Part 7

But the horizon of Shakespeare was broader than them all. There is no depth which he has not sounded, no height which he has not measured. He walked in the gardens of the intellectual gods and gathered sweets for the soul from a thousand unwithering flowers. He caught music from the spheres, and beauty from ten thousand fields of light. His brain was a mighty loom. His genius gathered and classified, his imagination spun and wove; the flying shuttle of his fancy delivered to the warp of wisdom and philosophy the shining threads spun from the fibres of human hearts and human experience; and with his wondrous woof of pictured tapestries, he clothed all thought in the bridal robes of immortality. His mind was a resistless flood that deluged the world of literature with its glory. The succeeding poets are but survivors as by the ark, and, like the ancient dove, they gather and weave into garlands only the "flotsam" of beauty which floats on the bosom of the Shakespearean flood.

Oh, Shakespeare, archangel of poetry! The light from thy wings drowns the stars and flashes thy glory on the civilizations of the whole world!

"Unwearied, unfettered, unwatched, unconfined, Be my spirit like thee, in the world of the mind; No leaning for earth e'er to weary its flight; But fresh as thy pinions in regions of light."

All honor to the poets and philosophers and painters and sculptors and musicians of the world! They are its honeybees; its songbirds; its carrier doves, its ministering angels.

VISIONS OF DEPARTED GLORY.

I walked with Gibbon and Hume, through the sombre halls of the past, and caught visions of the glory of the classic Republics and Empires that flourished long ago, and whose very dust is still eloquent with the story of departed greatness. The spirit of genius lingers there still like the fragrance of roses faded and gone.

I thought I heard the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer, rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing like an oracle in his academic shades.

The canvas spoke and the marble breathed when Apelles painted and Phidias carved.

I stood with Michael Angelo and saw him chisel his dreams from the marble.

I saw Raphael spread his visions of beauty in immortal colors.

I sat under the spirit of Paganini's power. The flow of his melody turned the very air into music. I thought I was in the presence of Divinity as I listened to the warbles, and murmurs, and the ebb and flow of the silver tides, from his violin. And I said: Music is the dearest gift of God to man. The sea, the forest, the field, and the meadow, are the very fountain heads of music.

I believe that Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all the great masters, caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians. I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the rolling billows of the angry ocean.

NATURE'S MUSICIANS.

I sat on the grassy brink of a mountain stream in the gathering twilight of evening. The shadowy woodlands around me became a great theatre. The greensward before me was its stage.

The tinkling bell of a passing herd rang up the curtain, and I sat there all alone in the hush of the dying day and listened to a concert of nature's musicians who sing as God hath taught them to sing. The first singer that entered my stage was Signor Grasshopper. He mounted a mullein leaf and sang, and sang, and sang, until Professor Turkey Gobbler slipped up behind him with open mouth, and Signor Grasshopper vanished from the footlights forevermore. And as Professor Turkey Gobbler strutted off my stage with a merry gobble, the orchestra opened before me with a flourish of trumpets. The katydid led off with a trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E. flat cornet; the bumblebee played on his violoncello, and the jay-bird, laughed with his piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum, and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole's leading violin. But it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I saw a youth standing there in the shadows with his arm around "something" and holding his sweetheart's hand in his. He bent forward; lip met lip, and there was an explosion like the squeak of a new boot. The lassie vanished into the cottage; the lad vanished over the hill, and as he vanished he swung his hat in the shadows, and sang back to her his happy love song.

Did you never hear a mountain love song? This is the song he sang:

"Oh, when she saw me coming she rung her hands and cried, She said I was the prettiest thing that ever lived or died. Oh, run along home Miss Nancy, get along home Miss Nancy, Run along home Miss Nancy, down in Rockinham."

The birds inclined their heads to listen to his song as it died away on the drowsy summer air.

