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EDITORIAL PAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME PAPER |
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THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday
By THE GEORGIAN' COMPANY
At 20 East Alabama St . Atlanta. Ga.
Sintered as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under art of March 3. 18<9
How Far Back Can on
Remember?
» * r.
You EXISTED Before Your Present Memory Began. Did You Not?
A reader writes us:
I argue pretty often with a man who calls himself an
atheist. He tells me that there is no such thing as heaven or
future life. We argue late at night sometimes. This is one
thing he says and I can not get aroufid it. He says: Every
thing you ever did you can remember. You know that you
were alive yesterday, and the day before, and last year. U
you had been alive, in existence as an angel or in any other
way before you came into this world, yon would remember
that, wouldn't you? If you were going to live on hereafter,
you •would know something about that. too.
. This atheist has a pretty good line of argument, and I
wish von could tell me some things that I could answer
him. He likes to talk with Christian people and make
them sound foolish with his arguments.
We advise our reader to talk to his “atheist friend” about
as follows:
To begin with, you are NO atheist. There is no such thing
as an atheist. An atheist is supposed to be a man who denies
the existence of God. He is in reality a man who makes HIM
SELF his god. His god is usually his own conceit. He suffers
from a more or less permanent attack of intellectual vanity, and
he wants to be able to explain everything for himself and do
everything for himself.
Intellectually he is about on a par with the little child that
can hardly walk, and yet refuses to be held by the hand by its
mother.
Occasionally a man calls himself an atheist, when some
great blow has fallen upon him, and when he thinks he has
lost faith in eternal justice and wisdom. But that is not
atheism, only passing discouragement.
The professional atheist, who delights in undermining the
religious belief of others, is morally on a par with a man who
would delight in attacking the character of some man's moth
er. The respectable man treats a man’s religious faith as he
would treat the memory of a man’s father or mother.
As to this foolish argument about life, before or after this
existence, it is hardly worth answering. But yon might, say to
your atheist friend :
How far back can you remember in THIS life'’ Can you
remember when you were four years old, or three years old. or
two years old? No matter how far back your memory goes.
THERE WAS PART OF YOUR LIFE THAT YOU CAN NOT
REMEMBER AT ALL. was there not? You can't remember
when you were a baby biting your own toes and howling for
your mother. You can’t remember when you first began to
creep along the floor, humping your head against chair legs
and table legs.
Yet you were ALB'E at that time You actually KNOW
that you were alive, and you take the statement from others,
having FAITH in what thev tell you.
How do you know that before this existence itself began
you hadn't others, and thousands of others, perhaps? How do
you know that you haven’t been coming to this earth over and
over and over again, reappearing in different human bodies to
do the work here? You can’t remember your infancy. Why
should you remember former existences?
What absolute knowledge of any kind have you" NONE.
You simply chronicle your little impressions. You live m I
a universe in which the least wonderful thing, the smallest
blade of grass or grain of sand is entirely beyond your com
prehension. Every phenomenon of life is mysterious beyond your
grasp. You take everything for granted the warmth of the
sun. the water and the air that you get free, the fertility of the
earth, the regular seasons, the wopderful balance of our planet
in its whirling journey, and all of eosinic wisdom and kindness.
And yet your foolish little intellectual vanity forbids you to
accept a power, justice, wisdom and benevolence infinitely
above that of the tiny little creatures on this earth.
You can say to the atheist this:
You are a mere denial. Others at least are striving dimly to
realize the wisdom that guides us. Others at least look UP
WARD. not downward. They have gratitude, which is inspira
tion. You haven't it.
The atheist is a foolishly vain person who delights in set
ting his own opinions against those of others, who makes a god
of Ins own trifling, foolish little power. DON'T WASTE TIME
ARGUING WITH HIM.
© Night Fall ©
Ba FRANCES TYRREI L-GII T .
Within, the heartunrest, the strife of brain !
Out there—th* l fall of evening near
The veil of noiseless. ' lose, persistent rain: •
Above, unspoiled In am t<-ar.
One golden spmc m all that waste of srav;
And. somewhere one untroubled bird.
Sang on her thankful sonir for night or day;
Whereat the low wind. list‘rung, stirred*
The dusk with som- h"urf-known refrain
Then all things w«r< « wires blent
The rain that knew it had t tall
The wind that answered. t.> the rain.
The bird so sure of lov thm all-
To bring, in all its full intent.
The meaning 1 had missed all dm
Something bid the turmoil
Things stayed, and vet had paswd avay,
And in my soul was peace !
i
1 HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE
That Is What Nine Men Out of Ten Who Are Failures Say. Look Out That You Don't Say It Yourself.
