I propose to talk to you to-day. Great soldiers merely have been no rarity in the world, since wholesale throat-cutting first came into vogue. But great men, all-round men, have ever been and will ever continue to be more of a curiosity and a historic world wonder. The great Marlborough, “Little Jack Churchill,” was undoubtedly a great soldier, perhaps until Lee put in an appearance, the greatest of all the English speaking ones of the tribe, but who in the face of his time-serving, self-seeking instincts and proclivities, and easy and ever-shifting political principles, and infidelity to faith and plighted word, would ever think of writing his name in the little book of truly great men. It was, I repeat, for the last named as a professional soldier to complete the combination, and stand forth for all time the model soldier and ideal man. Most fortunate he was in final development, in having for chief, one of kindred mould, and for cause one as immaculate as the untrodden snow. Both in unison were essential to the full make-up of the man. He could never have reached his full stature as commander of the “Tenth Legion” under Cæsar, or of the “Rear Guard” on the great retreat (freely rendered, “panic”) under Napoleon, because, forsooth, his judgment could not have relied on the captain, or his conscience on the cause in either case. But here there was the entente cordiale, the thorough accord all around. See the outcome the grandest outcrop of creation, Davis and Lee, the grandest brace of heroes that ever immortalized any antecedent struggle between the sons of men. Are you not proud, young ladies and gentlemen, that you are of the same race and tribe with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee? If not, you should set to work to correct the defects of neglected education. But to the work in hand, let it be premised, that it was my proud privilege to know them both, and the one whom we are considering, intimately from my boyhood days to that of his death, as numerous letters from him can attest, as well as the bequeathal of his inksand, most valued heirloom in my house. In that acquaintance began, ripened and continued to the end, is the secret of my love, admiration and hero-worship of the man. It has never flagged or grown dimmer, but on the contrary intensifies with each recurring year. My first acquaintance with him began during his first term in Congress, when he was a man of 37 years, and I a boy of fourteen. It is needless to say, there could be no great intimacy between two of our divergent ages, but, boarding at the same house, a Mrs. Potter's, I believe, on Pennsylvania avenue, near Sixth street, and our rooms contiguous. I being the only juvenile in the establishment, (the others being grave Senators and members of Congress,) I naturally saw much of him in his leisure hours. In fact, out of compliance with my father's request, who was his friend, but absent on business, he kept a kind of casual supervisory outlook over me until I was consigned to my college, and he to the colonelcy of the First Mississippi Rifles, in the Mexican war, which he made immortal as well as himself by his superb management. At Buena Vista, it is generally conceded that he saved the day at more than one critical juncture. The general in command, sturdy old Zach Taylor, a little later on, lovingly dubbed “Old Rough and Ready,” realized his obligation to him at once and although connected by closest family tie, had refused to extend him friendly greeting for many years anterior. A well authenticated story has it that without dismounting after battle he rode over to the colonel's tent, who was lying on a pallet with a shattered foot. “Colonel Davis,” he said, “will you deign to take my hand?” Quick came the reply: “More gladly, general, than I ever did anything in my life.” The reconciliation was complete. Girls, would you like a little love story in this connection? Well, you shall have it. Shortly after the cadet was turned into a lieutenant he was sent to the then northwest, to wear the gilt off his epaulets and spurs, and to help catch Black Hawk, the famous Indian warrior, who was making things lively in those parts for the settlers. This was done, and the conquered Indians, including their chief, were prisoners under his care. He subsequently received the thanks of Black Hawk for his courtesy to the conquered. Quotation this last. Observe the difference accorded to prisoners, (though only barbarians), by a gentleman jailor and that received by himself from an inflated, upstart tyrant later on? Having served a long probation as a prisoner of war myself, I was brought in touch with each class, and to draw the line of demarcation between the two, to honor the one and to loathe and despise the other. If it be a sin to put the systematic torturer of our “grand old man” in the contemptuous class, God help me, I can't help it, and perhaps I am not disposed to make an over-strenuous effort in that direction. History tells us of many brutal keepers of illustrious State prisoners. Few, if any there are, whose name and fame I covet less than that of one Simon-the-Cobbler, the torturer unto death of a little boy king, known as the Dauphin, whose only crime was that he was the son of his father and mother, known in history as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were murdered by the insane mob government of that day. The question arose what was to be done with their poor little eight- year-old orphan, then de facto King of France. Murder him they could as they had his parents, but were afraid to for fear of intensifying the horror and indignation of all Europe, already at fever heat. So it was resolved to accomplish the same end by slow, deliberate, systematic cruelty and torture. But where could a creature so base be found as to carry out such a demoniac purpose? It was at that juncture, when true soldiers held back aghast, that this creature, more loathsome than a toad, or vampire, or devil fish, came for name, laterized, as soldier. Ye Powers! for a consideration he would undertake the job. He got it, yes, Simon-the-Cobbler was promoted to be the keeper of a King with the implied, if not expressed, condition, that he was, like the fabled vulture of old, to feed on the vitals of his helpless victim until the vital spark was sped. He complied with his part of the contract with scrupulous exactitude!