That night I slept in a mansion; but I "closed my eyes on garnished rooms to dream of meadows and clover blooms," and love among the hollyhocks. And while I dreamed I was serenaded by a band of mosquitoes. This is the song they sang:

"Hush my dear, lie still and slumber; Holy angels guard thy bed; Heavenly 'skeeters without number Buzzing 'round your old bald head!!!"

PREACHER'S PARADISE.

There is no land on earth which has produced such quaint and curious characters as the great mountainous regions of the South, and yet no country has produced nobler or brainier men.

When I was a barefooted boy my grandfather's old grist mill was the Mecca of the mountaineers. They gathered there on the rainy days to talk politics and religion, and to drink "mountain" dew and fight. Adam Wheezer was a tall, spindle-shanked old settler as dark as an Indian, and he wore a broad, hungry grin that always grew broader at the sight of a fat sheep. The most prominent trait of Adam's character, next to his love of mutton, was his bravery. He stood in the mill one day with his empty sack under his arm, as usual, when Bert Lynch, the bully of the mountains, with an eye like a game rooster's, walked up to him and said: "Adam, you've bin a-slanderin' of me, an' I'm a-gwine to give you a thrashin'." He seized Adam by the throat and backed him under the meal spout. Adam opened his mouth to squall and it spouted meal like a whale. He made a surge for breath and liberty and tossed Bert away like a feather. Then he shot out of the mill door like a rocket, leaving his old battered plug hat and one prong of his coat tail in the hands of the enemy. He ran through the creek and knocked it dry as he went. He made a bee line for my grandfather's house, a quarter of a mile away, on the hill. He burst into the sitting-room, covered with meal and panting like a bellowsed horse, frightening my grandmother almost into hysterics. The old lady screamed and shouted: "What in the world is the matter, Adam?" Adam replied: "That there durned Bert Lynch is down yander a-tryin' to raise a fuss with me."

But every dog has his day. Brother Billy Patterson preached from the door of the mill on the following Sunday. It was his first sermon in that "neck of the woods," and he began his ministrations with a powerful discourse, hurling his anathemas against Satan and sin and every kind of wickedness. He denounced whiskey. He branded the bully as a brute and a moral coward, and personated Bert, having witnessed his battle with Adam. This was too much for the champion. He resolved to "thrash" Brother Patterson, and in a few days they met at the mill. Bert squared himself and said: "Parson, you had your turn last Sunday; it's mine to-day. Pull off that broadcloth an' take your medicine. I'm a-gwine to suck the marrow out'n them ole bones o' yourn." The pious preacher plead for peace, but without avail. At last he said: "Then, if nothing but a fight will satisfy you, will you allow me to kneel down and say my prayer before we fight?" "O yes, that's all right parson," said Bert. "But cut yer prayer short, for I'm a-gwine to give you a good sound thrashin'."

The preacher knelt and thus began to pray: "Oh Lord, Thou knowest that when I killed Bill Cummings, and John Brown, and Jerry Smith, and Levi Bottles, that I did it in self defense. Thou knowest, Oh Lord, that when I cut the heart out of young Sliger, and strewed the ground with the brains of Paddy Miles, that it was forced upon me, and that I did it in great agony of soul. And now, Oh Lord, I am about to be forced to put in his coffin, this poor miserable wretch, who has attacked me here to-day. Oh Lord, have mercy upon his soul and take care of his helpless widow and orphans when he is gone!"

And he arose whetting his knife on his shoe-sole, singing:

"Hark, from the tomb a doleful sound, Mine ears attend the cry."

But when he looked around, Bert was gone. There was nothing in sight but a little cloud of dust far up the road, following in the wake of the vanishing champion.

BROTHER ESTEP AND THE TRUMPET.

During the great revival which followed Brother Patterson's first sermon and effective prayer, the hour for the old-fashioned Methodist love feast arrived. Old Brother Estep, in his enthusiasm on such occasions sometimes "stretched his blanket." It was his glory to get up a sensation among the brethren. He rose and said: "Bretheren, while I was a-walkin' in my gyardin late yisterday evenin', a-meditatin' on the final eend of the world, I looked up, an' I seed Gabrael raise his silver trumpet, which was about fifty foot long, to his blazin' lips, an' I hearn him give it a toot that knocked me into the fence corner an' shuck the very taters out'n the ground."

