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Items of Interest Gathered Here and There
The Tirst 'Ylarathon 'Race.
The Marathon race, won by the American Hayes
at London, commemorates an event that took place
490 years before Christ, that is 2,398 years ago,
when a. Greek runner brought to Athens from
Marathon, 22 miles away, the news of the great
victory won by Miltiades over the Persian army.
This battle took place on a September afternoon,
closing with the overwhelming defeat of the Persian
host, which left 6,400 dead upon the field. One
hundred and ninety-two Athenians were killed. Os
the small force of Plateaus who had come to the
aid of the Athenians there is no account of the
number who fell nor of the slaves who took part
in the battle and died on the field.
The course run by Hayes and his competitors from
Windsor to the stadium at London is given as 26
miles, 385 yards, being more than 4 miles greater
than that of the Athenian rum.er who brought the
news of victory. The Athenians had probably not
undergone the long and careful training of the run
ners in the modern Marathon. He had taken part in
the hard battle and did not start with the news until
the battle was over, which was near the going down
of the sun. His run was made in the light of a
full September moon. The time made by Hayes in
his longer run was 2 hours, 56 minutes, 46 seconds.
There is no way of determining the time taken by
the Greek runner in making’ this distance from
Marathon to Athens. His distance may have been,
probably was, more than 22 miles—-perhaps as much
as 24 miles—if he. started from near the center of
the battlefield.
Durando, the Italian runner in the Windsor-
London race, like his great prototype, was overcome
at the end of his flight, but the Athenian runner died
when he had gasped out the words that assured his
countrymen of their safety from the Persians.
The name of this Greek is not known. Robert
Browning, in his noble poem, “Pheidippides, ”
assumes that to have been his name, and that he was
the same runner who had gone to Sparta to ask
aid of that people for Athens against the Persians. —
The Indianapolis News.
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The Youngest Confederate.
Col. John H. Whallen, of Louisville, is the young
est Confederate veteran in the United States. He
does not make this claim himself, but his friends
do, and no less an authority than Gen. Basil Duke
vouches for it.
The war ended 43 years ago, and Col. Whallen now
is only 57 years old, yet he saw three years’ active
service in the great struggle between the states.
There may be men younger than he who fought in
the Confederate army, as a man who enlisted at
the age of 13 in the last year of the war is now only
56 years old, but there is no man of his age who can
point to three years’ service as a real soldier.
Col. Whallen was 11 years old when he enlisted in
the Confederate army. He lived in Alexandria, Ky.,
just across the river from Cincinnati, and when some
youths of the neighborhood formed a party to cast
their fortunes with the South, Whallen, who was
a good-sized boy and of most adventurous spirit,
persuaded them to accept him. On their first start
they saw fighting, for a band of home guards who
learned what they were about undertook to interrupt
them. There was a sharp brush and Whallen shot
one man, wounding him seriously. He met this man
after he returned from the war and they became
fast friends.
Whallen and his comrades struck for central Ken
tucky and joined the Fourth Kentucky cavalry.
Whallen was assigned to Capt. Bart Jenkins’ com
pany, and from that time on, although he was of
an age more suited to the nursery than to the camp,
he was a soldier and knew real war. His company
was chiefly on duty in Southwestern Virginia, and,
although it participated in few big battles, was in
constant fighting and skirmishes, and the work was
harder and more dangerous than that which fell to
armies that enjoyed respites between combats, and
each man had to rely more on his individual prowess.
The Golden Age for August 13, 1908.
Capt. Bart Jenkins says that Whallen was one of
his best soldiers, and General Duke, who frequently
met him during the war, says the same. Captain
Jenkins’ most thrilling story is of the time he and
Whallen were besieged in a house by bushwhackers.
Jenkins was ill and Whallen was hardly large
enough to handle a gun, but they beat off the band
until aid came.
Whallen served until mustered out in 1865, when
he was just 14 years old. He located in Louisville,
and is now influential in Democratic politics in
Louisville and in the State, having a large personal
following. He has business interests that make him
one of Louisville’s wealthiest citizens.
His most cherished possession is a cross of honor
that was bestowed on him by the Daughters of the
Confederacy for his service to the “lost cause”
when he was between the ages of 11 and 14 years,
and the youngest soldier of the Confederacy. —The
New York Herald.
Nelv Auxiliary in the 'Business World.
