Various

“ One of the several objects of curiosity and admiration to those who visit South Georgia is Forest Falls, near Whigham, a town on the Atlantic Coast Line Railway, in the new county of Grady. A stream of clear, sparkling water rushes over a cliff and falls into a huge sink nearly a hundred feet below, where, instead of flowing on in its precipitated direction, it immediately steals away into the earth as if endowed with life and seeking refuge beneath monstrous rocks and in the depths of a bed of sand washed white by the water’s continual dash in shouts of victory. ”

“ I believe the superb churches of to-day, with the glorious harmonies of their choral music, their great pipe organs, their violins and cornets, and their grand sermons, full of heaven’s balm for aching hearts, are expressions of the highest civilization that has ever dawned upon the earth. I believe each successive civilization is better and higher and grander than that which preceded it; and upon the shining rungs of this ladder of evolution, [438] our race will finally climb back to the Paradise that was lost. I believe that the society of to-day is better than it ever was before. ”

“ His clear, sound judgment, personal courage, untiring activity, genius for war, and absolute devotion to his state mark him as a public man, as a patriot to be forever remembered by all Americans.... I have met many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man who was cast in a grander mould and made of finer metal than all other men. He is stamped upon my memory as a being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom none I ever knew, a very few of whom I have read, are worthy to be classed. ”

“ The knightly spirit of the cavalier, that led their comrades to the opening grave, inspired the heroes who still survived, to face the dark and lowering future as bravely as they had faced the foe in the dreadful past; and buttoning on their tattered jackets of gray, their paroles of honor, they turned their tanned and tear-stained faces Southward and straggled back to Dixie to rebuild their ruined homes and raise the domes and spires of a new civilization in the air above the ashes of the old. Upon their faithful souls there is no stain of treason ”

“ They treat us to the same, so that one never knows whether it is Love or Death who knocks at the door until the latch is lifted, for their footsteps are not heard. They are not alike again after they have crossed the threshold, not alike at all, ever. Each knocks but once at the door of our hearts, and if we do not answer, but sit still and wait and there comes no sound, not even the sound of his retreating footsteps, it was Love. If you do not answer, but sit still in the gloom and silence, and there is no other knock and the latch lifts, it is Death. ”

“ I see them swinging corners in the old Virginia reel to the music of the banjo and the fiddle and the bow, until the dust rises above them and swings corners with the moonbeams in the air. I see the old black mammies soothing their masters’ children to sleep with their lullabies. I see the whole black race rejoicing in their transplantation from darkest Africa and gladly serving the white race who led them into the light [431] of civilization and the Christian religion, leaving not an infidel among all those millions of slaves. ”

“ Why should I when the most eloquent tongues and pens of two continents have labored to present, with fitting eulogy, the character and career of our cavalier par excellence? It is the South’s patent of nobility that he is to-day regarded, the world over, not only as ranking with the greatest military geniuses history has known, but as having less of the selfish littleness of ordinary humanity than any of his compeers. ”

“ I see the remnants of the Confederate armies giving shelter and food and raiment to this helpless race and furnishing them with land and plows and mules, and building [432] school houses and taxing themselves to promote the education of the negro children at their doors. I see the sturdy veterans at work in every department of life, and new cities and towns rising in the track of war, and the devastated South blossoming like the rose. ”

“ A grave in one’s native land is better. But to-day a new hope lights up my horizon, a new aim presents itself to my endeavors; it is to go and surround you with attentions and prove to you that if for the last fifteen years many things have come between our hearts, nothing has been able to uproot filial piety, the first foundation of all virtues; I have suffered much. Sufferings have destroyed my illusions and have dispelled my dreams; but happily they have not weakened the faculties of the soul, those faculties which permit one to comprehend and love all that is good. ”

“ We were meeting a negro funeral procession—good old Uncle Pete, as good an old-time darky as ever lived. I had known him well, a fellow of infinite jest. But I did not recognize him promptly, now—at least as I soon saw him.
I hate to write what followed. I felt faint and sick.
Be it known that every negro loves to be buried behind white mules. It is his glory and his religion. ”

“ Pessimism is the nightmare of the world. It is the prophet of famine, pestilence and human woe. It is the apostle of the Devil, and its mission is to impede the progress of civilization. It denounces [435] every institution established for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery of injustice. It sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity. It brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. ”

“ In the confusion no one had thought of Black Hawk, but it seemed he had not forgotten his brave rider, for he actually followed the path made by his colonel, or rather those who carried him to the hospital—almost tracking him by his blood—straight up to the hospital tent, and to the surprise of Colonel Bate, who had been badly but not seriously wounded in two places, one ball going through his shoulder, he poked his head in the tent door and affectionately whinnied to his master while the surgeon was dressing his wound. ”

“ There was once a civilization in the beautiful land of the South more brilliant than any that ever flourished in all the tide of time. About its ruins there clings a pathetic story of vanished dreams made holier and sweeter by lips that are dust and hearts that are stilled forever. There is nothing left of that civilization now but the memory of its departed glory lingering among its tombstones and monuments like the fragrance of roses that are faded and gone. It was an imperial civilization, ruled from a throne of living ebony ”

“ I see the white-columned mansions of the masters rising in groves of maple and live oak, where perfect types of Caucasian beauty are wooed and won by men as brave and courtly as ever shivered lances in the romantic days when knighthood was in flower. I see the snowy cotton fields stretching away to the horizon, alive with toiling slaves who, without a single care upon their hearts, sing as they toil from early morn till close of day; and when their task is done I hear them laughing and shouting at the negro quarters in the gathering shadows of the evening. ”

