| OCR Text |
Show As To Great Names JUST now a discussion is going on as to who have been the great men and women of the world. The way it is discussed is a rs'minder of un incident which is said to have happened ast after our Civil war, which, reduced to words, runs about as follows: A group of officers, Union and Confederate, were discussing their respective generals and with a disposition to be fair were naming those they thought foremost in their achievements during dur-ing their war. Of course the names of Lee and the Johnstons, of Grant, of Sheridan, of Stonewall Jackson, Thomas, and others, were mentioned and extolled by their admirers; when a gentleman gentle-man who had been waiting on the others, a gentleman of Hibernian descent broke into the conversation with the question: "Why do you lave Colonel Billy Mulligan out? Look at the man he was! Look at the discipline he had over his troops! Why do you lave him out? What did he say to the Hibil gineral Sterling Sterl-ing Price, when he demanded his surrender? Why do you lave him out? Did he not send back word, 'Go to hell with you and be damned, you dirty ribel!' Why do you lave him out?" There have been many great men and women. wo-men. About the greatest man of ancient times was Regulus. He was taken prisoner and sent by the Carthagenians to Rome to make a treaty of peace, on his word that he would return. He went to Rome, stated the terms of the Carthagenians; Cartha-genians; when the Romans were about to accept them ho plead with them not to, and explained to them that if they would hold to the war another an-other few months they would win. Then he took ship back to be tortured to death by the Carthagenians Cartha-genians in the cruelest manner that barbarism could invent. About the greatest woman of ancient times was that Spartan mother who gave her son as he was going to battle his shield and said to him, "My son, bring It back or come back on it." What was meant by those last five words was simply a reminder that when a Greek was killed on the battlefield, his body was borne off on his shield, and the real meaning of the mother was to either conquer with his shield or die with it. In modern times it. is hard to single out the groat women. There are too many of them; but if the historian could recall the names of the mothers, the women who went with their Iiub-bands, Iiub-bands, starting from the eastern seashoro, and pui'sued their way, raising their famillesf working as a rule sixteen hours a day, while the forests melted before them and the savage was driven back, the mothers who without plaint raised that race of men which existed between 1800 and 1850, there would be names on the list which would shame all the na'mes that have been put out as great. And as for men, if the name of that Arkansas man could be discovered who received re-ceived and entertained a northern guest over night, and in the morning when told that it was a lovely country about there, but was asked what he did when he had to have some money, and who answered ; "When we can't get along without it, under no circumstances?" "Yes, what do you do then?" "Why we take another hitch in our belts and say: "There's no hurry, wo will wait." He would jtund iigh u. oil the Iitt oi. the great spirits that have come to the earth and passed by. Mr. Carnegie na'med iron workers for most of his -great men, and that was, natural, for that was the second great work of his life, working iron. His first great work was working the government gov-ernment to get a good price for his iron. Some scholarly men na'me the artists and poets and statesmen and the strong-minded women wo-men name those who have made a fight for what they believed to be right, either in an intellectual or other ways, which included everything from the mother of Washington to Carry Nation. It is a profitless study. Our idea is that the great man of this age is Marconi. He called down from the ether the power which is the life of this world, 'called it down, put a bridle on it, and raakes it do wonders; makes it carry messages mes-sages from one shore to the other of the sea; makes it possible for distressed ships to give expression to their danger far out at sea and has started a science which when completed will come pretty nearly enabling the poor creatures of this world to communicate direct with those in the higher spheres. The sun throws off electricity all the time. That travels through the cold of space, through the fields that are twelve hundred degrees colder than ice, strikeB our atmosphere and there, by friction is warmed into what makes the sunbeams, I the life of the earth. It is one of those currents 1 that Marconi has caught and subdued, and he I has set going a science which will follow the I sunbeams back to their source and possibly i bring us an explanation of how they are created. I The discovery made by Columbus is a petty I thing compared with the thought of what the 1 wireless will do. I And as for the statesmen and the scholars, they are in truth what Newton said of his scholarship, which was, that all he had done was I to play with the pebbles on the seashore; that I the whole great ocean rolled beyond. I Women's Gains In 1911 I THE women made some signal triumphs during 1 the year just closed. I They have secured suffrage in one or I two great states. They have shaken the House ol I Commons so badly that the proposition now is to 1 give them suffrage. 1 Unfortunately, while we think they ought to I have it, we are bound to say that the way they I present the thing makes sensitive men distrust- 1 ful. They think back and say to themselves, 1 "My mother would never join anything like that. 1 The world is getting out of joint." I A great many people call it an inspiration on their account to do what they have done. Maybe it is, but it reminds one instinctively of the cry of "Homo rule for Ireland." It is said that that will be granted by this present Parliament. But we imagine that when it Is obtained, the majority of women will feel as will the men in Ireland after they have bad home rule for a little while. They are liable to break out into all kinds of riots. In our judgment, there is no discounting the fact that women ought to have suffrage if they I desire it. Wo cannot see why men should deny I them that any more than anything else that is I good, that they set their hearts on obtaining. But we are afraid of the effect, not that it will make mannish women out of many of them, but that it will develop that feature in them which never would have been removed from the germ state except that suffrage was given them. It is an instinct with men as well as with wc- ! men to want something that looks good to them, and very often when they find it they find that it is only a false glare, a lantern in the wrong 1 place on their beach. It is just as liable to strand 1 them as to lead them into the bay of peace. I We suppose it is pure projudice on our part, g but wo .lever Jix l. lady whw is u pronounced g speaker for woman suffrage that we do not have tliej same feeling toward her that we had for the old housekeeper when, in our childhood, we saw her coming with a strap in her hand. |
