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HINTS TRO JI HISTORY:
Sy A. H. Rllett.
WOULD YOU HAVE DONE BETTER?
LATO tells of a Seriphian who became
envious of the fame of Themistocles.
Meeting Themistocles he said: “You
deserve no credit for it yourself; it’s
all because you happen to be an Athen
ian.” Themistocles suavely replied:
“If you had been.an Athenian and I
had been a Seriphian, neither of us
would have been famous.”
P
Some one lias left this warning on record: 1 ‘Put
not your trust in princes.” I think I have never
wantonly disregarded the injunction. Indeed I am
not sure we have given the princes all that was
coming to them. I remember when the incog king
asked the daughter of the Shoemaker how long it
required to learn the trade, she answered: “A
bright man would learn in six or seven months, I
spec it would take de king ’bout a year.” I am
not sure, but there seems to me to be a covert smile
in that somewhere at the expense of the king. I
know Thomas Jefferson says that at the time he
was in Europe there were not three sovereigns on
the continent who were sane. But then you know
Jefferson was a powerful democrat.
I have been turning over some of the dead kings
in my mind and I want to put some questions to
you. Alfred, for instance, you know you fell out
with Alfred because he let the cakes burn. But
would you have done better? Oh, yes, I know you
would have defeated the Danes at Ashdown and
would have wrung from them the treaty of Wed
more. I know you would have built the first Eng
lish navy, and would have arranged the Code of
Laws and would have translated the books, but the
cakes, what about the cakes? Would you have
done better by the cakes? You know it isn’t so
hard to concentrate your thoughts upon a half
naked, unshaved Dane who is bearing down upon
you with a battle-axe, but the cakes —why, great
people ought not be expected to remember the cakes,
ought they?
Then there was John, King John. You will re
member he was requested to sign a paper granting
to the people certain rights that already belonged
to them. You know the paper is called Magna
Charta, and was considered at the time to contain
great concessions to the people. But I was not
thinking so much of that, I was thinking how King
John “flung himself down on the floor, and gnawed
sticks and stones in his impotent rage.” I have
not even stopped to inquire why a king’s floor
should have been littered with “sticks and stones.”
I was wanting to ask you if you would have done
better than that. When you are constrained to give
up something that really never was yours by right,
do you control your temper?
Then there was Edward IV., who kissed the
widow. Could you beat that? The widow who,
pleased with the king’s handsome face, willingly
handed him 20 pounds, whereupon Edward kissed
her and she at once doubled her donation. They
might all have been idiots in the time of Thomas
Jefferson, but here, evidently, was a king with his
wits about him. If I should stop here to write a
motto, it would read; Be grateful, and preserve
your presence of mind.
But my thought runs on to Henry VII. Henry
was industrious and economical —in some respects
like our own provident Rockefeller. By cutting
down expenses, and exercising due industry Henry,
you will recall, managed to amass some $150,000.-
000. He had this much left even after he had paid
the Cabots SSO for North America. I said Henry
himself lived economically, which left enough of
his income to make him feel justified in giving the
order that after he was dead his tomb should be
erected and that prayers should be said over it “as
long as the world lasted.” There was also enough
left to give Henry VIII. a fair start on the road
to hell. You would have done better than that,
wouldn’t you?
I was thinking of Richard HI., wasn’t he the
one that held out his withered arm and asked Lord
Hastings what ought to be done with the one who
bewitched him? When Hastings hesitated. Richard
The Golden Age for November 14, 1907.
shouted, “By St. Paul, I will not to dinner till I
see thy head off.” Hastings was a handsome fellow
with two good arms. Richard was hump-backed
with a withered arm. What I wanted to ask you
was, would you cut your opponent out if he were
handsome and you were not? In making up your
answer remember Richard had the backing of the
community in doing what he did.
Then there was James First, “The wisest fool
in Christendom.” “But handsome,” you say? Not
especially. The historian says “he had a feeble,
rickety body, he could not walk straight, his tongue
was too large for his mouth, and he had goggle
eyes. Through fear of assassination, he habitually
wore thickly padded and quilted clothes, usually
green in color.” But the people thought his touch
would cure disease. There is no record that James
denied it. Would you have done so? To be per
fectly plain with you, if the people believed you
to be something extraordinary, could you resist tell
ing a lie to keep up the delusion? I fear we doni
ocrats are unduly hard on the kings.
There was George First, for instance —king of a
great people. To be sure he did not know the
English language, knew nothing of English customs,
and probably cared less, but the historian gravely
informs us that “he was a hearty eater.” Now
that isn’t bad, is it? If you had all the income you
could use, a lifetime cinch on your position, and
the adulation of all the people who could get to you
would you undertake to do anything much except
to eat three good, square meals a day?
And the other George, George Third. I could hunt
up the genealogy for you and tell you what kin he
was to George First, but it doesn’t matter. What I
was thinking of was his mother’s admonition—his
mother who had seen other people besides the king
taking a hand in the government. Even while he
w T as yet only a prince, his mother’s constant in
junction to him was, “Be king, George, be king!”
