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the statue are these words: “The Statue of Mar
garet of New Orleans.”
She was left an orphan by the ravages of yel
low fever. She married in early womanhood, but
her husband soon died, also her only child. She
was poor and uneducated, and could scarcely write
her name. She went to work in the Orphan Asy
lum for Girls. She toiled early and late, solicited
groceries from merchants, and, indeed, put her whole
life into the work for the orphans. When a new
and beautiful asylum was built, Margaret and one
of the Sisters of Mercy, freed it from debt. Mar
garet opened a diary and bakery in the city, of her
own. Everybody knew her, and patronized her milk
wagon and bakery. She worked very hard and sav
ed every cent, to help the orphans whom, in effect,
she had adopted as her own children. She never
owned a silk dress or wore a kid glove, and she was
very plain; but the city erected this beautiful mon
ument to the orphans’ friend, as a thank offering
for a beautiful, helpful, unselfish life of service.
How true these words of the Master! Do we
realize them as we ought today? Is there the
proper appreciation for the life that serves? Is it
not true that we fail, too often, to see the value
of such lives until they are gone? Would it not
be more Christ-like to weigh the deeds and impulses
of men during life? Oh, if this were done many
a life today unknown and unpraised would bloom
out of its obscurity as a fragrant flower.
And let us not forget to admonish ourselves.
Would we be great in appreciation? Do we long
for the admiration, the love and esteem of others?
Then let us remember to be the servant of all. Let
us never fail to realize that while the servant may
be slow in getting his position as chief, it is a law
that is bound to prevail. His position is sure. No
devils can cheat him out of it. The day of sowing
may be long, but the harvest will be sure.
Yes, we shall get it. It may not be until we are
gone, but at last when we have passed from injus
tice to justice we shall get the reward.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto
me. Enter thou into the joys of the Lord.”
* *
Dr. Hillis On Jubenile Offenders.
Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, writing in the New
York World, discusses the manner in which juve
nile criminals are treated by some courts of justice,
and he further comments upon the unfitness of some
judges to pass upon the sins of the young. He
makes an eloquent plea for the establishment of
juvenile courts similar to that presided over by
Judge Ben Lindsey, of Denver, and his argument
is so in keeping with the spirit of the times, and
comes so eloquently from a heart that loves youth
and desires to give to the city’s young the best
opportunities possible, that we quote and endorse
it here:
“A Monday morning listening to a judge pro
nouncing sentence upon children is more terrible
than a day with the overseer driving slaves under
the old horrors of the cotton field. The history of
these Mondays and the sentences pronounced upon
boys and girls by judges in our great cities during
the last two years, will show twenty-five years of
imprisonment put upon little children in a single
day by judges who were violently angry, who in
a mood of extreme passion that shocked every on
looker through anger ruined forever the career of
the children before them. Witness the following
cases on record in our courts: A little girl, scarce
in her teens, was sentenced to a year. A boy, but
little older, who had run away from home and come
into the city, and through hunger stolen a piece
of lead pipe, thinking he could trade it for a night’s
lodging, was sent up for two years. More recently
three bow. mere chPdren. were kept fo** days herd
ed in with old criminals and compelled to listen
to their tales of crime, and then, for a first offense,
were put in jail for a year. Some men are color
blind; they ought not to be judges of pictures.
Some women have no ear for music; they must not
go on a committee to hire singers and members of
a chorus. Some judges have no moral vision, no
talent for the diagnosis of character, and they are
incompetent for legal therapeutics; their decisions
upon children are butchery: not knowing, they
Golden Age for April 4, 1907.
strangle souls. They know the law, providing it
is bound in calfskin that is dead and set upon a
shelf. But when society gives them the right to
adjudicate the eases of children their courts be
come slaughter pens, places where children are not
tried but done away with. Could Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, who visited the mines of England where
children were working, visit some modern courts,
she would dip her pen, not in blood, but in fire,
as she wrote her new poem on the slaughter by
strong men of ‘God’s innocents.’
Any one who will study the question for years,
visit the jaiF’bn Sunday afternoon and the court
rooms on Monday, will return with the conviction
that the need of the hour is for children’s courts
and for children’s judges who are really educators.