By TAD
-
i|aKi
1 < Sil fcr?..
j|t!l
No. 3.
Yum was quite a success at baseball, but
the money end of it bothered him and soon
he started to figure the softest way to get
coin He could have helped the grocerynian
or worked in the dry goods store, as the
other lads did. hut then that would be taking
up too much of his time, so he turned fight
manager.
He found a young lad in the neighbor
hood who was quite a scrapper, and took him
around to the little fight clubs, where he got
half of the earned b\ his demon.
*
(To be continued.’)
DOROTHY DIX WRITES
OF
The Man W ho Admires Fat Women
By DOROTHY DIX.
ORIGINALLY the general pub
lic has scant sympathy with
the woman aho brings a
breach of promise suit against the
man who has promised to marry her
ami then welched on his bargain.
It fills us with disgust ami repul
sion to think of a woman exhibit
ing het heart wounds to the cal
lous gaze of the public on the
■ hanee of getting a few dollars
damages for her injuries, and we
marcel that any one could be so
lacking in every sense of delicacy
that she would be able to drag to
the altar, the man who hrfd tired of
her and who was trying to break
away
But circumstances alter eases,
and a breach of promise ease Is now
to the fore in which the woman’s
loss, through the perfidy of her'
faithless swatn. is so great, so over
whelming. so utterly irreparable*
that all ordinary opinion in such
matters must be reversed, and the
woman's actions < ondoned, if not
justified.
The ease in quo tion is that o f
Miss Maud Mitten, who is suing
Colonel Power, of Chicago, for $50.-
000 for breach of promise. It is said
that Colonel Poyver is a rich mine
i-ie-. but that is an insignificant
detail unworth' of consideration.
One Man. at Least. Who
Adores Fat,
Colonel Pow ej-’s money is the
least of his desv ’ble assets What
makes him the pearl of price, the
incomparable, the greatly to be de
sired above al! other men. is that be
. lim.’res fat on the fi minine frame
Do you get that suffering sisters?
H- adores fat —not plumpness, but
' ■r- and in th< more than fourteen
hundred sizzling love letters which
he wrote Miss Mitton within the
space >f two years, and which form
exhibits \. and B and C etc., etc .
as ct idem e in her suit, the ga!l?.n»
c-oionel uses the word ’fat" contin
ually. as an adjective of adulation
instead of as an epithet of oppro-
Yum met the gay fellows then. His one
ambition was to rig himself with a set of
swell scenery and then get a diamond ring
and pin.
“You tion't need any schooling to be a
manager,” he said.
Half the managers never read anything
except a bill of fare and the “Entries for to
morrow,” and they had nothing on Yum.
The money was easy and his time was his
own.
brium, as is the common custom
among men.
Over and over again in these let
ters be calls her "my beautiful fat
Mitten." "My darling fat kitten."
"My lovely fat girl." and so -on,
ringing the usual lover’s changes on
her perfections, but always striking
the high note of his praises with
the magic word "fat." She is. in
turn, referred to as beautiful, ador
able. fascinating, wonderful, but
each of these terms of flattery is
buttressed and bulwarked and
cmwAicd. and pinnacled, so to speak,
with fat
$50,000 Too Little for
Such a Man.
Is it any wonder that a la.dy who
loses a man who admires fat on a
woman tries to get him back by
process of law, or any other way
that she < an"? Is it to be mart eled
at that, having been deprived of the
prop and stay of the affection of
such a man, she seeks what poor
(insolation $50,000 yyould give her?
Hers is no common loss. An or
dinary man, w ith ordinary views on
the straight front subject, may be
easily replaced if he wriggles off
the matrimonial hook, and we may
scorn the woman who is so poor a
sport that she asks to be paid for
the fish she did not have skill
enough to land, but the man who
adores fat women, whose love is of
the elastic variety that spans a 28-
inch waist, and who thinks there
can not be too' much of a good
thing, is of another breed He is
the treasure that only once in ten
mil’ion times may the fisherwoman
hone to bring up in her net. and
w. hen be is lost there is no balm in
Gilead for her wounds.