“ Sometimes Love leaves the heart, but never if God comes first, for he is truer in the presence of the King, and the King is happy when Love is near. Sometimes Love comes first, and while he sits waiting, Death knocks; then he flees from the soul, for he fears the face of his brother, unless God is there, for Death always smiles when he sees God. Sometimes Death comes first, and then neither Love nor God can enter. This and this only is Tragedy with us in Dunvegan. ”

“ Poor fellow, poor Ervin. God have mercy on his mother! Don’t tell Annie, Miss—don’t tell her he’s dead. It would kill his mother. He loved his mother—and now he’s dead!”
Death—Love.
Love and Death are brothers, and we would tell them so, could we but persuade them to forget their mutual hatred long enough to come and listen to our words. For Love is life, and Death is death, and they never meet. Love never dies. There is a third brother, the youngest of the three, and his name is Fancy, who closely resembles the oldest. Death often crosses his pathway. ”

“ I would not recall those bloody wounds nor wake the hatreds of Civil War, but rather let me lift the curtain and give you a glimpse of the glory and the grave of that civilization.
I lift the curtain and see the old South enthroned amid the luxuries of peace and plenty. Heaven never smiled upon a happier people nor upon a land more beautiful; the eagles never soared under softer skies. ”

“ Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the facial muscles of a corpse.
God deliver us from the fools [436] who seek to build their paradise on the ashes of those they have destroyed! God deliver us from the fools whose life-work is to cast aspersions upon the motives and characters of the leaders of men! ”

“ Now, a white mule is an old mule, and the older the mule, the bigger the fool, and when they peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always do. When I first saw them I was looking at the north end of that funeral procession. The next instant I was looking at the south end. And as the thing turned over once to adjust itself to different direction, a venerable old darky shot out of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a two-dollar coffin, and everything in that two miles of vehicles turned tail at the same time. ”

“ Shall we permeate their lives with the dreariness of drudgery, the weariness of eternal struggle, the unworthiness of our fellow men and the hopelessness of reward? Or shall we live each day in joyousness of spirit, in happy accomplishment of duty, in serene confidence in the worth of mankind, believing that “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,” attracting to ourselves the happiness and sunshine we radiate? ”

“ The season brings a strange mingling of mirth and superstition and reverence. The smallest lad is familiar with its origin, and can tell the story of the three wise men who journeyed from afar over plain and mountain, until, led by the wondrous star in the East, they knelt beside the cradle of the infant King and worshiped Him. The wealthier class bring their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh to place upon the altar, as did those wise men of old, and the humble rustic invokes a blessing upon his harvest fields. ”

“ What do they know at Washington, a thousand miles away, with their ears sealed for fear they’ll have another war on their hands? The government—all governments are abstract things, at best. It is the men in them that count—the concrete agents who carry out the things to be done, and there are things every man is called on to solve for himself, both in war and in life—there are times when the general is the government, and if he fails to rise to the occasion he is a flunk and a failure.”
He was still walking around the room, talking more to himself than to Jack. ”

“ The long table spread for the feast is a wonder of art fresh from the hands of the pastry cook and confectioner. There are pasteboard castles to be blown up in jest, the rarest of old claret flowing like blood from the side of a wounded stag, with all sorts of curious and dainty conceits set forth amid sparkling glass and silver, while the guests playfully pelt one another with eggshells filled with rose-water. ”

“ Here and there a man drops his musket, throws up his hands and falls backward dead; or another lunges heavily forward on hands and knees, mortally wounded; and no one who has seen it will ever forget that look of agony unspeakable on the faces of those stricken by sudden death in battle.
For what seemed an interminable time the angry buzz of bullets clipped by our ears and overhead ”

“ England had slavery also, and the Exeter Hall people, like those of Faneuil Hall, were fanatics. They exalted the negro and ascribed to him attributes, qualities and possibilities equal to those of the white race, and hated his owners and the constitution, government and laws of this republic as founded by the fathers. To-day many of the triflers with the stern facts of anthropological and ethnological science, who distort the truths of history while laboring under the magic spell of this fanaticism, confound all dark, dusky or colored peoples with the true negro of Africa. ”

“ But I loved Templeton and I love you, my boy.”
The other bowed his head reverently.
“The girl loves you, Jack; I know it. I know when a woman loves. She is wretched to-night. Why, didn’t I see her when she came home—in spite of Bristow, everybody—everything—with her face set like a flint monument in grief. To-night she was weeping in her room. Mrs. Jackson told me—by God, but you have broken her heart, and you must tell me, Jack.” ”

“ Splendid sugar and coffee plantations left untilled, grew up in wild growths, the rich resources of the island were consumed. For a brief space the orderly habits of the white race flickered, and then went out in darkness, eclipsed by a saturnalia of idleness and crime. Negro nature, left to itself, relapsed into barbarism.
“But,” says Froude, the most distinguished modern English historian, “behind the immorality, behind the religiosity, there lies active and live, the horrible revival of the West African superstition; the serpent worship, the child sacrifice, and the cannibalism. ”

“ Doubtless I am unable to forget that you placed yourself in this position out of mere wantonness, but I suffer from your sufferings because I had hoped for some solace in your happiness, a happiness which should be independent of all the glories of life. Moral sufferings have reduced me to the point of being no longer able to stand upright, or even to rise from my chair without assistance ”