Part 1

Bob Taylor’s Magazine.

Contents for April, 1905.

The Contents of this MAGAZINE are protected by copyright and must not be used without the consent of the publishers.

══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ COVER DESIGN _Mayna Treanor Avent_

FRONTISPIECE—The Late Hon. John H. Reagan 2

THE OLD SOUTH _Robert L. Taylor_ 3 Illustrated with photographs.

POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH _Henry N. Snyder, LL.D._ 9 With portrait of the Author.

TO HELEN KELLER 14

MEN OF AFFAIRS 15 Illustrated with photographs.

THE LOST HERD _Joseph A. Altsheler_ 23 With portrait of Author.

THE ISLES OF SCILLY _J. H. Stevenson, Ph.D._ 32 Illustrated with photographs.

LABOR PROBLEMS IN THE SOUTH _Herman Justi_ 39 With portrait of the Author.

TILDY BINFORD’S ADVERTISEMENT _Holland Wright_ 46 Story. Illustrated by the Author.

THE MAN AND THE MATINEE _Sybil Stewart_ 54 Story. Illustrated.

THE OLD ORDER PASSETH _Grace McGowan Cooke_ 61 Poem. Illustrated with photograph.

SOURCES OF SOUTHERN WEALTH _Austin P. Foster_ 62

SOCIETY OF THE FOREST _M. W. Connolly_ 66 Illustrated by Mayna Treanor Avent.

SUNSHINE—Conducted by the Editor in Chief 80

GREETING. FLY IN YOUR OWN FIRMAMENT. THE GOVERNOR. THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR. THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELER.

LYRICAL AND SATIRICAL—Conducted by Vermouth 87

A CUBAN SKETCH _Harvey Hannah_ 90

WITHIN A VALLEY NARROW _Ingram Crockett_ 91

LEISURE HOURS 92

BOOKS AND AUTHORS—Conducted by Mrs. Genella Fitzgerald Nye 95

THE FIDDLE AND THE BOW _Robert L. Taylor_ 103 Illustrated.

THE SOUTHERN PLATFORM 107

POEM _Capt. Jack Crawford._ THE STORY OF JOSEPH _Ida Benfey._ THE MOCKING-BIRD _Mary H. Flanner._ THE YOUTH OF SHAKESPEARE _Frederick Warde._ A CRITIQUE OF THE MASQUERADER _James Hunt Cook._ ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Copyright 1905 by The Taylor Publishing Co. All rights reserved THE TAYLOR PUBLISHING COMPANY, Publishers, _Vanderbilt Law Building_, Nashville, Tenn.

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BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── VOL. I APRIL, 1905 NO. 1 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

THE OLD SOUTH.

By Robert L. Taylor.

One of the most brilliant civilizations that ever flourished in the history of the world staggered and fell with broken sword and shattered shield on that dark day when the flag of Southern hope and glory went down in blood and tears. Its decimated armies, too exhausted from loss of blood to longer pull the trigger, too weak from starvation to charge the enemy, too footsore and too proud to run, stacked their old, bent and battered muskets in the anguish of defeat and went limping back to their ruined homes in Dixie.

There is nothing left of that civilization now but a few remnants of its gray columns—_themselves_ grown gray as if in honor of the uniforms they wore—and the thrilling and pathetic story of its vanished prestige and power lingering among its tombstones and monuments like the fragrance of roses that are faded and gone. Never again will the white-columned mansions of the masters glorify the groves of live oak and the orange and the palm where Southern beauty was wooed and won by Southern chivalry, and life was an endless chain of pleasure. Never again will the snowy cotton fields and rice fields, stretching away to the Gulf or to the river, teem with happy slaves and ring with their old time plantation melodies. Hushed forever is the music of the Old South! Closed are the lips of its matchless orators! The dust of its statesmen mingles with the dust of the heroes who died to save it. Only three are left in the counsels of the nation: Morgan, the brave and the true, the able, the eloquent and learned Senator from Alabama; Pettus from the same state, the peer of Morgan in all the exalted traits of character that distinguish the unswerving and incorruptible representative and defender of Southern ideals and Southern traditions; and Bate, that grand old man of dauntless courage, that fearless soldier with many scars, the hero of Shiloh, the strong and faithful Senator who in private life is as pure and gentle as the mother of his children, and in war as bold and daring a cavalier as ever drew a sword![1] It is true there are other splendid men from the land of cotton and cane in Congress, whose heads are silvered o’er, and who have nobly led Southern thought and sentiment. They are superb exponents of the old ante-bellum civilization, but they were too young to taste the sweets of its glory. Some of them were born soon enough to listen to the lullaby of the old black mammy and to sit in the negro cabin and listen to the blood-curdling tales of uncle ’Rastus about ghosts and goblins; some, like Daniel of Virginia, Berry of Arkansas, and Blackburn of Kentucky, were old enough to follow Lee and Jackson and to fight to the finish; but their youth forbade them from sitting on the throne of living ebony with these older men, who, in reality, are all that is left of the Old South in the national legislature; and in whose presence all men, whether of the North or of the South, delight to lift their hats with that profound reverence which true nobility of character always commands. What a shame there are not four!