Mhy fat and love should be as
inimical as oil and water nobody
knows. It is merely a fact. In po
r-ry and romance the heroes are all
tall and slender, and the heroines
I'ving skeletons No woman falls in
love with a fat man No man even,
thinks of falling in love with a fat
'Oman That is why women tor
ture themselves to keep thin, and
why. when one woman yvants to be
catty to another, she says, "My
clear, how well you are looking'
You've gained at least twenty
pounds since I saw you last, haven't
you ?”
only women who go through the
agony of starvation and of being
flayed alive by ma.-seurs, and who
exercise to the point of fainting
with fatigue, in order to keep down
their adipose tissue, know what
luck lias happened to a fat woman
w hen a man condescends to notice
her, much less to fall in love with
her. and only women w ill know how
to estimate the misfortune one has
sustained in having lost a lover who
prefers curves to angles, and a
comfortable, -well fed appearing
lady to a female who has a lean
and hungry look.
With the present mania for
scrawnincss in women, it is gener
ally conceded that fat is the unpar
donable sin, and that for a wife to
permit herself to grow stout is suf
ficient cause for her husband to
pension her off on alimony and get
a new and stringy mate. Think,
then, of the blighting disappoint
ment of this woman, who lias Just
missed getting a husband w ho liked
fat and who would have loved his
wife b‘ tter as the ' ears went by
and she pulled down the scales at a
heavier and heaxier notch.
Happiness of Being Able
to Eat All You Want.
Picture the happiness and the
calm peace of mind of a woman
who could sit down to a good din
ner and eat all she wanted, untrou
bled by the thought that everything
she liked was fattening and that
she got fat at her peril. Could any
money pay for the loss of such do
mestic felicity as that—an Eden
into which the serpent of obesity
had never entered?
The fair plaintiff in this case has
s lust cause, and one that will make
an irresistible appeal to the sympa
thies of her sex. If she is wise, -he
will demand to be tried by a jury of
her peers—a jury of fat women—
and what they will do to the de
fendant will be a shame.
t
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Writes on / ' jr-~a
A Letter From an Ita han
Lady
—and— Msfe:' Tj
The Practice of Chang- 1
ing Names
Written For The Atlanta Georgian .
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Copyright, 1912, by American-Journal-Examiner.
AN Italian lady by the name of
Colombo writes to know why
• the name of her illustrious
countryman, Christopher Columbus,
was changed.
Here is her letter
“I had in my house Germans,
Spanish and French people, and I
am Italian. We al! discussed about
Christopher Columbus, and I said
that the spelling is not correct. The
name is Cristoforo Colombo. The
Spanish and French said the name
is Cristoforo Colon; then, of course,
the American said no, the family
name changed, and they believed
Columbus was right. Now, I was
always taught the family name
never changes, and I am sure the
great discoverer’s name is Colom
bo, as is my name. S© I will be
obliged to you if you will explain
why they change the Colombo
name.”
The lady is quite right in think
ing that the family name should re
tain its spelling and its pronuncia
tion, through change of country,
and during all the passing of the
centuries.
But this law is not followed, for
anyjength of time, in any land
Without doubt, the changes occur
in order to oblige the inhabitants of
the adopted country.
The Italian “Giuseppe”
Becomes Joseph
The handsome Italian boy who
looks like his debonair name,
"Giuseppe,” after a few years in
America, becomes JOSEPH That
most unromantic of names ill be
fits him; but, still, to Americanize
himself, he makes the change.
At a little seashore resort, a.
Spanish cavalier, whose eyes and
deportment are in keeping with his
ancient lineage, has adopted the
commonplace name of White in or
der t» make his little shop more
popular with the people whose cus
tom he seeks than lie feels would
be accomplished were he to use his
Spanish cognomen.
Over in France our good George
Washington, were he alive, would
never respond to the name they use
Antarctic Continent an
American Discovery
By G ARRETT P. SERVISS
ONE of the prettiest examples
of the wiell-known British
practice of appropriation, ex
ercised on every possible occasion,
in all quarters of the world, has re
cently been exposed by General A.
W. Greely.
In January. 1821, Captain Na
thaniel Brown Palmer, a Connecti
cut man, only 21 years of age. com
manding the sloop Hero, of 44 1-2
tons, then on a sealing expedition
to the South Shetland islands, dis
covered the northwestern part of
the Antarctic continent in about
latitude S. 68 degrees, longitude W.
59 degrees. Like Columbus, he did
not know that it was a continent
he had found, and. like him, too,
as General Greely points out. he
was robbed of the honor of having
his name attached to the new land
which he had been the first to
visit.
While the fleet of sealers to
which the Hern belonged was en
gaged, late in 1820. in capturing
seals at the South Shetlands, an
other sharp-eyed Yankee. Captain
Benjamin Pendleton, saw from his
lookout, on a volcanic crater snow
capped peaks far in the south.