Only a great heart has anv right to sit in judgment
on a child. Some judges, well equipped for analyz
ing constitutional questions, viewed in relation to
trying a child are nothing but animated butcher
knives. Put a robe on a tomahawk, and let a boy’s
scalp stand for his wig, and you have this judge
glaring down at children, while under his breath
he mutters, ‘l’ll show the little devil!’ Thomas
Arnold, of Rugby, is the type of man for the
bench of a juvenile court. Arnold put his arms
around boys like Tom Brown, at Rugby, and
turned many an incorrigible into a noble and praise
worthy citizen. We all have known at least one
or two men whose names are the very synonyms
for integrity and financial honor who, in boyhood,
committed a crime which the father made good in
secrecy. Had these boys been discovered and
brought into some of our city courts they would
have been sentenced, publicly branded, put into a
reform school, where some of the boys are moral
degenerates, and so these judges would have cost
society some of its noblest and best citizens. For
the true judge has the vision that distinguishes be
tween the boy who had gone down once in a weak
hour and the second boy who is in danger of be
coming an habitual transgressor, both of whom
should be kept away forever from the state reform
school, where are boys who, representing a third
class, are moral degenerates. Witness a boy who
was recently examined by a family physician be
cause he insisted on trying to kill everything he
saw. He was bora of a father who was drunk
when the infant began its career. It is not enough
that the judge of the juvenile court knows the law
and knows the facts: he must also have moral
vision and skill to read humian nature like an open
book. He must be above the boy and girl who have
transgressed, as a mother is above the babe that
she loves, as the surgeon is above the patient for
whose life he is struggling, as the teacher is above
the truant, and then his sentence will heal, not
hurt, will siave and not destroy. We now have
two judges in juvenile courts who redeem children;
other judges damn them. The jails in our cities
where weak children and undeveloped are put in
with degenerate children, are as awful as the
Black Hole in Calcutta. When will the great city
hear the Master’s word, ‘Take heed that ye offend
not one of my little ones. It were better for you
that a millstone were hanged about your neck and
that you were drowned in the depths of the sea’?”
H *
An Unpublished Tale by Poe.
(Old-time printer preserved manuscript left by
the erratic poet.)
A traveling man who spends much of his time in
Richmond, Va., has in his possession what is said
to be the original manuscript of a short story by
Edgar Allan Poe.
The manuscript was given to Mr. Applegate at
Richmond by an old-time printer, who was once em
ployed as a compositor on the Southern Literary
Messenger, of which Poe was the editor for a brief
period. The manuscript, although faded and time
worn, is in a fair state of preservation. The chi
rography is plain and resembles slightly that of
James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet. The
story, so far as is known, has never been given to
the public. It is entitled “The Skull with a Forked
Tongue,” and is as follows:
“This is a strange hotel! There are bars on the
windows.
“The door of my room is often open, yet T may
not go out. I have books, flowers, a clean, white
bed, and from my window a fine view of the garden
and a high wall. They say lam ill! Perhaps!
“Her picture—l have hung it near my bed. Ev
ery day I put fresh flowers —the kind she loved—
beside it. All is well with her, for she is dead.
“Sometimes I sit for hours before that picture—
lost in tender musings—contemplating the beauty
of her life. The eyes are brown —wide open and
deep with intelligence. The silvery hair is parted
in wavy folds over her forehead. The mouth is
firm and sweet.
“And yet she married my deadly enemy—my
father’s enemy—the man I should have killed.
“But she paid the price with her life, and may
her gentle spirit, where’er it dwells, forgive the
son for whom she suffered so much.
“My father died when I was but a boy, and five
years later my mother married this man. He was a
coarse, ignorant fellow. He had a mind like a
dirty rag; a heart of flint. He was thought to be
rich. Three years later I left home. Fear that I
might kill him drove me away.
“Long years of busy life in a new land failed to
quiet my hatred. My mother died. Then her hus
band.
“When the word reached me that he was dead
I had a wild desire to reach my old home in time
for the funeral —solely that I might spit in his face
ere the grave hid him forever from my fury. Fool
that I was, to have remained silent so long! Yet
it was for her dear sake.
“They say he was put away decently. He had
neighbors and some friends, and they spoke softly
at his grave. The parson and the undertaker did
their parts. The grave-digger rounded up a mound
over where he lay, and when all were gone the old
sexton locked the gates for the night, and he, too,
went his way.
“There, under the white stars, under the wide
sky, side by side, my mother and her husband. But
between those two graves, the one green with God’s
fresh grass, the other a new scar in the soil, there
stalked the specter of my hate. Years came and
went, and once in a passing fancy—dreaming that
he still lived, and that my hatred might not lull it
self to sleep —I wrote these lines, which I call:
‘‘THE HEADMAN’S MONOLOGUE.”
“Your pardon, sir, age hath a quality
That challenges the headman’s first respect!
And yet, I half suspect my knife were kind
To clip you without pause, when I reflect
What man you are. That you could kill with
words,
And had a devilish glee in doing so.
I would that all might know —therefore take heed
Unto the thing’s I utter ere you go!
* * * * * ❖ *
“Thy tardy taking off I fear
Will breed a sorry pestilence in hell.
Nor priest, nor book, nor bell will follow thee,
All men shall flee but I —who love thee w T ell.
Again your pardon! See! The tears I shed!
My good blade quivers in the frosty air—■
Respecting your gray hair. Farewell! Lie still!
The blow I strike I pledge you will be fair,
And now prepare! Strike, blade! Ah, neatly
done!
The basket takes its quarry with a groan!
Thy little soul hath fled. The block still holds
A shred of flesh upon a rotten bone.”
—lndianapolis News.
There are 8,300 Young Men’s Christian Associa
tions the world over.
The infant of the household was in its cradle.
The head of the house was at home, peevish and
fault-finding. At length he became unendurable.
“You have done nothing but make mistakes to
night,” he growled. “Yes,” she answered meek
ly; “I began by putting the wrong baby to bed.”
W. T. WINN, General Insurance, representing
several of the best companies in all the lines.
Phones 496. 219 Empire Building.
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