Various

“ For these go into the man.
When we shall have seen the Hermitage and the breadth of its fields and hills we shall begin to understand the broadness of the man, for a man’s home is the effect of the cause of that which is in him.
When we shall have seen this country he lived and died in, so bountifully endowed, lying between the Cumberland and the Stone, fit for a king to fight for, we shall understand why Jackson loved it, fought for it—why patriotism burned as a religion in his soul.
To him it was the Union—of the home he killed Dickinson for, that he might live there untouched by slander ”

“ Little things count most in the crises of life and it was Dickinson’s talk at last that gave Jackson the plan of his fight.
“General,” said Thomas Overton, as they rode along, “I have been thinking of the only chance we have got. It’s a bitter pill, but it’s our only chance with a man who shoots as quick and true as Dickinson.”
Jackson was silent. He knew his second; that no gamer, truer man lived; that he was not only a soldier himself, but had been in many affairs of honor before; that he would let no chance escape him. ”

“ Jackson. Of course you will kill him. God is on our side!”
If Dickinson and his crowd rode along with shouts and songs, and wild, reckless fun, very different was Jackson’s and Thomas Overton’s journey. They knew Jackson’s chances for death were five to one. He was an indifferent shot—all high-strung, nervous men are. He had but one chance, and he and Overton thought it out as calmly as ever generals planned a battle. For it was a battle—a battle of life and death, with the chances all against Jackson. ”

“ Never before had it done that, for a truer, better weapon no man ever had. Why this accident, this chance, one in ten thousand? We know not the unseen of life. Who sent it to give Dickinson this chance for his life—to save Jackson from a shadow that would darken all of his?
Coolly, grimly Jackson recocked his pistol. Reeling with pain and loss of blood, but bracing himself to kill, he took deliberate aim, not at Dickinson’s brain, not at his heart, for his chances were small there, but at the middle of his body where he knew he could hit and [359] where death would be sure and lingering. ”

“ As for the negro himself, here are some plain, never-lying, physiological, bred-in-the-bone truths about him which the sooner the world recognizes, the easier will the problem of his being be. The Negro is first and always an imitator. He cannot originate. He cannot go upward, save as he copies from the whites, and if that prop be removed, he will quickly go back into barbarism. There is something wanting in the Negro character—in the very fibre of his being—that says as plainly as God can say it of a race: “Thus far shalt thou go and no further.” ”

“ Growing, it creeps forth, but under leaf and mold, under the hanging vines and protecting shrubs and only when it is strong enough to resist all efforts to change its course does it flow out into the open and run the race of its life. ”

“ There has been so much said on the Negro problem lately that I have inadvertently, as it were, thrown out this. It is good for one to be set straight now and then, on first principles. It is easy for man to get all wrong if he starts out on a wrong hypothesis.
In a letter from a correspondent in Medicine Lodge, Kans., the other day, appears a sentence we have been looking for all our lives. “Facts, ideals and a thrill,” he says, “is a terse definition of every great story,” and he is kind enough to say that Trotwood’s fills the definition. ”

“ Without agriculture all this wealth would crumble away. Yet, is it not sad to contemplate that, while the tillers of the soil have been building such a gigantic structure that they have not received a fair share of the spoils? They have been sowing while others reaped the reward. Presumably the farmers were to blame themselves for the unequal division of the profits. ”

“ If taught to hold the law in high esteem when young in years, he becomes a patriotic man, with a profound reverence for the statutes of his State. The most courageous men, bravest warriors, and the most aggressive leaders are those of gentle natures and of tender hearts. Instill these precepts into the souls of boys, and, existing in such noble environment, it will mold characters that will ornament society and serve to lift mankind from the miasmic swamps of degeneracy to the mountain tops where radiates the splendor of moral grandeur. ”

“ And so was brought on the great duel, one of the most famous of all times and which cast its shadow over Jackson’s life, even to the portals of death. For the almost fatal wound Dickinson gave him broke out afresh now and then during all his remaining days and helped to carry him off at last.
17. The Duel. A great man always has his bitterest enemies at his own home. The nearer they get to him—friends and enemies—the more they love or hate him. It is the weakness of poor, fighting humanity that they are kind to strangers out of their way, but will fight the neighbor who gets in their way. ”

“ The cracker dialect of Georgia differs from the mountain dialect of Tennessee, and so the darky language in Georgia differs much from that in Tennessee.
But at last Negro dialect devolves itself not so much in spelling—in dialect—as in mannerism. This is the fatal mistake which many writers make who have not been raised among Negroes and who seem to think that bad spelling and certain other forms of spelling make Negro dialect. No one should attempt a Negro story who is not thoroughly familiar with his ground, and then not unless he can tell a good story anyway. ”

“ The Lord cannot save us unless we co-operate with him and do our part. While I am, and always have been, an earnest advocate of the greater use of legumes in restoring the fertility of our land, I am fully alive to the importance of putting back all the manure from the farmyard onto the land. I was raised on an extensive truck garden, and there is no reason to doubt the capacity of the soil to yield a product to which no one can yet forecast the limit. ”

“ There is no chance for me to get the first shot. Dickinson can shoot quicker than you and with more chance of success. All you can do is to wait till he shoots and take your chance. If he wounds you or misses you take your time and kill him. If you try to shoot first, you will miss him and he will kill you. It’s hard, but it’s all we can do.”
Jackson agreed and went to the field, a six foot three inch target at twenty-four feet, for a man who could put four balls in four shots into a space not half the size of Jackson’s heart! ”