In the competition of life for existence and suc
cess specialization in education is receiving more
and more its peculiar accent. The arts and estab
lished sciences have long had their distinctive
courses and their appropriate degrees signifying at
tainments in given lines. Now comes that compre
hensive and universal activity knows as “business,”
inspiring and accepting instruction designed to cul
tivate fitness in its countless workers. The educa
tional innovation now under development is the
school of commerce. In effect it is finding place in
specific courses in many universities, and it is also
taking form in separate schools within university
organization. The greater institutions, responding
to modern conditions, are now furnishing instruction
for consular’ and diplomatic work, for banking, for
railroading, for forestry, for insurance, for adver
tising, for journalism, for accounting, and in rudi
mentary ways for business in general. An inter
esting illustration of specific instruction for commer
cial life is to be furnished, with the opening of the
study year, by Northwestern University, Evanston,
111. Not to speak of a four years’ course for busi
ness in its regular preparatory school, this institu
tion is to start in the heart of Chicago an evening
school of commerce, wherein a youth may get general
preparation for a breadwinning employment or by
pursuit of technical studies fit himself for the dis
charge of high administrative posts at no remote
period in his career. Such a school could be most
advantageously located only in a great commercial
and industrial center, where practical business is
in operation in perfected and complex form, and
where great business institutions not only stand as
teachers, but are waiting for talent trained to some
extent in commercial method and technique, inspired
with a due sense of the value of morality, and capa
ble of producing great results with little waste. A
noteworthy feature of instruction in the above men
tioned school will be lectures by successful business
men, not to speak of the service of distinguished
university teachers from other institutions than the
one founding this school of commerce. The head
of one of the country’s largest mercantile houses
will discuss merchandising; a banker will explain
banking and brokerage; manufacturing and real es
tate will be treated in like authoritative way; busi
ness in religious movements will be analyzed by the
general secretary of the Y. M. C. A., of Chicago;
while representatives of the commercial departments
of New York University, University of Wisconsin
and University of Illinois will contribute from val
uable experience to the symposium. The University
of Chicago was a pioneer in considering this im
portant branch of modern training. In 1894 im
portant reports upon the subject had been made, and
the College of Commerce and Administration was
placed under a separate faculty in 1901. A notable
feature of the college institution has been the lec
tures delivered by men eminent in the business world.
Recently a new department, that of consular ser
vice, has been added, which is proving its useful-
ness by the attendance of students. It is stated
that fully 500 students in the university register for
some of the courses provided by this college. The
“three R’s” are still of honorable memory and in
dispensable foundation stones but they cannot make
the commercial and industrial captain of the twen
tieth century. “Business is business.” But what
is business'? Call in all the scientists and yet you
shall only begin to know. —The Standard.
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The Opium Traffic.
Dr. Wright’s investigation of the opium traffic
and the use of opium throughout the world reveals
some interesting facts regarding the growing em
ployment of the drug as a. surcease for the sorrows
of the spirit of man. Medicinally, opium finds its
highest mission in allaying the bodily pains of hu
manity, but its medicinal function has long since be
come secondary to its psychopathic uses. Despite
all the efforts of the British and Chinese govern
ments to stamp out the evil among Orientals, opium
smoking has spread, is spreading, rapidly over the
whole East. The East Indian isles have come under
its spell—Persia and Beloochistan find its devotees
in their kiosks and bazars. Soon it will cross the
blue waters of the Marmora, and the “White Lady”
from the poppy fields will vie in Turkish chambers
with the “Dream Lady” of the hasheesh bowl.
But, after all, it is in the United States that the
use of opium has made the most unusual advances.
It is a popular notion that opium smoking is con
fined to the Chinese quarters in our large cities and
that the Mongolians themselves are the sole smok
ers. Yet since 1878 the importation of smoking
opium into this country has increased more than
250 per cent, while our Chinese population has de
creased in almost the same proportion. It would
seem, then, that the use of the stupefying drug must
have largely increased among our white popula
tion.
This is probably the true explanation. As a mat
ter of fact, the smoking of the opium pipe is on the
wane among the Chinese in America, and, contrary
to the general opinion, its use has not been spread
among the white residents by the Chinese, although
their presence in the cities has facilitated the means
of using it. The real cause of the spread of the
habit among the whites is a moral one. Opium is
essentially the surcease of the hopeless. It is the
cup of Lethe to those who have struggled and failed,
who have run and lost, who fain would forget—and
dream. It is the balm of wounded spirits, the staff
of those whose courage is broken.
Os hopelessness there is too much in the modern
world. The life is too fast for some to keep the
pace. They are left behind, broken, run over, kicked
(»ut of the course by their more rugged fellows. The
highly keyed nervous system breaks under the strain
of high tension, under the humiliation of having
failed. Having lost all desire for endeavor, it seeks
only oblivion. Opium furnishes that. It stirs, too,
the sluggish fancy into a world of unreality that
seems real, and whose beauty is limited only by the
imagination. When a man comes to seek his peace
in the opium pipe he is a psychopathic ease, and
ought to be treated as such.
Fortunately for America, our population is not
tied by religion, custom, or law to a doctrine of
hopelessness. The fatalistic beliefs of the Chinese
are responsible for the dreadful inroads opium has
made upon that people. Although opium smoking
may be on the increase in this country, it is unlikely
that it will ever reach the dignity of a problem.—
The Washington Post.
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“Vodka” bottles in Russia carry the imperial
eagle on the labels —the “vodka” trade is a govern
ment monopoly—but a commission of the Duma,
appointed to consider the drink evil, has lately
recommended that the eagle be removed from the
label, and a skull and crossbones be put in its place,
with appropriate warnings against the use of the
poison.
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