"Tut, tut," said the old parson, "don't talk that way in this meeting; we all know you didn't hear Gabrael blow his trumpet." The old man's wife jumped to her feet to help her husband out, and said: "Now parson, you set down there. Don't you dispute John's word that-away--He mout a-hearn a toot or two."

"WAMPER-JAW" AT THE JOLLIFICATION.

The sideboard of those good old times would have thrown the prohibition candidate of to-day into spasms. It sparkled with cut glass decanters full of the juices of corn, and rye, and apple. The old Squire of the mill "Deestrict" had as many sweet, buzzing friends as any flower garden or cider press in Christendom. The most industrious bee that sucked at the Squire's sideboard was old "Wamper-jaw." His mouth reached from ear to ear, and was inlaid with huge gums as red as vermilion; and when he laughed it had the appearance of lightning. On the triumphant day of the Squire's re-election to his great office, when everything was lovely and "the goose hung high," he was surrounded by a large crowd of his fellow citizens, and Thomas Jefferson, in his palmiest days, never looked grander than did the Squire on this occasion. He was attired in his best suit of homespun, the choicest product of his wife's dye pot. His immense vest with its broad luminous stripes, checked the rotundity of his ample stomach like the lines of latitude and longitude, and resembled a half finished map of the United States. His blue jeans coat covered his body as the waters cover the face of the great deep, and its huge collar encircled the back of his head like the belts of light around a planet.

The Squire was regaling his friends with his latest side-splitting jokes. Old "Wamper-jaw" threw himself back in his chair and exploded with peal after peal of laughter. But suddenly he looked around and said: "Gen-tul-men, my jaw's flew out'n jint!"

His comrades seized him and pulled him all over the yard trying to get it back. Finally old "Wamper-jaw" mounted his mule, and with pounding heels, rode, like Tam O'Shanter, to the nearest doctor who lived two miles away. The doctor gave his jaw a mysterious yank and it popped back into socket. "Wamper-jaw" rushed back to join in the festivities at the Squire's. The glasses were filled again; another side-splitting joke was told, another peal of laughter went 'round, when "Wamper-jaw" threw his hand to his face and said: "Gen-tul-men, she's out agin!!!" There was another hasty ride for the doctor. But in the years that followed; "Wamper-jaw" was never known to laugh aloud. On the most hilarious occasions he merely showed his gums.

THE TINTINNABULATION OF THE DINNER BELLS.

How many millions dream on the lowest planes of life! How few ever reach the highest and like stars of the first magnitude, shed their light upon the pathway of the marching centuries! What multitudes there are whose horizons are lighted with visions and dreams of the flesh pots and soup bowls,--whose Fallstaffian aspirations never rise above the fat things of this earth, and whose ear flaps are forever inclined forward, listening for the dinner bells!

"The bells, bells, bells! What a world of pleasure their harmony foretells! The bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells! The tintinnabulation of the dinner bells!"

In my native mountains there once lived one of these old gluttonous dreamers. I think he was the champion eater of the world. Many a time I have seen him at my grandfather's table, and the viands and battercakes vanished "like the baseless fabric of a vision,"--he left not "a wreck behind." But one day, in the voracity of his shark-like appetite, he unfortunately undertook too large a contract for the retirement of an immense slice of ham. It scraped its way down his rebellious esophagus for about two inches, and lodged as tightly as a bullet in a rusty gun. His prodigious Adam's apple suddenly shot up to his chin; his eyes protruded, and his purple neck craned and shortened by turns, like a trombone in full blast. He scrambled from the table and pranced about the room like a horse with blind staggers. My grandfather sprang at him and dealt him blow after blow in the back, which sounded like the blows of a mallet on a dry hide; but the ham wouldn't budge. The old man ran out into the yard and seized a plank about three feet long, and rushed into the room with it drawn.

