Show UNCOMMON AMERICANS BY elmo eimo a 0 we western s tem 1 tarr news p afef scott watson union he gave Us craps HEN bernard xavier philippe ade de marigny de mandeville was sixteen years old his father who was louisianan Loui richest creole planter died and left his entire fortune to the wild and headstrong son whose every whim had been granted by the indulgent father within two years bernards guard tan inn finding him uncontrollable shipped him off to england in the hope that life abroad might improve his behavior but it for young marigny became even more dissipated in london than he had been in new orleans and finally his guardian ordered him to return home the boy came back bringing with him a new dice game called hazard which was then all the rage in england and france this was at the beginning ot of the nineteenth century and hordes 0 of americans were swarming into the capital of their newly acquired louisiana territory the pleasure lov ing creoles cheoles looked upon these energetic and unmannerly visitors with disgust and their dislike was fully reciprocated by the americans they regarded the creoles cheoles as an effete alien race and spoke of them slurring ly as johnny cra frogs when they saw them huddle around a table playing Mari gnys new game of hazard they called it johnny cra game but these yankees soon found themselves fascinated by the game and taking part in it with the creoles cheoles Cr eoles gradually they shortened the name to Crapa and eventually it became craps the name it bears to this day meanwhile the man who had introduced it to this country was steadily losing his great fortune little by little part of it went because these despised yankees were better with the galloping dominoes dominges dom inoes than he was part of it went because he was given to making grand gestures such as lighting his cigar with five and ten dollar bills twisted into spills eventually his fortune was all gone and this grand seigneur of the new world was reduced to the barest necessities of life in a tiny cottage attended only by one loyal old in 1863 then a feeble old man of eighty three he tripped over his own doorstep and died as the result of the fall thus prosaically sai cally ended the life of the last great creole gentleman it had spanned the whole history of his state and city over it he had seen floating the flags of five nations spain france the united states and the confederacy an experience given to few if any of his fellow americans first father of democracy E A R L Y historians wrote him down as a scurrilous young journalist who yapped at the father of his country because when george washington retired from the presidency he printed in his paper a bitter attack on that chief executive even going to the lengths of declaring that if ever a nation was debauched by a man the american nation has been by washington but modern scholarship has revised that opinion and has shown that he and his grandfather rather than thomas jefferson and andrew jackson were the real fathers of american democracy his name was benjamin franklin bache and his grandfather was w s benjamin B G na franklin at his giandi knee in both america and in in france where he lived from 1778 1776 to 1785 he learned the meaning of real democracy the elder ben may have preached the lessons but it was young benny benn y who put them into practice he founded the philadelphia general era I 1 advertiser later the aurora and in it he attacked washington because washington was the symbol of the federalist faith which he was convinced was standing in the way of the development of the democratic ideal in the new republic he be also attacked john adams and that led directly to the passage of the alien and sedition laws under which statutes benny bache was arrested for libel libe I 1 but bu t never prosecuted he was still lighting fighting when death in the form of the yellow fever ended his tempestuous cari career on september 5 1798 1793 ile he was only twenty nine n inc years old but he hid III A labored greatly and accomplished much for in what modern historians called the second ameri can revolution bache and his crusading newspaper had broken the power of the F federalists and snapped the link between L them and england thereby he freed the n new ew nation natio n from the english idea of a semi monarchical form of government n he made certain the victory ol of the new R republican D democratic tic party which with the election of thomas jefferson belan began a real democratic rule in this country for this he should be remembered rather calist than 11 as a scurrilous young jour |