Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1907 — IN THE WASTE-BASKET. [ARTICLE]

IN THE WASTE-BASKET.

The recent death of Miss Julia Bryant, the daughter of William Cullen Bryant, has called forth a number of reminiscences of the poet and his family. Although always kindly, Bryant ■was not a man of winning personality. He was too dignified. But at home Be could unbend; with his children and their intimate friends he could occa•lonally even romp. With strange chll■dren the poet, perhaps being a little *hy of them, became even more than usually dignified, with the result of reducing them to solemn and hopeless good behavior. “I always, in my Infantile mind,” confessed a lady who knew him slightly in her childhood, “connected him Vaguely with the Old Testament, and ' revered him accordingly. 'Such a beard ■and such a brow were his as I knew ■only in Biblical Illustrations depicting Methusaleh and Jeremiah. It would have shocked me, I am sure, to see blm laugh.” , With another little girl, whom he knew better, however, he often laughed, and used to perch her on his desk to listen to her amusing chatter. When he had had enough of it, and wished to resume his writing, he would put her In the big waste paper basket, carry it ■outdoors, and merrily tip her out on the grass. His own %irls were at that time grown up, but it was a method of closing a conversation first practiced upon them. Sometimes, too, he used the same receptacle to hold a daughter too •mall to be overconvcrsational, but large enough to insistently demand amusement Dumped in among the •craps, she would be happy long time, crooning to herself and tearing bits of paper into smaller bits. Not until the crooning stopped did her father need to give her any further attention, but silence was a signal not to be disregarded, for it meant that she was, by no means figuratively, exercising her literary taste upon his latest discarded poem. Her opinion It was never possible to extract ; but the poem It was—more or less chewed —and It was removed from her mouth as rapidly as possible, and the little lady supplied with some other plaything less tempting or more digestible. The Coeen Dugn. We have been used to hear that wblle the fear of dangerous negroes made It hard for white children In the South to get to school, the negro children were not In danger, and going to school without fesr or risk had on that account an educational advantage «ver the whits children. A Southern — = '•

woman who writes to the American Magazine about race relations In the South touches on this point to sa£ that the dangerous negroes are dangerous to all women and girls, white or black; that the negro children go to school in groups, as the white children do; and that the negro women, like white women, in the South recognize that It is not safe to go far from home unprotected. This statement has probability in its favor, and for various reasons sounds true. It was worth making; the more so that we do not remember to have seen it in print before. We have all along known and deplored the peril to the white women apd children, but tfo one before this has thought worth while to mention that the negro women and girls were In any danger. The reason why this ought to be known is tliht a common danger is a strong tie, and the blacks and whites In the. South are developing antagonisms so fast that no tie that remains ought to be Ignored. After the Atlanta riot decent people, white and black, got together to discuss preventive measures. That was the right way. Shotgun methods will only increase their perils.—Harper’s Weekly.