"Now William," said he, "get down on your all-fours." William got down. "Now William, when I hit, you swallow." He hit, and it popped like a Winchester rifle.

William shot into the corner of the room like a shell from a mortar, but in a moment he was seated at his place at the table again, with a broad grin on his face. "Is it down William?" shouted the old man. "Yes, Mr. Haynes, the durned thing's gone,--please pass the ham."

I thought how vividly that old glutton illustrated the fools who, in their effort to gulp down the sensual pleasures of this world, choke the soul, and nothing but the clap-board of hard experience, well laid on, can dislodge the ham, and restore the equilibrium.

PHANTOMS OF THE WINE CUP.

A little below the glutton lies the plane of the drunkard whose visions and dreams are bounded by the horizon of a still tub. "A little wine for the stomach's sake is good," but in the trembling hand of a drunkard, every crimson drop that glows in the cup is crushed from the roses that once bloomed on the cheeks of some helpless woman. Every phantom of beauty that dances in it is a devil; and yet, millions quaff, and with a hideous laugh, go staggering to the grave.

THE MISSING LINK.

A little below the plane of the drunkard is the dude, that missing link between monkey and man, whose dream of happiness is a single eye-glass, a kangaroo strut, and three hours of conversation without a sensible sentence; whose only conception of life is to splurge, and flirt, and spend his father's fortune.

"Out of the fullness of his heart his mouth singeth:"

"I'm a dandy; I'm a swell. Just from college, can't you tell? I'm the beau of every belle; I'm the swellest of the swell.

I'm the King of all the balls, I'm a Prince in banquet halls. My daddy's rich, they know it well, I'm the swellest of the swell."

NIGHTMARE.

Unhappily for us all, in the world of visions and dreams, there is a dark side to human life. Here have been dreamed out all the crimes which have steeped our race in shame since the expulsion from Eden, and all the wars that have cursed mankind since the birth of history. Alexander the Great was a monster whose sword drank the blood of a conquered world. Julius Cæsar marched his invincible armies, like juggernauts, over the necks of fallen nations. Napoleon Bonaparte rose with the morning of the nineteenth century, and stood, like some frightful comet, on its troubled horizon. Distraught with the dream of conquest and empire, he hovered like a god on the verge of battle. Kings and emperors stood aghast. The sun of Austerlitz was the rising sun of his glory and power, but it went down, veiled in the dark clouds of Waterloo, and Napoleon the Great, uncrowned, unthroned, and stunned by the dreadful shock that annihilated the Grand Army and the Old Guard, "wandered aimlessly about on the lost field," in the gloom that palled a fallen empire, as Hugo describes him, "the somnambulist of a vast, shattered dream."

INFIDELITY.

It is in the desert of evil, where virtue trembles to tread, where hope falters, and where faith is crucified, that the infidel dreams. To him, all there is of heaven is bounded by this little span of life; all there is of pleasure and love is circumscribed by a few fleeting years; all there is of beauty is mortal; all there is of intelligence and wisdom is in the human brain; all there is of mystery and infinity is fathomable by human reason, and all there is of virtue is measured by the relations of man to man. To him, all must end in the "tongueless silence of the dreamless dust," and all that lies beyond the grave is a voiceless shore and a starless sky. To him, there are no prints of deathless feet on its echoless sands, no thrill of immortal music in its joyless air.

He has lost his God, and like some fallen seraph flying in rayless night, he gropes his way on flagging pinions, searching for light where darkness reigns, for life where Death is King.

THE DREAM OF GOD.

