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12
i Clippings From Ancient Press.
(Continued from Page 7.)
“The adversary, my enemy, your enemy, my lord,
is this wicked Haman,” and as she pointed her
jewelled finger at the wretched man he sank in a
helpless heap to the floor.
“1 am a Jewess,” continued the queen, “and I
am included' in the order that has been sent out
over the kingdom by this man,” and, as she spoke,
she unfolded the decree of Haman and held it be
fore the king. The. scene as described by those who
saw it, was tragic in the extreme. The excited
queen, beautiful in her agitation, the angry king,
awful in his wrath, the frightened Haman, pitiable
in his fear, were fit subjects for the brush of Per
sia’s greatest artist.
The king in his anger strode out into the garden,
as if seeking some weapon to use upon the guilty
man. The queen, in her agitation, sought her bed
chamber and, falling across the bed shook with emo
tion. Haman, rising from his place, rushed after
the queen, caught her robe, fell across the bed on
which she was lying, and, whimpering like a fright
ened cur, begged for his miserable life. Thus the
king found him a moment later and his wrath knew
no bounds. He ordered his face covered as they
dragged him out so that he might look upon him
no more.
One of the attendants told the king of the gal
lows erected for Mordecai, and he ordered that
Haman should be executed upon it immediately.
Followed by a curious rabble, the unfortunate sec
retary was dragged through the streets to the gal
lows of his own making and there, within speaking
distance of his wife, he was hanged like a dog.
When the king sought to comfort the queen she
told him her story and of her connection with Mor
decai, and all that he had been to her. On hearing
this the monarch gave orders that Mordecai should
take possession of the house of Haman and live
there and that he should be given the office made
vacant by the death of the secretary.
There is great rejoicing in Susa over the down
fall of Haman who was very unpopular and over
the promotion of Mordecai who is highly respected
by all classes of people.
Track Through the Bible.
(Continued from Page 6.)
Israel” was fulfilled in the case of Levi in the
scattering of the tribe through all the others. This
second division of the book ends with the state
ment that the Lord gave, and they possessed the
land. His promise to them was fulfilled.
No man had been able to stand before them.
Their enemies had been wholly delivered into their
hands. They never completely realized the purpose
of God in these matters. The failure, however, was
wholly due to their own disobedience, and the rec
ord at this point fittingly closes with the declaration
of the fidelity of God. “There failed not aught of
any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the
house of Israel; all came to pass.” Failure to
possess what God gives is always that of His peo
ple, and never the result of unwillingness or weak
ness on His part.
C. JOSHUA’S FAREWELL.
At the close of the war the two and a half tribes
returned to their possession on the other side of the
Jordan. As they departed Joshua commended them
for their fulfilment of their promise, and charged
them to be loyal to Jehovah. As the time for Josh
ua’s passing approached, he twice gathered the
people together, and delivered farewell messages.
The burden of the first was that of the power and
faithfulness of God, with an earnest desire for
the faithfulness of the people to Him. His warnings
were perhaps more fiery and searching than those
of Moses. The address was a wonderful revelation
of the strength of the man, and of that strength as
consisting in his acute consciousness of the rela
tionship of the people to Jehovah, and his conse
quent passion for their loyalty to His law. The
second time he gathered them to 'Shechem. In his
final address he traced their history from the call
of Abraham to the then present time, emphasizing
the fact that everything of greatness in their his-
The Golden Age for February 21, 1907.
tory was of God. He finally charged them, “Now,
therefore, fear the Lord, and serve Him.” There
was a fine touch of courageous irony in the appeal
which followed. If they would not serve God, he
called them to choose whom they would serve. Would
they go back to the gods of their fathers beyond
the river, or would they turn to the gods of the
Amorites in whose land they dwelt? It ended by
declaring, “As for me and my house, we will serve
the Lord.”
The book closes with death, the death of Joshua,
the second great leader, and the death of Eleazar,
the second priest. Yet in the midst of the darkness
of death there is something almost weird and yet
full of the suggestion of hope. The bones of Joseph
were buried in the land.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
(Continued from Page 2.)
Character of His Work.