The fancy has sometimes come over me, what if you were reduced to the dread alternative of making choice between the Cobbler and another later on whose name, latinized, is Soldier. (Ye Powers eternal what a travesty on nomenclature!) who gladly discharged the same villainous functions; which would you rather be of the two? The question still remains unsettled in my mind, notwithstanding the difference in prominence and position of the jailors.

But to come back to our story: The post to which the young man was assigned was under the command of a bluff old colonel with a charming daughter, who he declared with military emphasis and intonation should never marry in the army. Now that was just what the young lady wanted to do, and what the lieutenant wanted to do likewise. But the colonel was incorrigible, and the young couple, being respectors of parental authority and military mandate, were compelled to put off the nuptial day until the obstacles could be removed or avoided. Two years later he resigned his commission, and deeming now that all rational objection on the part of her father was removed, he hurried to Louisville, met his sweetheart, and the twain, Jefferson Davis and Sarah Knox Taylor, were married at the house of the bride's aunt, a sister of her father, with other near relations on hand to sanction the event by their presence, in July, 1835. All the sensational stories about an elopement are purely fabulous and without foundation. Their married life and happiness was all too short lived, for in three short months he was a widower. She was a sister of the accomplished Lieutent-General Dick Taylor, who, as a major-general in command, won one of the might-have-been decisive victories of the war, at Mansfield, but of which he or rather we were cheated, as at Bull Run and Shiloh and Murfresborough, but supernal incompetency in command after the victories were won, and who afterwards wrote one of the most graphic and interesting books of the war yet penned—“Destruction and Reconstruction.” The sequel of the story has been anticipated in the “make-up” interview between the two on the field of Buena Vista, the older giving a clincher to the renewed bond of friendship with the remark: “I am convinced Jefferson, that Sarah was a better judge of men than her father.” Each of them became a reluctant President later on, both preferring the camp to the cabinet. Their bond of union thence on to the end was that of father and son.

At your bidding I am here to talk to you of two of the grandest men that the world has known. Nor can I imagine a more appropriate beginning than the opening words, on a similar occasion, of the most valued friend whom I have known in life; one whom I loved next to my father. What shall his title be? State Governor, U. S. Senator, Lieutenant-General, or simply that inborn, ingrained, undeviating gentleman? for each and all he was at times, and the last at all times. It is needless to say that his name is Wade Hampton. It is culled from his eloquent address delivered before the Society of Confederate Soldiers and sailors in Maryland on the 12th of October, 1871, on the Life and Character of General Robert E. Lee. Taken as a whole, it is one of the most exquisite eulogies that has ever fallen under my eye. Every word and utterance was felt to the core, for the two were of kindred soul, and twin brothers in loftiest patriotism and sublime self-negation. Here is the excerpt alluded to with conjoint regret that time and occasion calls for any excerpt from that superb production instead of giving it entire: “Whilst appreciating the compliment that brings me before you, it is with a profound sense of my inability to ‘rise to the height of this great argument,’ that I assume the duty of your kindness has imposed; nor would I venture to do so, comrades of the Confederate service, were it not that it seems to me no duty can be more sacred than that which bids every true man of the South, at all times, by all means, in all places, to pay homage to the character, and honor to the memory of our great leader. To myself, whose good fortune it was to follow that illustrious Chief from the beginning to the close of the marvelous career, which has placed his name by the side of those of the world's greatest captains—who witnessed his grand magnanimity in the flush of his proudest triumphs— his sublime serenity in the hour of disaster—who was sustained by his constant faith in the justice of his cause, encouraged by his kindness, and honored by his friendship—this call to join in doing honor to his memory has the saucity and the tenderness that death alone can give. Once again and for the last time, I seem placed on duty in the service of my old commander, and the voice that summons me here, waking many of the proudest, though saddest emotions of my heart, comes from the tomb of him who, ‘though dead, yet speaketh.’”

Ladies: By the received verdict of recognized judges in such matters, the five great captains of anthentic history, naming them in point of time, were: Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Frederic, and Napoleon. Just precisely the number that there are fingers on the hand. But circumscribed as was the limit, it was held immune from intrusion of soldiers of inferior sort or minor degree until some forty years ago, when bolder iconoclasts of our own great tongue made room by way of deposition for two of their own unequalled race. ‘The mad boy of Macedon,’ and the almost equally mad Sage of Bradenburg, were told by these to descend from their pedestals and make obeisance to Marlborough and Lee. So it stands today, and probably will continue for centuries to come. Quintette of the incarnate gods of war; here they are: Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon, Churchill, Lee. But grand as they are, and as are the two called down, ye powers, how they pale before the courtly gentleman and unpretentious schoolmaster of Lexington. Who would hesitate in the right of choice, as between him and Imperial Cæsar? Not I, forsooth. And so by my vote he stands the foremost man of recorded time, Paul alone excepted.

