The Oregon daily journal., February 21, 1909, Page 30, Image 30

THE OREGON, SUNDAY; JOURNAL,; PORTLAND,, SUNDAY MORNING. FEBRUARY.' 2f, 1909
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TT WAS after the battle of lomown.
. Lord Cornuallis had surrendered; yet
- ' the affairs of the patriot army and the
fortunes of the revolutiopsts generally were
in a bad enough way. ' ,
But the men under General George
Washington felt for their leader a fealty such
as was comparable only to the allegiance given'
to men who, in the long course of history, had
made themselves kings. '
One great faction of the army was de
moted to him, and. that faction his intimate
friend, Colonel Nicola, engaged to convert
into his loyal supporters, if he would consent.
to accept, in reality, the royal station as king '
of the nascent nation.
Washington, the pure patriot refused the
proposal with all the scorn of his lofty soul.
But had he been less patriotic, and more royal
f his character, it is quite possible that today .
the citizens, of these. United States might have
been merely the subjecti of his majesty the
king; 1 - ' . ; i
Who would that king be; and. where and
what is he. nowt ; .
Hecan be found, very readily, at Garden
City, in M issouri, working, whenever he has
work to do, : at his trade, that of a painter.
Ask there for Thornton A ugustin Washing
ton, house painter, and, like as not, somi Mts
saurian will tell you to go around to So-and-scfs--JVashington
is sitting out of the second
story window painting the window frames:
And the Missourian will say it in the
plain, matter-of-fact tone which indicates, for
the man you inquire about, precisely the same
measure of respect which he would use in re
f erring to any other Missourian -which is
more, by a good many bushels than he would '
for any prince or king now ruling in Europe.
. (The man who isn't king deserves it.
a , LETTER vii addregwd recently to Mr. Washing.
l !ton, at hia -homa la Garden City, tequea ting that,
J ai the preaent head of the family owning the sam
blood that ran in' the vein of George. Washington,
he' forward hla photograph for publication. In the course
or hie reply, Mr. Washington remarked:
tMt oummer I irt Interviewed tr a man wlio nd m;
m dowa from a building which I u paiatln an4
hava a photograph taken to my paint clothea. I do not
ilk th article he rot about my family and myeelf.
do not teek notoriety on account of my lineage. I am
a laboring man. in very poor clroumetancee. If It woula
he the mean of curing- m goed. lucrative position, where
I could make a living for thoee dependent upon me. I
would not care it I were written up by every publication
in the country. - . . . ,
' There 1 a wood artist here. If you care to hare a
photograph taken. I will cheerfully alt for one. and I will
live you any information that I can. t am a ann of
I.aolt Bedlnger Waehlngton. he of John T. A. Wash
ington, he of Thornton Washington, he of Colonel Kamuet
Washington, full brother of Oeneral George Waahisgton.
'""OKTfSSfAUOUSTIW WASHINGTON.
Thl letter ia printed because, In lti brave, uncom
plalninr, everyday democracy and confronting; of poverty,
it ihowg that the most Admirable traits of the father of
Ms country shine with undlmmed luster in this fenera
tion, so far removed from the parent stock.
- But it is printed' for another reason. As no essayist
and no courtier could portray him. it display the inmost
character of the straightforward rentlman who, if thev
first great Washington had consented to the plot of Colo
nel Nicola to wake bltnaelf t king, would today be the
monarch ruling; this people) and thl land.
Instead of the painter' ladder.he would have mount
ed a throne beside which he rlchea and splendors of the
world'a greatest tulera would seem likely to dwindle and
I ale. Even with the present population and territory of
the nation, be would be the envy of nearly all the living
klnga and the dreaded rival of , the rest; But with a
monarchy egiatlng mere frotn tha period of the Revolu
tion, there is avery possibility that Canada would have,
ere now, either willingly Joined forcea with her neighbor,
tr, in the operation of t-ba changeless policy of all king
Com, been forced to the amalgamation,
ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITIES
Such a unified continent, of auch united peoples, ex
ploiting aueh unexampled resources of a virgin world.