It is almost impossible to fully discuss here the
character of Longfellow’s poetic works. A marked
feature of all his writings, however, was his sym
pathy with the sorrows of mankind, and his deep
appreciation of many of the difficulties of life. His
translations from the Spanish, German, French,
Swedish and Italian, were all marked by scholarly
understanding of the intricacies of these languages,
as well as a poetic instinct as to the finer grades of
meaning. Os course, his most ambitious work was
“Evangeline,” which is written in the most diffi
cult of all measures, English Hexameters, and
which is one of the few pieces of English verse cor
rectly written in this style. This poem, together
with “The Courtship of Miles Standish” and
“Hiawatha,” would determine Longfellow’s ri?ht
to the laureateship of America, as there are no other
pieces of verse in the language so entirely local in
tone color and general characteristics. His minor
poems have been more largely quoted and more gen
erally used than, perhaps, those of any other Eng
lish-speaking poet. Yet they have been so numer
ous that some of the least known are, from a purely
literary point of view, among the very best. We
have in mind a short poem entitled “Two Rivers,”
which, by some curious trick of lack of public ap
preciation has been omitted from many of the
poet’s published works. and which is less known
than would seem possible from the character of
the verses. The following will convince the reader
of the claim to pure poetic imagery which the little
poem has; it begins thus:
“Midnight, the outpost of advancing day
The watershed of time from which the advancing
Streams of Yesterday and Tomorrow take their
flight—
One to the land of promise and of light.”
And, again, in the closing stanzas:
“Oh! River of tomorrow flowing between thy narrow
adamantine walls,
Yet beautiful and white within waterfalls
And wreaths of mist like hands the pathway
showing!
Thee, I follow, follow where thy waters run, through
unfamiliar, unfrequented fields.
Still follow, follow 7 sure to meet the sun,
And confident that what the morrow brings will be
the right unless myself be wrong!”
The reader may find many hidden gems in a full
copy of Longfellow’s works, and we have also dis
covered one “Unpublished Poem,” written soon af
ter the death of his second wife, and which was
found among the poet’s papers after his own pass
ing. Mrs. Longfellow 7 was burned to death, her
clothing catching fire from the open hearth and her
going hence was a sorrow from which her poet
husband never recovered. The brilliant social life
at Craigie House was never altogether resumed and
the poet buried himself in his work. His well known
translation of Dante was done in the months imme
diately following his loss just as the translation of
Homer occupied Bryant’s hours at a time when he
was suffering a similar affliction.
A scholar, poet and Christian gentleman of the
highest order, Longfellow presents all that is best
in our national life, and even though he may not
merit the first literary rank, yet he won for himself
a position all his own in the hearts of the people
on both sides of the watpr. An evidence of his
place beyond the seas being shown by the honor
which was done his memory by giving him a place
in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey in Lon
don—a distinction conferred only on a favored
few.
Nine Hundred College Boys.
(Continued from page 5).
was generally dismissed about 8 o’clock, often the
Christian teachers stayed with us in after-meet
ing's until ten o’clock, twelve or fifteen boys being
happily converted sometimes in a single service.
And in one service there were about twenty-five
professions. It was glorious to see about a hun
dred young men take a definite stand for Christ dur
ing the meetings, and the general influence of the
meeting to the great student body, the workers
declare, will be deathless.
“Up to the Mississippi Legislature.”
The personnel of the A. & M. students is stal
wart indeed. One time I asked for every student
who came from the farm to raise his hand, and it
seemed like the whole business, almost, came “up
from the farm.” And so many of these future
makers of Mississippi have come that they actually
are crowded beyond comfort when they assemble
at chapel. The same chapel that served twenty
five years ago is serving now, and the Mississippi
Legislature ought by all means to build next year
a great auditorium that will seat the student body
and their parents and friends who wish to come to
lectures and commencements. And if they don’t
do it pretty soon I think I shall appoint myself a
“committee of one” to go all the way from Geor
gia and speak to the committee of the whole, tell
ing them some things they surely do not seem to
know about the vastness of their own A. & M. Col
lege. The auditorium should certainly be in keep
ing with the other splendid and imposing build
ings and all the other lines of progress, and es
pecially meet the positive needs of the largest stu
dent body in the South.
Beginning with a property valuation of $146,-
000 the school now has about three-quarters of a
million investment, and with an enrollment of over
nine hundred boys, being trained in the most in
tensely practical way, and above all, touched and
moulded by the influence of a great Christian Pres
ident, with a loyal cabinet to uphold his hands,
this great college world of its own is a growing
force whose influence can not be measured in the
basic building and upward reaching of the greater
world beyond the rolling campus, the waving fields,
the blazing forges, and the forceful forum of the
Mississippi “A. & M.”
“Doctor,” said the patient upon whom theffiosoi
tal surgeon had just operated for appendicitis,
“you’re the same surgeon who amputated the first
finger of my right hand when I had it crushed in
a railroad accident a few months ago, ain’t you?”
“Yes,” answered the surgeon.
“Well, you got my index then, and now you’ve,
got tny appendix. I hope you are satisfied.”
Pasted on the window of a book store was a
sign “Porter Wanted.” In the window on a pile
of books was a sign, “Dickens’ Works all this week
for $4.”
An able-looking Irishman read first the sign and
then the placard. He scratched his head and
blurted out: “Dickens can work all the week
for foor dollars if he wants to, but I’m a union
man. I’ll not touch it. Ye’d better kape Dick
ens,”