“ Trotwood’s Department this month will discuss the old-time negro, chiefly, all brought about by a correspondent who writes asking that he discuss it.
The old-time darky is sui generis, and I sometimes fear his race is almost extinct. The modern darky is no more like his ancestors, so far as individuality is concerned, than the Greek of to-day resembles those who fought around the walls of Troy. In other words, the modern Negro has “caught on,” and there is now little difference between him, save in the eternal negro that is in him, and any other class that he happens to run with. ”

“ Maggie Hatfield, who had not been at prayer meeting the night before, and knew nothing of what had occurred, looked at her curiously, wondering what Lawrence Eastman could see in her to be as crazy about her as some people said he was. Bessy was looking her oldest and plainest just then, with her hair combed severely back from her pale, dispirited face.
“It must be her money he is after,” thought the dressmaker. “She looks over thirty, and she can’t pretend to be pretty. I believe she thinks a lot of him, though.” ”

“ Yet nine-tenths of the tillers of the soil are still going on exploiting their land, and when failure comes they wonder why their land does not yield like it used to when they first broke it up and started to cultivate it. These agricultural colleges are grand institutions, and their object and aim is a noble one, that of helping the farmer, and cannot be too highly praised for their efforts. However, I am afraid that a great majority of our farmers have received little or no benefit from them. ”

“ Let every sportsman and lover of bird life in the country take up the fight for such a law, and wage a vigorous and determined campaign for its speedy enactment.
Game birds, to some extent, by virtue of their already deplorable scarcity, have elicited protective legislation. The mind of man imperatively demands recreation. Unless diversion can be found in a legitimate vein he, in his great unrest, seeks that which is not wholesome. ”

“ To make me it has taken fire, water, star-dust, the Spirit of God, the lives of a million people and the lights of a million suns. I have grown from heat and star-dust to the Thing Which Thinks. What has happened to me has been good: what shall happen will be better, for I am Evolution, and Evolution goes ever upward. ”

“ The most critical period of American history was that right after the Revolutionary war, when the States were debating on the question of the new constitution and the West—Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio—were uncertain whether they had any rights which anybody else was bound to respect.
For the first ten years after the Revolutionary war the most dangerous foe the young Republic had was the great, but waning empire of Spain. ”

“ Home in the South means more than it does anywhere else in the world, for the entire law and religion of the South is based on the idea of local self government—the home idea. Throughout Jackson’s life every plantation was a self-governing institution, a little government in itself. ”

“ The experiments carried on at Rothamsteed show conclusively that “continuous wheat-growing is, from a natural point of view, an extravagant mode of farming, only justifiable, like other extravagances, under the pressure of a more or less artificial environment, for the wheat crop has completed its growth and is harvested long before nitrification has ceased in the soil, and there is no crop to take up the balance formed after the active growth of the wheat is over, and these nitrates pass away in sub-soil drainage in mild, genial climates, during the winter.” ”

“ We will toss up for position. There will be no counting. Each man is to hold his pistol down by his side until the word fire is given, then each is to fire as he pleases.”
Jackson was still silent. He knew this was not to his advantage. But as the challenged party Dickinson’s second had the choice of weapons and conditions. He knew that Dickinson, expert shot that he was, needed no time to aim and fire, but that he himself did. Dickinson shot instantly, as a boy shoots a marble; no aim, but that true action of the hand and eye which come together by practice and long instinct. ”

“ The truth is, there is and always has been, a strong antipathy—nay, positive aversion—between the poor white and the darky. Any trouble between the two races in the South is always between these two classes. The old-time Southerners of the better class, who owned the darky, or whose fathers owned him, are his best friends and staunchest supporters. But for them I sometimes think the poor white, with his ignorant, prejudiced ways and his natural hatred of the Negro would drive the darky out of the country. ”

“ It would be well for them to know what constitutes fertility, generally speaking. There are three constituent elements of fertility, namely: nitrogen, phosphate and potash. The first element, nitrogen, is what may be termed the motive power in the growing of the crops. There are inexhaustible supplies of this element in the atmosphere, and it only needs to be brought down. It costs you nothing. Help yourself. But it is a very costly element if you have to purchase it as a commercial commodity. Nitrogen, like the air we breathe, we can only use as we need it. ”

“ But in the next twenty-five years, when the farmers of this country get down to hardpan, when the yield of their crops has deteriorated to such a degree not only in the quantity of the product, but also in the quality of the product, which is more important than quantity, in other words, when necessity compels them, then I look for the fruits of the labors of the agricultural experiment colleges. Renewing the soil is analogous to the redemption of the soul of man. ”

“ Thus it is that, unless speedy legislation is had in order that the insectivorous birds remaining may be retained to do valiant service for their farmer friends, discord will perennially blight the heart of the happy husbandman, and political chaos and turbulence will reign throughout the nation, and the anthems of contentment and cadences of prosperity will not longer pervade the hearts of the honest sons of toil, but will be hushed and swallowed up by the sighs and groans of the imp of insatiate despair. ”

“ If our people could fully appreciate the value of preserving the existing remnant of our birds, without considering its future increase, the halls of our State capitol would resound with an emphatic and peremptory demand for adequate legislation, for the preservation of our birds means little less than the preservation of our agriculture itself. ”

“ When we consider the richness and cheapness of our soil, the salubriousness of our climate and the fact that immigration has not really yet started toward the South, the man who has the forethought now to invest in Southern land will lay the foundation of a future fortune more surely than in any other way. ”