Not that it is proposed to claim equality of plane in intellectual development and varied achievement between him or any other and the phenomenal all-sided man of Rome; but it is a moot question, and ever will be, until true story of this glorious epoch is written, if written it ever will be; could even he, “noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times,” have done as much under like dearth of men, money and munitions? If not, then it is clear that Robert E. Lee is entitled to his new elevation into the exclusive five awarded him by a jury, composed of such as Wolseley, Freemantle, Chesney, Henderson, and Long, whose claim to the proud title of Military Critics, is acknowledged around the world. See what the first two, who made the Pennsylvania campaign under him, for the avowed purpose of studying war under the greatest soldier of the age, have to say. General Lord Wolseley, head of the English army, has this to say: “I would instance Cæsar, Hannibal, Marlbourough, Napoleon and General Lee, as men who possessed what I regard as the highest development of military genius—men who combined with the strategic grasp of Von Moltke and the calm wisdom and just reasoning of Wellington, all the power of Marshal Bugeaud and of Souwaroff to inflame the imagination of their soldiers, and impart to them some of the fiery spirit of reckless daring which burned within their own breasts.”

One other excerpt from Col. Freemantle, commanding officer of the “Cold-stream Guards,” the crack regiment of the English army of that day, must suffice in laudation of this incomparable hero and leader of heroes, the incarnation and embodiment of poetic Spain's fabled demigod, “the Cid Campeador,” barring the latter's disregard of plighted truth, and proclivity to Treason, both of which were beyond his capacity. Quoting from a perusal, nearly forty years ante-date, and for which allowance must hence be made, this in effect, is what the gifted Englishman says of his cousin over the water: “He is the grandest and stateliest man that I have met in life, whether afoot or in the saddle, but especially the last. Serious but not over solemn, his every glance and utterance indicates the soldier and the man of thought. Free from the minor faults and foibles of manhood, such as levity, drinking, swearing, smoking, chewing, etc., his bitterest enemies, of whom there are few, have never accused him of being addicted to any of the greater.” “Can pen portraiture of a perfect character go further? Ladies, you will pardon my introducing a little more quotation from illustrious contemporaries of our father land, bearing on the subject, and whose estimate is naturally free from bias and prejudice of participants in the mighty struggle of which he was the military head. Better such than my crude opinions, and better ten thousand times told, than the perverted, distorted, malicious and mendacious statements of so-called historians, God save the mark! have essayed to do through forty years of counterfeit peace, by a prostitution of their base talents to belittling him and his cause, a task which baffled about three millions of armed foemen, including John Pope and a gentleman down there, who shall be nameless, through four years that he was on the back of old “Traveller,” and had attenuated legions within call. History forsooth of the United States of America! None of the recent trashy stuff for my posterity, if my interdict would prevent it. Better Munchausen, Jack, the Giant Killer, Aladdin and his lamp, and other such transparent History, to the nauseating fiction of post bellum days, which sails under the counterfeit and fictitious title “History.”

No modern history of the United States for me and mine, until it is penned beyond the shadow of Bunker's Hill, and by impartial hand.

The most veracious and reliable history of the American Revolution ever penned, as conceded by both sides in the struggle, was written by the Italian, Dr. Botta, who had never set foot in the New World. Let us of the South bide the coming of a second Botta to do the same for us, if no son of the soil to the manner born, arises to essay the stupendous work, and carries it out to a successful conclusion. Until that day arrives, let the story be unwritten, if samples these be, or at least unread by Southern youth through time and eternity. Give us Munchausen in preference to mock heroics and mendacious statements, palmed off by lying knaves for ture recital. But to leave off digression. Professor George Long, one of the most profound scholars of his day, having an intense admiration for the great and good Aurelius, whom he seemed to regard as the most perfect of men, compiled and published the thoughts of his ideal hero.

The book was hardly out of press, before it was pirated by a Northern publisher, and dedicated to a learned doctor profundus of that quarter by the name Emerson. The English author was naturally outraged by such unwarrantable impudence, not to give it the less euphonic name of forgery, and expresses his opinion in the prefatory of the ensuing edition, as here follows: “I have never dedicated a book to any man, and if I dedicated this, I should choose the man whose name seems to be most worthy to be joined to that of the Roman soldier and philosopher. I might dedicate the book to the successful general who is now President of the United States, with the hope that his integrity and justice will restore peace and happiness, so far as he can, to those unhappy States who have suffered so much from war and the unrelenting hostility of wicked men. But as the Roman poet says:

And if I dedicated this little book to any man, I would dedicate it to him who led the Confederate armies against the powerful invader, and retired from an unequaled task defeated, but not dishonored; to the noble Virginia soldier whose talents and virtues place him by the side of the best and wisest man who sat on the throne of the imperial Cæsars.”

Observe another tribute from another English admirer, Philip Stanhope Worsley, a poet of no mean merit, with a stanza added to the cause: