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THE t LOWERS COLLECT*
VOL. XXIV—No. 1214.
ATLANTA. GA„ SATURDAY, JUNE 10,1899.
Price $2 Per Year.
HAMPTON’S POVERTY.
The Gallant Old Confederate, Left Destitute in His
Declining Years by the Burning of His Home,
Refuses Charity From Admirers.
Tn two tiny rooms on the “Sand Hills,”
near Columbia, lives in his gray old age,
one of the most dashing, knightly soldiers
that the south has ever boasted.
To this narrow home is General Wade
Hampton driven by the recent burning of
his cottage, the Southern Cross.
The people of the state have offered
him a home, but the proud old general
has refused the offer.
General Hampton Is the head of one of
the most famous old families of the Pal
metto State. His ancestral estate. Mill-
wood, was one of the most beautiful in
the south. Princely hospitality to all
comers was its rule, and pretty nearly
every visitor of importance from Europe
to the United States was there entertain
ed. General Hampton’s father had vast
estates in Mississippi as well as in South
Carolina, and was the largest slave own
er in the country.
Now, within plain view of the gaunt and
blacekened columns that mark the site
of Millwood a kindly, white bearded old
gentleman comes out at intervals from
the two rooms that shelter him to feed
his chickens. Even in his old age—he is
elghty-one, and crippled by the loss of his
leg—he is still a handsome man of dis
tinguished appearance, the Rupert of his
state.
The Burning: of Millwood.
It was the war, of course.
When it came Wade Hampton was one
of the leaders of his state. For the inev
itable conflict he raised the standard of
the Hampton Legion of cavalry—dare
devils and rough riders, every man of
them.
The Hampton Legion simply fought
through the war; fought at every chance
for fighting: fought in the very last skir
mish.
J; T465 Mil wood wnW. h-irnoa., Gen \-Vaj’
Hampton was' practically Impoverished.
The big stone columns of the portico of
the old house stood up stark and useless,
and still stand. Some of the humbler
bricks from the ruins were dug out, and
with them a cottage of four rooms was
built in southern style, with big exterior
chimneys. In time two more rooms were
added, and the cottage then came to be
known as the Southern Cross. It's shape
was rather that of a fat letter “H.”
Here General Hampton lived in the in
tervals of public service as senator, gov
ernor and railroad commissioner. Here
he retired when too old for longer official
service.
In the recent fire the four older rooms
of this cottage were destroyed. The two
newer ones in the rear, connected with
the older portion by a passage, were
saved.
Something else was saved—something
more valued than money. The general
brought out his sword.
General Hampton was awekened by the
cries of little Bruce, a pet collie dog only
only a few months old, of which he was
very fond. He went to the hallway
where he slept, in tlie back part of the
house, and as he opened the door was
driven back by the steam and smoke.
He called to the puppy, but he refused
to come, and he was obliged to close tlie
door. The puppy still cried, .and General
Hampton made a great effort ot get into
the passageway, but the flames enveloped
him and his hair and beard were burned.
The failure of his plucky attempt to res
cue the puppy was what he most re
gretted in the fire. *
In the two remaining rooms in his cot
tage the general lives.
To the east of the house pine trees
guard like sentinels the spot where stood
his beautiful home.
Across the way is the home of Colonel
John C. Haskell, and in a cottage near by
live the tnree sisters of Genera] Hampton.
They were forced to take refuge here two
years ago after the destruction by tire of
their home.
When the people of South Carolina
heard of Generad Hampton’s loss, they
promptly and delicately offered to rebuild
his home. To this offer he has just re
plied:
"It is the duty of every citizen to serve
his state whenever called upon to do so,
and his sole reward should he the con
sciousness of having fulfilled that obliga
tion. If my fellow-citizens think that I
have have been able to serve my state
in any manner I only discharged my duty
in doing so, and I am deeply compensated
for any service rendered by their verdict
of ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’
I am with heartfelt thanks for the great
kindness shown me,
"WADE HAMPTON.”
General Hampton's Birtliday.
Just before the burning of tlie Southern
Cross General Hampton passed his
eighty-first birthday. The manner of its
celebration proved In what regard he is
held.
The “birthday dinner” was an informal
affair, where only his three sisters, his
children and a few friends were present.
Among these lust were Captain Thomas
Taylor, who entered the Hampton Legion
as captain of a cavalry corps and subse
quently served to the close of the war
as one of General Hampton’s aids, and
Ills brother, Dr. B. AV. T ylor, Avh • went
,orL a* -JoVisW :>",<•-! 0" IV.e i d.i-.ii
and became medical director of the cav
alry corps.