Os course George was a fool all the first part of his
life, and an idiot all the last part, but he undertook
to carry out his mother’s advice. But who is it
would not damn the nation to maintain the appear
ance of his own importance?
Any way there was Edward First, who did not
wish to quit the fight even when he was dead; or
dered his son to carry his body at the head of the
army and whip the Scots whether or no. Now when
you are dead, do you suppose the body of your in
fluence carried in the van would lead any good cause
to victory?
Let’s not be envious and mean.
The Prohibition Fight.
The compiler of this column met a most excel
lent and intelligent citizen of Atlanta the other day,
and showing him a copy of The Golden Age, called
his attention to a paragraph about the prohibition
conflict. He remarked: “Oh, that’s a dead issue
now; everybody that knows anything knows that
prohibition has come to stay.” In a sense that is
true, and yet it will not do to take that statement
at par. Prohibition has come to stay. Shall the
State of Georgia license the liquor traffic? is not
now and probably never will bel an open question
again, but the issue is not dead, and it will never
be a dead issue until the time comes of which this
paper is the harbinger, and for which all of its
forces are laboring “THE GOLDEN AGE” of
Christian social life cannot come until the liquor
traffic shall have been banished from the bounds of
Christian civilization. The fight is no longer at ovr
doors and each week marks the retreat of the liouor
line to points more remote, but this paper with all
its powers is enlisted for the war. Hence the bme
has not yet come for abandoning this special fea
ture.
The progress of prohibition in Alabama since the
last writing, has taken in Shelby and Tallapoosa
counties, one in central and the other in east cen
tral. Tuscaloosa, Jefferson. Etowah, Calhoun. Tal
ladega. Tallapoosa and Shelby, turning white, have
brought a vast amount of light to the situation
in central Alabama. Now let Montgomery spread
the white from the borders of Lowndes up into the
same enlightened regions and then let all make a
pull for Dallas and the cane-brakes.
The United States sent a special agent, Mr. Wil
liam E. Johnson, to break up blind tigers and gam
bling in the Indian Territory. He has been at it
for about fourteen months. During that time he
has made 1,535 separate seizures of intoxicating li
quors, and made 890 arrests in liquor cases that re
sulted in binding over to the grand jury or grand
jury indictments. This does not include probably a
hundred prisoners who were turned loose on ac
count of insufficient evidence.
The seizures were almost entirely in small
amounts. The average value of the goods in each
of these 1,535 seizures according to the current re
tail price of same was only about s6l. In addition
to this, Mr. Johnson raided 75 gambling houses, in
which he summarily destroyed $15,000 worth of
property, and convicted ninety-three gamblers. The
total value of property destroyed in these raids
was $118,529.
The program for World’s Temperance Sun
day for 1907, which comes November 24
next, arranged by Mrs. Zillah Foster Stevens. Sec
retary of the Temperance Department of the In
ternational Lesson Committee, is both practical and
dynamic in material and suggestion, and marks a
new standard for this event in the Sunday schools
of the world.
The subject of the lesson for November 24 is
“The Saloon a Stumbling Block,” and the Prohibi
tion National Committee, by special request, has
had prepared through the Associated Prohibition
Press, a new leaflet which strikes the keynote of
this topic in a two thousand word study which
epitomizes the chief standpoints from which the
“saloon,” i. e., the liquor traffic, is the supreme
stumbling block to all progress. This new leaflet
was demanded as a result of the widespread popu
larity attained by the National Committee’s leaflet,
“Facts for Temperance Studv/ ’ which has passed
through three 10,000 editions in three months’ time.
“Minnesota Civic Reform Association is the name
of the new Prohibition movement in the State of
Minnesota which has just been incorporated by
leading party workers to aid in the campaign of
1908. The articles of incorporation assert that the
purpose of the new association is “to assist primar
ily in bringing into power in the government of
the State of Minnesota and in the United States of
America, a political party which shall have for its
fundamental issue the overthrow of the license sys
tem as it relates to the traffic in alcoholic beverages,
and the enactment and enforcement of laws which
shall suppress the sale, importation and manufac
ture of all liquors.”—Associated Prohibition Press.
The correspondent of the Prohibition Press which
furnishes this matter gives a verbal statement from
Mr. Johnson, which is as follows:
“I have been arrested and sued, sued and ar
rested, shot at, stoned, mobbed, and clubbed, but I
gave them the Irishman’s answer every time,, and
kept breaking up their bottles and ripping up their
joints until last Friday when the thing came to a
show-down in Judge Lawrence’s Court at Tulsa on
an application for a permanent injunction restrain
ing me from spreading ruin and devastation in these
low-grade beer holes. The matter was fought out all
day long and resulted in Judge Lawrence not only
refusing the application, hut making the decision
that there were no property rights whatever in the
2 per cent stuff. The judge further decided that I
was entirely within mv rights in seizing and sum
marily destroying all that I discovered. The sweep
ing character of the decision completely spiked the
guns of our opponents.”
Copies of the leaflets, “The Saloon a Stumbling
Block,” and “Facts for Temperance Sunday,”
can be obtained at the rate of 40 cents per hundred
prepaid, from Charles R. .Tore«. Chairman. The
Temple, Chicago.
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