Footnote 1:

Senator Bate has died since this was penned.

A sigh of deep regret came from the Southern heart when Missouri registered the decree that Cockrell, the soul of honor, the impersonation of truth and integrity, the soldier and the statesman, must cease to reflect honor upon that great commonwealth as one of its representatives in the United States Senate. But it must be a sweet consolation to him to go back among the people whom he has served so faithfully and so well, with the consciousness of a clean life behind him, both private and public, and with the prestige of a glorious record in the service of his country.

To those who have marked the passing of men in recent years, how solemn the thought that there are so few left to tell the tale of the manhood, the wealth and the influence of that chivalrous race who staked all and lost all save honor in the struggle to preserve its institutions. There is only one remaining who served in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis, in the person of the venerable and beloved John H. Reagan of the Lone Star State. The dews of life’s evening are condensing on his brow and its shadows are lengthening around him, but the burden of his fourscore years and five still rests lightly upon him. The snows that never melt have fallen upon his head, but there’s no snow upon his heart; ’tis always summer there! He has been distinguished through life for his rigid honesty and the fearless discharge of duty, and he will die, as he has lived, the idol of his people. May God lengthen the twilight of his declining years far into the twentieth century![2]

Footnote 2:

Since this article was set up, Judge Reagan, too, has passed away.

One by one the great majority of the star actors in the thrilling drama of the past have made their exit behind the sable curtain of death, and in all probability another decade will clear the stage.

It is one of the purposes of this magazine to aid in keeping ever fresh and green the history and traditions of the Old South; to keep alive its chivalrous spirit, and to tell the pathetic story of the lion-hearted men around whose names are woven some of the greatest events of history. It has been beautifully said that “literature loves a lost cause.” If this be true, the South will yet be a flower garden of the most enchanting literature that ever blossomed in any age or in any land. Some Homer will rise, greater than the Greek, and dream among the cemeteries where its heroes sleep and sing the sweetest Iliad ever sung! The spirit of another Hugo will brood over its battle fields and gather tales of valor and reckless courage; of grim visaged men scorning shot and shell and riding to the cannon’s mouth; of bayonets mixed and crossed; of angry armies clinching and rolling together in the bloody mire of the awful strife; of Death on the pale horse, beckoning the flower of the Old South to the opening grave! He will gather up the tears and prayers and the withered hopes of a dying nation; the piteous wails of pale and haggard maidens for lovers slain in battle; the shrieks of brides for grooms of a day brought back with pallid lips sealed forever and jackets all stained with blood; and the swoons of mothers with the kisses of fallen sons still warm upon their wrinkled brows. He will gather them up and weave them all into volumes of romantic love more vivid and terrible than the story of Waterloo! He will paint in burning words a picture, not of all the horrors that followed the blunder of Grouchy in that battle upon which hung the fate of empires, but of Stonewall Jackson falling in the noontide of his brilliant career and passing over the river to rest under the shade of the trees; a picture, not of Wellington seizing the fallen Napoleon and banishing him to solitude and death on a rock in the sea, but of the great and generous Grant receiving our own immortal Lee like a king at Appomattox, declining to accept his sword and bidding him return to the peaceful walks of private life among the green hills of old Virginia; a picture, not of Ney, who had fought so long and so bravely for the triumph of his beloved France, shot through the heart by cowards within the very walls of Paris, but of Gordon, with golden tongue portraying the last days of the Confederacy amid the shouts and tears of the brave men who had faced him with booming cannon and rattling musketry on a hundred fields of glory; a picture, not of the English Channel as the dividing line between the drawn swords of France and Britain, but of Mason and Dixon’s line healing into a red scar of honor across the breast of the great Republic and marking the unity of a once divided country!

Not very long ago, during the Spanish-American War, there was commotion in a far Southern town, caused by a coterie of young men bitterly protesting against the sons of Confederate veterans wearing the blue and fighting under the old flag. An elderly man with “crow’s feet” at the comers of his eyes and silver in his hair, listened for a while in silence, but finally arose from his chair and said: “Young men, you are wrong. I followed the stars and bars for four long, weary years! I saw its colors go down at last and I straggled back to my native state, barefooted and in rags, only to find my home in ashes. I swore eternal enmity to the stars and stripes and to the blue. But one day, after the battle of Manila Bay had been fought, a Mississippi regiment went marching up the main street of my town and lo! my boy was in the ranks dressed in the Federal uniform. In my rage I rushed to the Colonel and shouted, “Take that blue uniform off these young men and let them put on the gray and show the world how the sons of Confederate veterans can fight!” but the Colonel smiled and shook his head and the regiment marched on eager for the fray. I went home in my fury more bitter against the North than ever before. But when one day they brought my boy home in his coffin and I looked down upon him pale and motionless, in his blue uniform and wrapped in the old flag, my animosity vanished in a moment and in my tears I said: ‘Henceforth that uniform is my uniform, that flag is my flag and this whole country is my country.’” This sentiment is not incompatible with loyalty to the gray nor to the folded stars and bars, but it is the expression of the only feeling that will ever unite all the sections of the Union.

We must recognize the fact that a new civilization has arisen in the South from the ashes of the old, and while her people cherish the past for its precious memories, their faces are turned toward the morning. They are not only producing more cotton than ever before, but building gigantic plants among its snow-white fields, and with the magic of modern machinery are transforming the raw material into finished fabrics; they are pulling down the hills and dragging forth their treasures of coal and iron, of marble, zinc and lead, and are converting them into all the finished implements of peace; they are harnessing their beautiful rivers to the thunder-clad steeds of the storm and turning the myriad wheels of industry with electric power; and they will some day out-herod Herod in the marts of the world.

The representatives and governors of the South, confronted with new and perilous problems, have had the courage to grapple with them, the brain to control them and the heart to turn many of them into blessings. They have brought wealth out of poverty and prosperity out of desolation; and Hope stands on the horizon with a new crown in her hand, beckoning this new civilization to a throne of power never dreamed of by the old. And yet, while the Southern people rejoice in the resurrection of their country from the dead and in the bright prospects spread out before them, let them never forget to worship at the shrine of memory nor to permit the glory of the blessed past to be dimmed by the splendor of the future.

POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.

By Henry N. Snyder, LL.D.

President Henry N. Snyder, of Wofford College, speaks to our readers in a thoughtful and commanding way on a question, that with the rapid and general development of the South is becoming more and more recognized as a vital popular problem.

As the executive head of one of the South’s most representative denominational colleges and as a lecturer on the subject before representative summer schools for teachers, President Snyder has had occasion to bestow upon his theme serious and special study and his intelligent and earnest treatment of his topic tends to present it in a practical and popular form and to eliminate from it those speculative and academic qualities that have so generally characterized its discussion.

A native of Macon, Ga., where he was born during the final year of the Civil War, President Snyder was reared and educated in Nashville where, after completing the course of the city high schools he entered Vanderbilt University in 1883, and from which he graduated in arts, with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He was until 1890 connected with his alma mater, the last three years of which time he was instructor in Latin and student of graduate subjects. He subsequently pursued advanced special work in German and English universities, since which time, until 1902, he was professor of the English Language and Literature in Wofford College. He has been president of this institution since 1902.

President Snyder’s contribution to the actual promotion and solution of his subject has been considerable, as he has served as lecturer on English Literature at the South Carolina State Summer School and the Summer School of the South, at Knoxville, Tenn.

He is a frequent contributor to magazines on literary and educational subjects and is a member of the Modern Language Association of America, and the Religious Education Association.

The American democracy is not so much an achievement as a prophecy. Its chief glory cannot be in what it is, but in what it is to be. It has not attained the measure of its growth till every man in it has a fair chance and an open field to make the most of himself, and has done so with reasonable completeness. It is therefore essentially idealistic, and, however deeply concerned with the present hour’s duty and work, its face is ever set toward a larger future for itself. But this larger future can only be realized in a finer and more efficient quality of the men and women who are to do the work and continue the unfolding life of this free democracy of equal opportunity,—equal opportunity not for the few favored by fortune or circumstance, but for every child born in it. No democracy dare have any other mind with reference to itself.

The most necessary, as the most inspiring, work therefore which a democracy assumes to do is that of seeing to it that all its children are rightly trained for intelligent service and skilled efficiency. This task it undertakes not only that it may live as a collective body but also that each citizen may in the best and fullest manner express his own individual life. In this two-fold view of the matter popular education, the putting of all the children of all the people into the best possible schools, under the best possible teachers, for the longest possible time, becomes the sacred and imperative duty of a democracy that cares for to-morrow as well as for to-day. And the to-morrow of a democracy, in all the manifold activities of its complex life, is determined by what it does for the child of to-day.

From this viewpoint no democracy ever had a better opportunity to test itself and its ability to control the future than that phase of democratic life working out its destiny here at the South. For the conditions are such as to make the task of training the citizenship of the future almost the one thing to be done. The figures representing those conditions have been so often used of late that one is really inclined to resent the very mention of them. Nevertheless, a proper understanding of the conditions entering into this, as into any problem, is the first step toward the solution. Moreover, in this struggle now on for popular education at the South, it is no part of courage to blink a fact because it is ugly, nor of sane judgment to let anything or anybody beguile us into fighting our battle in the dark. We should keep steadily before us the facts as they are, the stupendous nature of the work that lies ahead and how it is to be done, and withal the eternally vital need of doing it now and in the right way.

Now as far as figures can give one anything like an adequate conception, the situation is about this: In 1900 there were 8,683,762 persons of school age in what we are used to call the Southern states,—5,594,284 white persons and 3,089,478 black. It should be said in passing, yet with all emphasis, that the South may as well get used to reckoning the children of its former slaves in both its educational assets and educational liabilities. Justice and expediency are both vitally involved in this view of the situation. Now, of this future citizenship only sixty out of every hundred were actually in process of school training, and of this enrollment only forty-two were, on the average, in daily attendance. The only comfort that one can get in this situation is by looking back and seeing that conditions have been worse and forward to see that they are bound to be better.

These figures, then, represent the mass of material that popular education has to deal with and the actual portion upon which it is really working. Now when one considers the machinery of instruction, the teachers, the school-property, the length of terms, and the capital invested, one sees even more vividly that the democracy of the immediate future must be limited in its development, not alone because its children are not in process of training but because the means themselves are inadequate and inefficient. The entire country pays, on the average, for its men teachers a salary of $49.00 per month, for its women $40.00. The South gets its men for $35.63 and its women for $30.47. Leaving out of consideration the quality of service to be had at such a pitifully low price, one can be perfectly sure that no high professional ideals and standards can be maintained at such rates. But let us look at the matter from another standpoint; upon every child in its schools the South spends $6.95 as against $10.57 for the entire country; while some states of the West spend $31.49, some Southern states are spending only $4.50. It is not surprising therefore to see what this means as to the average length of school term among us: in the entire country every child has a chance to be in school at least 145 days, while the child of the South has open to him only 99 days. Clear enough is it, then, that democracy in this section is, in comparison with the rest of the Union, handicapped in the very beginning of its race. Moreover, the relation of popular education to its best life, in the light of the situation revealed by these figures, is a deep and fundamental one.

How deep and fundamental this is, can be best realized by the comparative density of illiteracy already prevailing at the South. Fifty out of every hundred negroes ten years old and over can neither read nor write, and nearly thirteen out of every hundred whites are in the same condition of darkness. In the United States as many as 231 counties report a proportion of twenty per cent of illiterate white men of voting age, and of the total, 210 of these counties are in the South. Now the conditions represented by all these figures—and at best they can only bring the matter vaguely to our conception—in one sense, on account of the magnitude of the work to be done and the difficulties in the way, are of a nature almost to take hope and courage from us. On the other hand, the absolute need of doing the work, the fruits that must follow, and the progress already made are a clarion call to patience, patriotism, faith, and unresting effort.