There were various callers during the
birthday. The first a Confederate veter
an 86 years of age, drove out in a buggy
alone and brought with him a bottle of
wine in which to drink the health of his
comrade. The AVude Hampton chapter,
Daughters of the Confederacy, held a
special meeting, and later drove out to
present him with a beautiful floral trib
ute arranged with a palmetto and the
Confederate colors.
Another offering was a rope of eighty-
one bunches of fresh violets brought by
three little girls, with the following note:
“Dear General—The little girls in Miss
McMaster's room send you a present of
flowers for your birthday. You have been
a brave man during your SI years. AVehope
you will accept the violets as a birthday
present. YOUR LITTLE FRIENDS.”
None of the little maids was over nine
years old, but they blushed prettily when
each received a kiss in turn, and said:
“General, we will always remember
this.”
A Feathered Sir Galahad.
General Hampton’s figure is erect, his
eye bright, his skin clear and ruddy and
bronzed by active outdoor life. His mem
ory is unclouded and his interest keen in
the topics of the day.
General Hampton has turned his atten
tion to the raising of game chickens as
a diversion in the life he leads. He al
lows no one to feed the chickens but him
self. They perch on his shoulder, sit on
his knee and take corn from his hand.
(Continued on Page Ten.)
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A
GOVERNOR HENRY A. WISE.
• War Governor of Virginia, Whose Life and Works Have Just Been Published.
THE TACOMA AND HANHATTAN.
The First and Latest Sky-Scrapers and Their Relative Size and Construction.
The Tacoma Is in Chicago and the ilanhattan in New York.
A brief summary shows the Manhattan to be 390 feet tall. 100x23x47 feet base,
950 rooms, contains 4,000 inmates, 25.000 visitors daily, cost $2,400,000; foundation,
5S feet deep and to top of flag staff 501 feet; as tall as the. pyramids or the AVash-
lngton monument. 100 feet higher than the dome of the capitol; elevators can
carry 60.000 passengers daily; absolutely fireproof and solid against earthquakes.it
is the wonder of the age. !
CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER.
Page 1.—Hampton’s Poverty—The Child
and Ma>n.
Page 2.—Lost Man’s Lane, serial.
Page 3.—Great South: News Notes—
Sound Advice—George McDuffie. *
Page 4.—Our Household: The Summer
Girl—Three Letters—The Ideal of AVo-
-fflanhood—Axillanelle—Our Letter Box.
Page 5„— Household, continued: The Land
of the Afternoon—Queen Victoria’s
Birthday—Mrs. Maybrick’s Release in
Sight—Nocturnal Visitations—In the Li
brary Corner.
Page 6.—Editorial: Victoria’s Remarkable
Reign—Dewey’s Home Coming — Mr.
Howells’ Choice — The Superfluous
Things—Alcohol Everywhere—Reconsid
ered Reputations—Short Editorials on
A r arious Topics—Bill Arp’s Letter.
Page 7.—A Georgian of the Present—A
Newport Idyl, short story.
Page S.—Our Boys and Girls—Larry, the
Wanderer, serial.
Page 9.—By Streams of Song—“Till Death
Do Us Part,” concluded from last week
Page 10.—Confederate A r ets—Memories of
Northern and Southern Soldiers—The
Blue and the Gray, Decoration Day
Sentiments.-
Page 11.—With Lee in Virginia, serial.
Page 12.—Favors Expansion—Dr. Tal-
mage’s Sermon.
Unsympathetic ITerriment Over Your Boy’s Imagin'
ary Trials Is the Bending of a Twig Which Hay
Make a Crooked Tree—His Woe Is Yours.
Grown-up people get no end of merri-
ment out of the little miseries of chil
dren—so ludicrously disproportionate
seems often the amount of outcry over
tin ir troubles to the gravity of the ex
citing cause. Still—though these grown
up people do not always see it—it is at
best but a topsy-turvey somersault of
imagination that sets on in them till this
hilarity over what they superiorly re
gard as a King Lear tempest in a tea
cup. a detonating thunder peal aborting
in nothing more Impressive than turn
ing a pitiful pan of sour milk. Amid
their own weightier cares and responsi-
oilities, they feel how ludicrous a figure
they themselves would cut if the re
fusal to them of a top or marble should
throw them into paroxysms of agony
hardly warranted in a Napoleon after
the loss of Waterloo. This smile at
their fancied selves they transfer to the
child. Ah! there are AVaterloos and
AA'aterloos, and to the mind of the deso
lated boy the catastrophe that has over
taken him seems as final and irretriev
able as that which shattered the for
tunes of the mighty emperor.
How many, for example, “the potent,
grave and reverend seigniors” who have
got huge delectation out of the oft-told
story of rhe- tragical little fellow who,
in the midst of all his playthings, kept
on bawling and bawling, and to every
query, “What is it you really want?”
returned no other answer but the reit
erated howl, “I want to want some
thing!” In reality, Coleridge’s ancient
mariner, with the despairing cry from
his parched lips,
“Water, wtiter everywhere,
And not a drop to drink,”
■ V 1 *r--j v
iv ■. i in no more wot—i;-?hone a plight.
Yet how merrily his elders smile over
the miniature tragi-comedy. ”A\ r hy
don't you play marbles, fly your kite,
trundle your hoop?” they cry. “I don’t
want to fly kite or trundle hoop!” is the
steady bawl of response, “I want to
want to fly kite or play marbles, and I
don’t want to!"
Alas! the real spectacle here to arrest
attention is the spectacled. A little
scrap of humanity for the first time
touching bottom in personal experience
of what is one of the most afflictive dis
pensations flesh is heir to, of what in
the story of even the greatest heroes,
sages and saints has at periods in
their lives brought them to the brink of
abject desolation. Marbles or meta
physics, hoops or scaling battlemented
walls, tops or rapturous soarings of piety,
where’s the difference if all zest is clean
gone out of them, if no longer they
quicken the pulse or pour through the
veins a tide of red blood of life?
Everybody lias read enough of biog
raphy patfNtically to sound the depths
of the abject despair of great poets and
painters that they could no longer re
spond to the glory and pomp of nature or
to the pathos and triumph of human life;
of great men of action, that nothing
seemed left in the world worth lifting a
finger to do: of saints like Augustine, a
Kempis, Fenelon, Edwards, that their
hearts were dry as summer’s dust, their
affections stirred to no thanksgiving by
blessings more hung in constellations
than the stars in the heavens? Of course
these great men did not go round like the
little boy. vociferously bewailing to all
the world their piteous lot. But they
carried it, all the same, in their hearts
of hearts, and theirs was the like exceed
ing bitter cry older people laugh at in
the little boy, “I want to want some
thing, want to want to laugh and cry
and sing and soar, and I don't want to:
I only want to want to.” Ah! there's
the pang—the gasping cry of the arid
desert to blossom as the rose garden.
“Out of the momhs of babes and suck
lings hast thou ordained praise!” says
the good book. AVell, praise from the
wise, but not from the foolish! So long
as a man takes note of nothing 'but the
actual babe and suckling, he sums up all
in mere vacuum-making lips and inflow
ing mother’s milk. So soon, on tlie other
hand, as he beholds there in action the
same universal principle at work in the
giant oak draining the chemical resources
of a whole tributary acre, or the intellect
of a Newton draining the astronomical
resources of the vast solar system, his
mind is all attuned for praise. Is it oth
erwise with the universal principle “writ
plain” in the instinct wail of the little
follow vociferating, “I want to want
something.”
How glibly older people repeat Words--
worth's famous line. “The cnikl is
father of the man.” and then make
nothing of it. That he is far more
father of himself than his own flesh
and blood father, that what gets started
in the twig will harden into perma
nent trunk and bough in the tree—how
many) palpably take this in and ao-
t-d.'.e ’ i.fn i N>~. . 3 ;■ J 'lgi'.L
to mean when they idly garret the
“child is father of the man?” They look
amusedly on at the little boy who has
encountered his first sad experience of
one of those fatal side eddies in which
the mind goes idly and helplessly
whirling round, unable to get- out" into
the free leaping current of the onrush-
ing stream of life, and they simply
laugh at him. “AA r hy. there is your top,
there is your kite, why don’t you spin
the one or fly the other? There’s plenty
of fun to be had out of them.” “I don’t
want to fly my kite. I want to want to,
and I can’t.”
Yes, there is the eddy and in it the
child helplessly revolving round and
round, now approaching the very edge
of the free flowing stream as it is speed
ing for river and ocean, and now set
back in the same abortive, imprisoning
circle. Look out! sane parent or teacher.
This little miniature tragedy may too
readily 'become father in the coming
man of an enduring tragedy. The child
may be but making the first entry in
some “Amiel’s Life Journal,” plain
tive record of the monotonous revolu
tion year by year of an eddied soul, rich
in endowment and rich in acquisition,
but forever unable to break out of
prison and rejoicingly take the tide
pressing on for larger ranges of life.
Ah! if it were but an eddy in a brooK
the parent were watching, and, in it, a
(Continued on Page Ten.)
GENERAL WADE HAMPTON.
The Gallant Old Confederate Whose Biography Has Just Been Published.
