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Show historical IMghlights ZUo Scoti Watte (Rt-lensed by Western Newspaper Union.) Saved by a Chalk Mark AMERICANS remember Thomas Paine as the man who, with his pamphlets, did as much as many a general with his sword to win the American Revolution. They remember re-member that his "Common Sense," published January 10, 1776, was an unanswerable argument for the independence in-dependence of the rebellious English colonies. But they remember most of all the immortal words with .which he began be-gan "The Crisis, No. 1": "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious glori-ous the triumph." What they do not remember, perhaps, per-haps, is that Paine's service to the cause of human liberty did not end fell ''' If' THOMAS PAINE with the successful conclusion of the American Revolution. Although the fight for freedom had been won on this continent when Cornwallis surrendered sur-rendered at Yorktown, it was still being waged in other parts of the world. So Paine went back to his ' native land, England. ' ! One hundred and fifty years ago j this year, he published the "Rights ' of Man" in reply to Burke's "Reflec- j tions on the French Revolution." i For this he was outlawed by the court of the king's bench, so he went i to France where the Revolution had i overthrown the Bourbons and where he was hailed as a hero. In fact, he was elected to the National convention but his republicanism repub-licanism was not strong enough to please the Jacobins. So when he opposed the execution of King Louis XVI and urged instead that the monarch be exiled to America, the Jacobins expelled him from the con- vention. When Robespierre came into power Paine was thrown into prison where he was kept for a year in constant fear of death. Listed among those who were to mount the steps of the guillotine, he escaped by that fate by a strange freak of chance. One morning the keeper of the prison went along the corridor placing plac-ing chalk marks on the doors of those who were to be executed that day. It so happened that the door to Paine's cell was open and pushed back flat against the wall of the corridor. In the darkness of the gloomy old prison the keeper failed to notice this and put his chalk mark on the inside of Paine's door. Thus when the door was finally closed the guards passed it by when they came to lead the other prisoners prison-ers to their doom. Paine was finally released through the efforts of James Monroe, United States minister to France, and resumed re-sumed his seat in the convention. He lived to see the revolutionary cause betrayed by Napoleon Bonaparte, Bona-parte, who had once visited him and flattered him by saying "A statue of gold ought to be erected to you in every city of the universe." Paine returned to the United States in 1802 and settled down on a farm in New York state which had been given him in recognition of his services serv-ices to the Revolution. Later he moved to New York and died there in 1809. He was first buried on his farm at New Rochelle but a few years later William Cobbett, the English radical, removed his bones to England Eng-land with the hope of increasing enthusiasm en-thusiasm for the republican ideas of which Paine had been the principal prin-cipal exponent Cobbett placed the coffin in the attic of his home at Normandy Farm in Surrey. After his death in 1835. the coffin disappeared and no one knows what became of it. Meanwhile the Thomas Paine National Historical association had been formed in America and Mon-cure Mon-cure D. Conway, its first president, began a search for Paine's remains. In 1900 he obtained in London a small portion of Paire's brain. William Wil-liam M. Van Der Weyde, the next president, next took up the search and secured several locks of Paine's hair. But what became of the remainder re-mainder of what was once Thomas Paine is still a mystery, although it is believed that he was secretly j buried in England in the seventies, i I |