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IN DIXIE LAND
(Note: The readers of The Golden Age have
learned already to love and honor David E. Guy
ton, the “blind Milton” who fills the chair of
modern languages in Blue Mountain College, Miss.,
and whose poems and stories have attracted much
favorable attention.
Mr. Guyton recently contributed to The Mem
phis Commercial-Appeal an article of beautiful
optimism, “In Dixie Land,” which, despite every
generous expression about the editor of this paper,
has about it enough of the gospel of good cheer
to make it worthy of reproduction here. Professor
Guyton is all the more pertinent in that section
of Mississippi because excessive rains have brought
to many excessive “blues.” It takes a blind man,
sometimes, to see the rainbow in the sky.—Editor.)
“When the birds in the tree-tops blithely sing,
and the stars twinkle brightly in the heavens;
when the sunbeams rollic with the rippling
streams, and the valleys are fragrant with flowers;
when our barns and our larders overflow with their
wealth, and our fields flash their promises of
plenty—how easy it is to be ‘calm and serene,’
when June brims our Southland with the bright
ness and the beauty of the first, golden Eden of
the world! Why the man or the woman, who
couldn’t be happy at the dawning of summer in
Dixie, would have to be given a brand-new soul to
get any pleasure out of heaven —if, indeed, such
a spirit should ever be permitted to pass through
the portals of pearl!
“Ours is a land of sunshine; ours is a sunshine
race; whoever, in the South, is shrouded in shadows
is, therefore, a traitor to his tribe. Now, of course,
you will answer that you can’t help grieving, when
everything goes all awry; but you ought to have
enough sense about you to know 7 that nothing ever
happens except as it ought to, no matter how se
rious it may seem. Unless this is true, religion
is a fake, and worship is a waste of breath; for
if God is too feeble to run things aright, he is only
a creature of imagination, an impotent dream of
an idle brain.
“I haven’t lived as long as many of my readers,
and haven’t solved as many of the problems of
life; but I’ve lived long enough to see the stars
darken and the light of the sun fade forever from
my eyes; and yet while the shadows have deepened
around me, and wrapped all my future in unbroken
gloom, still, I have no hint of a doubt in my heart
that the end of it all will be well. If I did not
believe that a wiser power than the wisest of
earth steers the ship of the world, I would burn
my Bible for kindling, and would worship mere
chance as supreme.
“What do you know of William D. Upshaw, the
invincible cripple of Atlanta? The story of his
life is a source of inspiration too potent for time
to suppress, and ought to be familiar to every boy
and girl in the limits of the Southern states.
“Born and reared on a Georgia farm, he learned
in his boyhood the meaning of labor and the value
of things worth the while. Before he had passed
from his tender teens, he had the misfortune of
falling, one day, and breaking his backbone in
two. For nearly seven years he had to keep his
bed; but he did not waste those years; for during
that time he gladdened his section with- his bright,
breezy letters in the ‘Sunny South,’ hiding his
modest blushes, however, under the pen-name of
‘Earnest Willie.’ These tender echoes from his
great, kind heart found a welcome in hundreds and
thousands of homes, and culminated in an ample
volume which has passed through ten editions, and
which is still being read with devotion.
“At the expiration of seven long years, the un
daunted cripple was provided with a jacket fash
ioned of plaster-paris; and by means of th’s sup
port and the aid of his crutches, he soon learned
♦ • g“t around without a companion: and although
he could not even sit upright if his trusty jacket
were removed, he travels from one end of Dixie
to the other, scattering inspiration wherever he
goes, and filling the hearts of thousands of his
By David E. Guyton.
hearers with the radiant sunshine of his own
buoyant soul.
“As he lay on his back in his shadow-years, he
dreamed fair dreams of a shining future, and
longed for a chance to try his hand as editor of a
great weekly paper. Just think of it, won’t you?
A man without a backbone dreaming of running
a journal of his own, when scores of his country
men with perfect bodies were blowing out their
brains because they had never been able to find
any work for their strong hands to do. The
dreamer was obliged to tarry for years with his
lofty scheme unattained; but he still hoped on
with a cheery heart; and only a few brief months
ago, he sent forth the first delightful edition of
The Golden Age of Atlanta. Under his direc
tion the journal has prospered, and has found a
hearty welcome in Dixie, and is destined to in
crease in public esteem as the silent days go by.
“Now is a time when his spirit is needed in
hundreds and thousands of homes in the South
land; for the farmers of our section are just now
confronted by a somewhat shadowy prospect. Since
the opening of spring, they have had small chance
to look to the culture of their acres; and even
where some of the more progressive have succeed
ed in planting their s n ed. they have generally
failed to get enough stand to guarantee a favor
able harvest. If those conditions were of a local
character, it would not be so bad for the section;
but the cry goes up from almost every quarter
that owing to the excess of rain and cold, cotton
in particular has already suffered an almost in
calculable loss.
“With such dire prospects stretching out before
them the farmers are naturally more or less blue;
and since thev are truly the makers or breakers
of the rest of the dwellers in Dixie, the uncomforta
ble feeling of the tillers is making its way into
other callings, and blighting the hopes of our peo
ple.
