Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1886 — Senator Beck and Burns, [ARTICLE]

Senator Beck and Burns,

I happened to sit at the table with Senatoi Beck, of Kentucky, a. d it occurred to me to ask him in what town in Scotland he was born. Beek has been in the Senate eight years; he came in at the same time with Voorliees of Indiana, and there are only three or foiu Democratic Senators of his seniority, such as Mnxey, of Texas, and Saulsbury of Delaware. “I came from old Dumfries,” said Mr. Beck. “Why, that is the town in which Robert Burns died!” “Yes,” said Mr. Beck, “and I often saw, before I left there Jean Armour, hi j wife. She did not die till 1834. Burns himself died before the close of the last century. I went to school with Burns’ grand children. Jean Armour was a rather gypsy-looking woman, with a black, sharp eye, dark skin, and she had fine arms, and when she was an pld woman would roll up her sleevos, and you could see the muscle left in her arms.” “How queer it is,” said I, “that you should he before me a United States Senator near the close oi the nineteenth century, and have seen Robert Burns’ wife —that Burns who would liked to have extolled both the French and the American revolutions, and did make a feeble strain that way, till the British Government sat down on him as an excise man!” “Ah,” said Mr. Beck, “Burns got his power from his manly indignation. He hated to be patronized, to be considered as something inferior, who might be encouraged and introduced to somebody. The reason that lie takes his rank in the world is that he first drew the character ot the natural man.— Walter Scott never made a poor mail manly. All his poor people *re willing serfs or common folks. He never drew but one character among the poor which had any self-assertion— and that not much and that was Jennie Deans.— Shakspeare’s poor people are all louts.

The Great Britain had never measured a man for his natural worth and equal claims till Burns set him up from his own mind and spirit.” Said I, “ What do you think of the Scotch of whom you once were 9i i ** “The Scotch race,” said Senator Beck, “are a kind of Western Jews. Some one said of them that they kept the Sabbath and everything else they could get.” Mr. Beck said of Burns that he had done more to destroy the old, fierce Calvinism of Scotland than anybody else, and he wondered if any dfh?r person had accomplished anything against it. In the first stanza of “Holy Willie’s Prayer” he threw a bomb-shell into the whole Calvinistic doctrine.

Said I: “Mr. Beck, John Knox, however, created the Scotch characteiydid he not?” “Yes; I suppose he did. Burns was a universal character, who spoke for man and his rights, but Knox gave the Scottish people their education. He made them believe that every one of them — man, woman and child —was the special creation of God, governed by God through the mind and soul, and that, therefore, they must get to work and learn to read and to write, and the race was very far advanced in the sixteenth century, when it gave the ruling dynasty to England, and has produced a long line of poets, philosophers, reviewers and inventors. The Scotch race is hard of itself,” said Mr. Beck, “but its influence in our day is due to old John Knox making them individuals and not a mere herd.”—Correspondence of Boston Globe.

One little girl was heard to say to a playmate, "When I grow up I'm going to be a school-teacher.” “Well, I’m going to be a mamma and have six children.” “When they oome to school to me I'm going to whip ’em, whip em.” “You mean thing! What have they ever dene to you?”—Boston Journal.

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