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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. s hiwi aiansEEE® a® swyiswia® a® sisi®®®sei® a®■ sEEiaiaEiaiai sisieisei tu ® ® 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