“The outlook is gloomy, it must be ad i i ted.
and yet it might be a great deal worse. With a
few bright weeks of sunshiny weather conditions
will greatly improve; and even if our section has
a very short crop, higher prices are sure to prevail,
thereby partially atoning for the unusual shortage
of the yield.
“There is always a silvery lining for every sable
cloud; but so many people have such a short vision
that they cannot look through the outside of gloom
to the splendor just a little further on. I have
no patience with a pessimist who never sees any
thing radiant ahead, and who thinks that he knows
more about running things than the God who made
all the worlds. Tn other sections, there is more
excuse for the blues than there is in the South;
and so the man who finds the most of his happi
ness in mourning over things beyond his power
ought not to do himself the great injustice to linger
in a land like our own.
Why, if cotton should fail, Dixie would still be
able to keep up her corners all right; for although
the fleecy staple is the foremost of her products, it
is only the chief of many, many others not incap
able of supporting our section.
“We have enough timber to keep our mills busy
for an innumerable number of years; our coal
mines are all but exhaustless, and are still in the
first glow of youth. Our iron ore, too, has hardly
been touched by the ever-growing factories of our
section; and our phosphate mines and our flocks
and herds are a source of a bountiful and endur
ing revenue.
“Tn addition to these, we have many crops be
sides the predominant staple of the South, and if
cotton should fail us we might make our way by
depending more exclusively upon one of these. Tn
a country like ours, with such a variety of avenues
to wealth, it is all hut impossible for our people to
experience a wholesale destruction of their mani
fold interests as so many countries may do.
“Os course, no nation is entiielv independent;
and yet we are almost a self-sufficient race; for
The Golden Age for June 27, 1907.
even if the rest of the world outside were forever
closed to our tribe, we could keep right rigidly
within our borders, and provide our people with all
of their wants, no matter how exacting they might
be.
“But why is Dixie threatened with disaster?
Who is responsible for so much rain? Why are
her fertile acres so barren of pledges of plenty?
These are questions of vital importance to the peo
ple of the Southern states; and if we can solve
them, we can possibly alter the conditions now
alarming our section.
“In the days of the prophets, when the Jews
were in power, all their national calamities were
invariably attributed to the sinfulness of the
tribes. In reading the Bible, we take it for grant
ed that all these statements are straight from the
Lord; so it seems to me that, if God used to punish
a nation with famine because of its sins, it is fair
to infer that our general disasters are duo to our
guilt as a people.
“Whether this is true, or merely a fancy, it is
certain that Dixie is not more religious than she
really ought to be; and while she is infinitely bet
ter, no doubt, than many other qaurters of the
civilized world, it would do her no harm to inau
gurate a few reforms in order to see if her present
misfortunes are due to the lack of spirituality on
the part of her sons and daughters.
“I firmly believe that all of this rain is the re
sult of some definite order of things; but just what
it is and just whv it is I have no means of ascer
taining except through the doubtful lens of faith.
I am sure, moreover, that all will be well when the
whole of the story is known: for as I stated at
the outset. T have no fears to let things work along
just as they have to, so carry out the aims and the
orders of the hand that, not only fashioned the
universal system, but also looks to its mighty
sweep through the infinite circuit of the ages.
“But even if T felt that nothing but shadows
awaited the future of our race. I should still insist
upon reaping sweet pleasures as we pass through
the valleys'of the present. Te see no reason why
today should bo cloudy because of the darkness
of tomorrow; and T deem it our duty to extra't
from each day every drop of the sweet that it
holds, leaving the sour of the future to look to
its own affairs.
“Have you road ‘Germelshausen’? According
to tradition, this quaint. German village was swal
lowed up whole bv the earth, but every hundred
years is again uplifted to remain above ground for
only one day. The inhabitants of the hamlet,
conscious of their doom, devote their one night to
the wildest delights, and drown in the pleasures
of the passing hours all thoughts of the silence of
the century in the cold, dark depths of the earth.
“This is only a wild, weird legend, of course,
evolved from its author’s teeming brain; and yet
it possesses some wholesome philosophy down un
der the surface of its mystic depths. Those poor
Gorman peasants were wiser by far than myriads
of the men and the women of today; for they had
enough horse-sense not to spoil their present by
looking to the sorrow of their future.
“Why may we not learn a lesson from the story?
Why may we not do as thev? Why may we not
make the best of the moment and leave all the rest
to the Lord? ‘A merrv heart doetn good like a
medicine,’ is as true as it used to be; so let us
cheat the doctors of their golden fees bv laughing
all our ailments away.
“Os course you will grow heart-weary now and
then as von pass from the cradle to the grave; but
if yon will pause for only a moment and match
all your sorrows with jovs, von will find that only
a few of your days have shimmered away jnto
shadows. In spite of the sneers of the pessimistic
snarlers and the moans of the Puritanic mopes, we
are living in a world of endless delights, in a re
gion of eternal raptures, in a promised land of
pleasures, in the Eden spot of the earth. Don’t
you pay any heed to the simpering fool who slan
ders God’s handiwork bv styling this world noth
ing but the ‘low-grounds of sorrow’; but just be as
pure and as sweet and as happy as a human soul
can possibly b 1 : and then if yon happen to mi«s
reaching heaven, you have had some sharp of sun
shine in the grand paradise of the present.”
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