m.iv have invested Its iiog with a power and a prestige
its hlch nothing but imperial Rome la ita most spien-
titd grandeur could compare. . ; - ' - -
Vnder the fierce white light that bests about a throne
and such a throne! would not the man capable of the
disregard which Thornton Washington . shows for
ti;e bueks of Unge, and capable of such a courageous
If dUTerenee to his own well-bred tistaste for notoriety
hn ha eonfronts the neda of those dependent upon
i,:in, be a ruler of remarkabla firmness and. probably, of
t ;. al magnanimity? ,V ' , v
i h derision, which created Into the world the most
rmpjt dvocmcr and the moat powerful epirit of hu
t -n niuiy hi h the human race has ever reckoned
v lh. !a f ai little tine toward the close of the Revolu
in th banda of a single man. ..;.-. .
tied Jhv n uiTii...t to be a mere mortal king, ln--
f i Inunnrlsl demi-god to which a little more
1 i a c. :ry has sufflcl to trsnitflgiire htm, the conti-
'!. i n Anrlra would todsv hold, not simply on
. -, irr. (.r acd a hundred mlUlon tiobod.es. but also
such a concourse of royalties as could equal In numbers,
and probably surpass in emolument and Inherited wealth,
the princes and royal grand dukes of the most ancient
monarchies of Europe. ; - ;
George Washington died without issue. Had he made
himself Kins George I he would have been George the
Great in the histories y this time, -for all the justly
earned odium of treachery that would have been burled
at htm by his contemporarieshis successor under the
"English laws cemented upon1-, the hew Klng"db1in6utd
have been hie grandnephew, John Thornton Augustine
Washington, for Colonel Samuel Washington; the gen
eral's oldest brother, died in 1781, leaving his son, Thorn
ton, who died in 1799, shortlylpriof to Oeneral Washing
ton's end. ' -
Thornton's son, John T, A. Washington, as grand
nephew and nearest of kin to "George I," would probably
havo been elevatedto the throne as Johtrhad not the
inheritors of the ' revolutionary f spirit of freedom then
revolted and instituted the belated republic of the United
States.
His oldest son, one of ten children, Lawrence Berry
Washington, was born in 1S11. He was by turns a lawyer
in Virginia, lieutenant In the Mexican War, a forty-niner
in Callfornia. ia newspaper writer and poet in Missouri.
He died suddenly on a Mississippi steamboat, a bachelor.
Had he ruled aa King Lawrence I, the succession
would hava passed to his brother, Daniel Bedinger Wash
ington, born In 1814, whose destiny was actually that of
a farmer and, at odd times,- a political pamphleteer. He
moved to Missouri in 1856, fought in the Confederate army
during the Civil War and was the typical American of
his place, and period. His wife was Virginia Wharton,
widow of Dr? John J. Wharton and a daughter of his
father's half-brother. .-''; .
Their son, the present Thornton Augustln Washing
ton, who would have been King Thornton I, studied phar
macy as a young man and later learned the trade of
painter, which he still pursues and by his earnings at It
supports himself and his two unmarried sisters.
The living members of the Washington family who,
wera thir r monarchy, wonldahara tha royal fortunes of
their race with King Thornton I are In various degrees
of prosperity, social and material, tha majority, however,
enjoying far more of the world's bounties'than the man
who, by all the laws of the lineage be so sensibly puts
from him, ia the head of the clanv
There Is William Lanier Washington, of 1700 Broad-
way. New Tork, .who has inherited General Washing
ton's place in the Society of the Cincinnati and own,
Jointly with Ms aunts, "Wakefleja," the birthplace 'f
George Washington.
' i He probably would have been one of the princes ot t
the collateral royal line by reason, of his descent from
General Washington's half-brother, Augustine; and hi
wife, who wasi Miss Mary Bruce Brennan, of Kentucky,
would have been a princess by her royal alliance.
Again, William de Hertburn Washington, who la tha
son of Colonel- Lewis Washington, a very handsome bach
elor of the CaluroetJBlub, In New York., close in his re
semblance to General Washington, would be as good a
royal highness as any of theml for be is a great-great-
great-grandnephew of George Washington, direct in his
descent from the father, mother anil stepmother of the
man who rejected the temptation to found the greatest
dynasty the world might have bad,
A royal princess would be Mrs, Attllio P. Moroslnl.
of NewjTorkv who befora her marriage wa Miss Mary
Carolina' Washington Bond, -of Elianbetb. N. J. She Is
lineal in her descent from Samuel Washington, that
brother of General Washington who was .the ancestor of
the man who might today have been npon, the throne. .
