faithful in performing executive trusts and modest in wearing well-earned distinctions.

America has set an example which France and Russia must follow. The Jew is entitled to the considerate esteem not only of all who call themselves Christians, but of all who profess to be well informed; for so thoroughly is the philosophy of Israel ingrained in the structure of the world's thought-rising from its roots and mingling with its sap that the man who is inclined to decry the chosen people of God can not repudiate the debt which he owes to the Jews by rejecting the Biblical theory of the universe. Nor can he date the simplest letter with the current numerals of the Christian era without kneeling unconsciously at the manger-cradle of the Babe of Bethlehem.

He

Going the full length of the skeptical tether he may scorn the law, revile the prophets and eschew the gospels, but the obligation still attaches to the civilization which he enjoys and which is all the wiser for the proverbs of Solomon, all the sweeter for the anthems of David and all the holier for the beatitudes of Jesus. may be an avowed enemy to oxygen, but the despised element keeps him alive, in the water which quenches his thirst-aye, in the breath which fills his nostrils. And if perchance the very name he bears in the ranks of unbelief is not enriched with the associations of the temple it still remains that the very air he breathes on the streets of Babylon is fragrant with the blooms of Galilee.

CHAPTER LI.

Miscellaneous Anecdotes and Witticisms.

T was not beneath the dignity of such an astute states

IT

man as John Quincy Adams to serve the commonwealth of Massachusetts in the halls of Congress after he had occupied the presidential chair of the republic; and Georgia has not infrequently been served in her legislative assemblies by men who have previously worn congressional honors. Among the ex-Congressmen who occupied seats in the Legislature of Georgia during the late eighties and the early nineties, were Wm. H. Felton, Hiram P. Bell, R. W. Everett and Morgan Rawls; and no members of the body were more active both on the floor and in the committee-rooms than these distinguished political veterans.

Conspicuously brilliant as were the services of Dr. Felton in the national arena it is doubtful if he ever achieved such oratorical triumphs or received such splendid ovations as marked his career in the Georgia Legislature. He was then an old white-haired man who leaned heavily upon his stick and bent forward with his hand upon his ear to hear what was said. He was so extremely nervous that his whole body quivered like an aspen even

when moved by no unusual excitement. The casual or ignorant observer who knew nothing of politics in Georgia might have hastily concluded that this trembling old man was there like the pictures on the wall, for the purpose of casting upon the assembly the austere but speechless spell of an earlier generation. But Dr. Felton was not in the Legislature of Georgia to enhance the scenic effects; nor to exemplify the golden beatitude of silence. He was there for more eloquent reasons. The light which shot from his eyes when interest was aroused or thought alert showed plainly that the old volcano was not yet extinct and that while it might lift the snows of Mount Blanc it concealed the flames of Vesuvius. To provoke his wrath was to hurl a lightning-rod into a thunder-storm or to wake an eagle upon his eyrie and to find that while he was an ancient eagle he was nevertheless an eagle still -scarred it might be with many a wound, but scarred in the battles of the blue.

Those who witnessed the famous fire of Dr. Felton's batteries in 1884, when Representative E. G. Simmons, of Sumter, was the victim of the fusillade, will never forget the scene of that terrific bombardment. Fort Sumter was again charged with iron hail. It is needless to recall the minute particulars; but it seems that Mr. Simmons, who was one of the ablest members of the House, had mortally offended Dr. Felton, perhaps without intention, in some remarks which he had made during the debate which was then pending. Instantly Dr. Felton sprang to his feet. The nervous infirmity under which he labored imparted an electrical power to his eloquence as he turned his powder-works toward the corner in which Mr. Simmons had just resumed his seat. The long arms

rose in the air as if to clutch the mallet of Hercules, while the fierce eyes darted fire like live coals from the forge of Vulcan. The established custom of debate was forgotten and the gentleman from Sumter became in the red-hot rhetoric of Dr. Felton "the man from Sumter." Such invective was never heard on the floor of the Georgia Legislature as then rolled in lava-like torrents from the lips of the impassioned old man eloquent. Members in breathless excitement crowded around the white-haired speaker and watched with amazed interest the scathing eruptions of the old volcano. Seizing upon one of the statements of Mr. Simmons to the effect that he had received the colored vote as well as the white vote of Sumter county in the legislative election, Dr. Felton enlarged upon the affinity existing between the colored brother and "the man from Sumter," and compared them to two drops of water hanging upon a telegraph wire in a rain-storm and gradually approaching each other until they came together and made one big drop. Then he proceeded to say that instead of praying to God in abstract terms to make his offspring the pattern of uprightness and probity of character he could now pray to have him made just the opposite of the man from Sumter. At last he reached the climax of his terrible philippic by pointing his slim finger at Mr. Simmons and pronouncing upon him the modified anathema of Lord Macauley.

"Sir, the one small service which you can render Georgia is to hate her, and such as you are may all who hate her be."

Dr. Felton made it evident from this wonderful speech that age had not impaired the powers of mind which had made him such an invincible force in so many political

campaigns in Georgia; but he did not carry off the honors undivided. Mr. Simmons took the floor next morning and explained the misconstruction which Dr. Felton had put upon his remarks; and though he lacked the dramatic fire and picturesque impressiveness of Dr. Felton, he sustained himself with splendid credit. Dr. Felton was several times reelected to the State Legislature, and was instrumental in shaping much of the legislation of the last two nineteenth century decades in Georgia. The lease of the Western and Atlantic Railroad upon the present advantageous terms is largely the legislative achievement of Dr. Felton, who introduced and urged the measure which fixed the rental. The last appearance of Dr. Felton in public was in 1898, when, bowed under the weight of nearly eighty years, he appeared before the General Assembly of Georgia and made an effective plea of surpassing eloquence on behalf of the State University at Athens. Mrs. Wm. H. Felton, the wife of Georgia's Old Man Eloquent, is one of the most brilliant and useful women that Georgia has ever produced, and is perhaps fully the peer intellectually and socially of the famous Madam Octavia Walton LeVert.

Hiram P. Bell made a record for repartee as well as for oratory in the proceedings of the State Legislature during the period of post-congressional service, to which reference has already been made. He was discussing some measure before the House general judiciary committee of which he was a member, when some one interrupted his rather warm argument by flippantly remarking that he was making bugbears out of what was really insignificant.