I have wondered a thousand times, if an infidel ever looked through a telescope. The universe is the dream of God, and the heavens declare His glory. There is our mighty sun, robed in the brightness of his eternal fires, and with his planets forever wheeling around him. Yonder is Mercury, and Venus, and there is Mars, the ruddy globe, whose poles are white with snow, and whose other zones seem dotted with seas and continents. Who knows but that his roseate color is only the blush of his flowers? Who knows but that Mars may now be a paradise inhabited by a blessed race, unsullied by sin, untouched by death? There is the giant orb of Jupiter, the champion of the skies, belted and sashed with vapor and clouds; and Saturn, haloed with bands of light and jeweled with eight ruddy moons; and there is Uranus, another stupendous world, speeding on in the prodigious circle of his tireless journey around the sun. And yet another orbit cuts the outer rim of our system; and on its gloomy pathway, the lonely Neptune walks the cold, dim solitudes of space. In the immeasurable depths beyond appear millions of suns, so distant that their light could not reach us in a thousand years. There, spangling the curtains of the black profound, shine the constellations that sparkle like the crown jewels of God. There are double, and triple, and quadruple suns of different colors, commingling their gorgeous hues and flaming like archangels on the frontier of stellar space. If we look beyond the most distant star, the black walls are flecked with innumerable patches of filmy light like the dewy gossamers of the spider's loom that dot our fields at morn. What beautiful forms we trace among those phantoms of light! circles, and elipses, and crowns, and shields, and spiral wreaths of palest silver. And what are they? Did I say phantoms of light? The telescope resolves them into millions of suns, standing out from the oceans of white hot matter that contain the germs of countless systems yet to be. And so far removed from us are these suns, that the light which comes to us from them to-night has been speeding on its way for more than two million years.

What is that white belt we call the milky way, which spans the heavens and sparkles like a Sahara of diamonds? It is a river of stars: it is a gulf stream of suns; and if each of these suns holds in his grasp a mighty system of planets, as ours does, how many multiplied millions of worlds like our own are now circling in that innumerable concourse?

Oh, where are the bounds of this divine conception! Where ends this dream of God? And is there no life and intelligence in all this throng of spheres? Are there no sails on those far away summer seas, no wings to cleave those crystal airs, no forms divine to walk those radiant fields? Are there no eyes to see those floods of light, no hearts to share with ours that love which holds all these mighty orbs in place?

It cannot be, it cannot be! Surely there is a God! If there is not, life is a dream, human experience is a phantom, and the universe is a flaunting lie!

* * * * *

ONE ENJOYS

Both the method and results when Syrup of Figs is taken; it is pleasant and refreshing to the taste, and acts gently yet promptly on the Kidneys, Liver, and Bowels, cleanses the system effectually, dispels colds, headaches, and fevers and cures habitual constipation. Syrup of Figs is the only remedy of its kind ever produced, pleasing to the taste and acceptable to the stomach, prompt in its action and truly beneficial in its effects, prepared only from the most healthy and agreeable substances, its many excellent qualities commend it to all and have made it the most popular remedy known.

Syrup of Figs is for sale in 50 cent bottles by all leading druggists. Any reliable druggist who may not have it on hand will procure it promptly for any one who wishes to try it. Do not accept any substitute.

CALIFORNIA FIG SYRUP CO.

San Francisco, Cal. Louisville, Ky. New York, N. Y.

* * * * *

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF DENTISTRY

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE.

A purely dental school--a training school for dentists--does what it claims to do, as the results show. Regular Session will begin Oct. 5th; ends March 31, 1898. Post-graduate and Practical Courses, also.

FOR INFORMATION, ADDRESS DR. W. H. MORGAN, Dean, 211 N. HIGH ST.

* * * * *

A MAGIC CURE ... FOR ...

Catarrh, Asthma, Hay Fever, La Grippe, Sore Throat, etc.

A positive preventive and cure for all germ diseases. A quick cure for colds. Used and praised by over a million Americans.

One minute's trial will convince you of its wonderful merit. Endorsed by leading physicians. Every one guaranteed. Money refunded if not satisfied. Will last two years and can be refilled by us for 20 cents in stamps. Thousands have been sold under guarantee. It speaks for itself. Show it and it sells itself. Price 50 cents postpaid. Stamps taken.