Captain Palmer determined to sail
In the direction of these peaks in
search of new scaling grounds. The
result of his enterprise has already
been mentioned —he found the cor
ner of the Antarctic continent
which projects farthest toward
Cape Horn. The distance from the
South Shetland islands was about
70 miles.
Cap'ain Palmer noted that the
land was mountainous and covered
with snow. He entered several
bays and found sea leopards, bu*
no seals. On hi- "ay home he met
a Russian exploring expedition
under Captain F. G. von Bellings
hausen, and communicated to him
full information of the discovery
w hich he had just made.
For about ten years, until 1831
the name of Palmer Land was at
tached to the voung captain's dis
covery. One of his fellows on ’he
expedition. an English sailor.
George Powell, brought out a map
of the South Shetland islands, on
which he locally charted Palmer
Land." and this nomenclature was
promptly adopted be French offi
cial publications.
Then the usual thing happened.
The Enderby brothers. Englishmen.
one of them ‘an influential member
of the Royal Geographical Society.”
fitted cut an expedition, command-
there in speaking of him. ’’Geeorgge
Vashingtone ’
But unless the traveling Ameri
can learns to pronounce this Ameri
can name in the French fashion he
will never be able to male the cab
drivers understand where he wishes
to go, if his destination is "Rue
George Washington ’
There are certain sounds peculiar
to each language, and when a child
is brought up from the cradle to
speak ohly that language it is oft
entimes a physical impossibility for
vocal organs and lips to form
sounds which pertain to other lan
guages without a. long course of
study.
This necessitates changing those
words, when possible, to the native
tongue of that person.
French Can’t Pronounce
“W” and “Th” Easily.
The French man or woman can
not, without a course of training,
say W or TH.
There are no such sounds in their
language.
The English and American can
not speak words containing the
French U so that they can be un
derstood.
Were a Frenchman and an Eng
lish-speaking man to refer to a lady
named Ursula, neither would know
of whom the other spoke, so dif
ferent would be their pronunciation
of the name
Speak of Paris. In France as we
cal! it here, and no one knows
w hat you are talking about. Speak
of going to "Paree" here, and no
one understands.
Up in Flanders there is a most
interesting city which we in Amer
ica spell and pronounce “Ghent.”
A lady traveling rushed to a
ticket office in Brussels and asked
for a ticket to Ghent, and lost her
train before she. was able to find
any one to translate her word into
the GANS, by which name the city
was known to its own people.
And the pronounciation of Gans
was wholly unlike Its own spelling
according to our rules.
ed by John Biscoe, a retired mas
ter In the royal navy, whereupon,
in the high British fashion, the
name of the discoverer was sum
marily thrown out and that of the
"First Lord of the Admiralty”
substituted, and so Palmer Land,
by order of “the mistress of the
seas,” became "Graham Land.”
Tn the usual way, also. British
writers have discredited and ig
nored the work of their country
man's predecessor, preferring even
to give the honor to the Russian
Bellingshausen rather than to al
low it to be retained by an Amer
ican. to whom it justly belonged.
The Encyclopedia Britannica, pub
lished in 1875, “mentions neither
Palmer nor charts his discoveries."
Its new edition, "Americanized for
the United States." “admits In two
lines that 'Nathaniel Brown Palm
er discovered the mountainous
archipelago (?) which now bears
his name," and then “proceeds to
gh ea column regarding John Bis
coe, "whose explorations resulted
in the ousting of the true discov
erer. An honorable exception should
be made in the case of Dr. Hugh
Robert Mill, who says that, as a
matter of historic justice, Palmer's
name should be retained.
Captain Wilkes, the American
discoverer of -the Antarctic con
tingent (as a continent) and wha
gave it that name, has suffered in
in a similar wav from Britisfe
jealousy, misrepresentation, apr
propriation and belittlement
order that his rival, A'ajftain A C.
Ross, may have ah boner
Say s General Greely: di.?-'
crediting of Wilkes bv standard
English authorities has b»Bn bold.,
open and persistent for sevent’
years, although occasionally in
late years some able,
expert like the Scottish scientist
Sir John Murray, has expressed
belief in him.”
Al! this, it must be confessed, -s
not calculated to create much
i aeneral sympathy foi ib«. un-on
cealed dTsappointm&nt of the R r ,
ish geographers in the fair beat
ing out of their champion, fan
tain Scott, by the bra’" Nor
wegian, A.mundsen. in the race
for the south pole. The British
formula in such cases
ries. and it is again illustrated by
the attacks m London on ’he
American investigation of the Ti
tanic honor E’l'yfhin
noranc - ' “boorishness ar( j
’backwoods manners ' thar decs
not come out of the tight fittle
is!a»