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II t! I w Itti ■■ 4 «« < ««<
r _ «&* _mowocaoaD* j
Vol. i. J>
the mamm
PUBLISHED BY THE
Phi Delta and Ciceronian Societies.
—
, MACON, GA., March, 1886.
J V \v:slnTH^ AN ’ } Editors in Chief.
Associate Editors:
T. H. BOONE, P. D. H. R. HARPER, C
L. M. BURRUS. P. D. L. KENNEDY, C.
The Monochord is issued about the 15th of every i
Collegiate Month, making nine issues per annum.
Terms : One Dollar.
Contributions solicited from Students and Alumni.
The Place where Jefferson Davis
was Captured.
As only a few, perhaps, of my
readers have visited the spot where
the distinguished chief of the
“Southern Confederacy” was cap
tured, (or made prisoner,) hy the !
"'"Federal forces in the Spring of|
1865, and as I visited it in the year
1883, I should like to give a brief
description of this now historic
spot, for the benefit of those who
have never seen it.
As the circumstances of the cap- j
ture of Mr. Davis are well known,
I will not relate them again, but
will proceed at once to describe
briefly the place where he was cap
tured.
In the Southern part of Georgia,
along both sides of the Alapaha
river, lies Irwin county. In the
central part of this county is the
little village of Irwinville, hence
forth to be famous in history as
the place near which Jefferson
Davis, President of the Confederate
States, was captured. One would
hardly take this to be a place of
note, as the village consists of but
five or six houses, including the
court house and jail, and has cer
tainly nothing to make it attractive.
But noted places are not always
the most attractive in appear
ance. Irwinville is situated
in the open piney woods, so
characteristic of Southern Georgia,
on the line of what may be called
a rail road in the germ, which many
years ago had been graded across
the country from the Ocmulgee
river to the Flint, and had never
developed beyond that stage of
rail road existence. Irwinville is
DEVOTED TO THE INTEREST OF MERCER UNIVERSITY.
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almost isolated from the rest of the
world, as it has no rail road con
nections, and is off from the river.
About half a mile north of the vil
lage is the place where Mr. Davis
was taken prisoner, by a portion of
the Federal army.
In casually passing along the
road, one would never suppose that
he was in the close neighborhood
of so important a spot. Nothing
is here to mark it as the scene of
so interesting an historical event.
There is no lofty shaft of marble or
granite to perpetuate its memory;
no humble memorial stone to re
call it to the mind of the passer-by;
not even a board with its rude in
scription in chalk or charcoal, to
rescue it from oblivion. A few
small earthen mounds are scattered
about, but for what purpose they
were thrown up, or whether they,
have any connection with the event
that has given the spot its celebrity,
I could not learn. A few pines,
bearing scars made by bullets, are
the only signs left of the brief fight
on the memorable occasion, be
tween two detachments of the Fed
eral forces, who mutually mistook
each other for enemies. But even
those few signs by which the place
now may be found, will soon have
passed away. For while the coun
try is sparcely settled now, the
settlements being sometimes four
or five miles apart, it is being
settled up very fast. The wood
man’s axe is playing havoc with the
extensive pine forests, the saw-mills
are fast converting the pines into
lumber, to be shipped to different
parts of our own country, and even
to foreign markets, and turpentine
is being extracted from the pines to
be distilled and exported.
Who knows but that the tree
which sheltered Mr. Davis from the
dew on that last night, may yet
enter into the structure of some
yankee dwelling for many months
of freedom and repose, or that the
rosin extracted from the tree may
help to make a yankee bonfire ?
Perhaps at no distant day the spot
will be in cultivation and may pro
duce the cotton to furnish the
yankee a garment or even Mr. Da
vis himself may wear a garment
made from it. D. L. H.
Mercer University.
MACON, GA., MARCH, 1886.
Speech. Delivered before P.D. Society.
By L. M. Nunnally. Junior Orator, for
February 27th.
I have often thought that there
is a striking similitude between
what grammarians call the “parts
of speech,” and the several stages
of a man’s life; and between the
cases, moods, tenses, and other
variations of these parts of speech,
and the different phases of charac
ter at corresponding periods of life.
In infancy, man is an “article,” an
“indefinite” “article;” what he is
or what he may be is very difficult
to tell. Even when he has out
grown the period of “bib and tuck
er,” and has become a college boy
he frequently preserves the indefi
niteness of the infantile period, and
may be considered an unfinished
article. He is cloth only half
\i-oven, a garment only half made,
an unblown bud, a crysalis in
short, with unknown possibilities
and potentialities of* development,
or destined to stop at this indefi
nite and unfinished stage. If one
may never aspire to anything be
yond an article, let him at least try
to be a definite article. Let him
point to something great, though
he should never reach it. Let him
aim high, even though he should
shoot low, and by so doing he may
cripple a sparrow, though he
should fail to kill an eagle.
From an article, youth advances
to the dignity of an adjective, with
qualifying and describing power
and the capacity of rising to a su
perlative degree of excellence. As
an adjective one should avoid the
comparative degree since com
parisons are frequently odious.
Let him begin with the positive de
gree, though to be sure of this last
advice seems rather superfluous;
for at this age boys are naturally
prone to be positive—positive in
their opinions, positive in their
convictions of their own wisdom,
so positive very often, as to be
positively ridiculous and positively
offensive. But let him aim at the
superlative degree, and if he can’t
get “e-s-t” attached to his name,
he may by a little effort get “E-s-q,”
and this will answer quite as well.
As the young man rises he ad
vances to the dignity of a “noun,”
which means a name—a name of
of any person, place or thing; in
his case it will be the name of per
son, and as person comes from the
Latin — per-sona, the mask worn
by actors through the mouth piece
of which the voice gave forth
sound, he will make himself re
nown by his sound, like the ambi
tious Soph, just before commence
ment time. Let him make him
self heard in the land. Let him
blow his own horn, and blow it
loudly and long, for this is the most
effectual way of asserting ones self
and demonstrating ones own per
sonality.
A college boy is a common
noun, and sometimes a very com
mon noun, indeed. It is a very
rare thing to find a proper noun
among them, even with the incen
tive off med?! for “general
fence,~it is only now and then that
a perfectly proper one can be met
with.
They naturally incline to be col
lective ; collecting in the corridors
of the college building, in spite of
the warnings of the faculty; col
lecting around the doors of
churches, and other public build
ings, to the annoyance of the young
ladies. The college boy is as
gregarious creature as the “English
sparrow,” and quite as noisy and
mischevious. His face is seen ev
erywhere and wherever he is seen,
he is sure to make himself heard.
But names perish. To be a
noun, is to be short lived. Qual
ities fade, hence to be an adjective
is a doubtful good, but the great
enduring existence is an action.
Actions are immortal. Undying
vitality is breathed into them. Ac
tions are the incarnation of thought,
the embodiment of purpose, and is
imperishable. Then let every one
be a verb, that which expresses
action, without which, the sentence
of life is meaningless. “Nouns” are
empty names, and “adjectives” are
only shadows, ever changing, but
verbs are living forces, throbbing
energies, immortal powers.
Let every one be a verb, not a
passive verb to express action re
ceived, or a neuter verb denoting a
bare existence, but an active tran
sitive verb, in the indicative mood
and present tense. Yes; let him
No. 4