Kvents have proved that the Waahingtons, men and
-Wameik Whatever their distance in thi fenerations frnn
the parent stock, own veins" that run red with the best
blood the nation owns pure and clean, and brave and
honest.'' - . .
Yet old Giovanni P. Moroslnl, the famous banker who
rose from the most abject . circumstances to the wealth i
which made him famous, all but disinherited big son,
Attilio, for marrying Misa Bond, and she, besides such
ancestry as the wealthiest In society -would give their
riches lo possess, being at the same time regarded by
artists as' the most perfect type of blond beauty Jn tha
East, Her husband, out of the millions of hla father,
was left only a paltry l50,ooft '
But he and his wife regard the millions they forfeited
as the plgln Missouri gentleman, Mr. Thornton Augustln
Washington, regards tha "lineage" for which he "does
not seek notoriety."
- They simply pay no attention to them.
-L-J ' . " '
The Genesis of Chewing Gum
MANY thousand dollars' worth of chewing gum
Is gathered in the state of Maine every year.
The 'gum Is found chiefly in the regions
about Umbago lake and about tha Hangeley lakes, A
number of men do nothing else in the winter except
collect gum. With snowshoes, axe and a-sheboygan,
on which Is packed the gum. they spend days and
nights in the woods.
The clear, pure lumps of gum are sold as found,
the best bringing $1 a pound. . Gum not immediately
merchantable is refined by a peculiar process.
Sievelike boxes arr covered w1th-prtice boufha. on
which Is placed the gum. Steam Is Introduced unIer
neath. The gum Is melted. Is strained by the bough
and. then passed into warm .water, where It II kept
froip ihardenlng until the packer takes It out. draw
it into sticks, and wrap It In tissue paper, when It 1
ready for market,
' 4 '
WUKLDo 1 T IAIN I VUKlwUo IJJJCO
inc
Hades
us
F
,im mo ..imi sw in . M I II saajssisiii , , mnvymmmk
Iff Iff
01l e?er good spirit that the imagination o
various people Has created there ia an evil
spirit; minds that have pictured a vague
heaven., or bothered about it not at ail-
usually hare before them some form of a hades or
place for the reception of the wicked af ter death. -
In his rafeearehes, Darwin found many mote
races without any definite idea of a God than
without Borne conception of a deril and an abiding1
place for sinners. , ,
A'
8 A GENERAL thing, the hell that confronts tha
people of torrid countries Is hot and filled with
flame-engendered tortures, while the hades of tha
fat North is cold.: glowing and o.ually forbidding.
, Scandinavians of t old regarded the future of the
wicked being passed in a frigid climate and a desolat
" country full of venoinous reptiles , and desperate wild -beasts;
a Zoroastrlan Idea had accursed departed spirit'
'sitting through eternity In a cold, dark lane, surrounded .
i by scorpions. -
A thoroughly - uncomfortable conception was that, ot .
early Buddhist,, who believed that the soul' of tha .
-siMtaui was taken eaia of In a hell of flrez that the His-
embodied individual waa -"spreadt-eageed" upon a bed ot
biasing embers, a blanket of fir was drawn over and
carefully tucked about him, and. that when ha was tor
: mented by the pangs of thirst attendant devils gleefully
fed him with'balls of red-hot metal. . ,
Among the oldest known ia the Hindoo's place of pun- .
' Ishment. Over it, according to the ancient belief,, a a
evil genius, with large teeth and monstrous body, pre
. sided. The place was filled with Are and Infested with
snakes, insects,' horrible monsters and all sort of really -.
unpleasant things. - . - ' ,
As a sort of compromise between the frosen hade
of the far North and the fiery future of warmer coun
tries, there wa an Anglo-Saxon conception, which com- ,
bined the repelling features of both.
The miserable sinner wa plunged ' Into a pit and
'there subjected alternately to biting frost and melting-..
- heat. In addition, he had to contend with Innumerable
serpenta having - fiery teeth, that tore flesh from tha
bones continually. Other fearful creatures lent their
- aid to the punishment, of the wicked. - .JUr - .. ,
Among the ooast-dwelllng negroes of Guinea Is arbe
. tlef that the sinful soul is kept in a continual state of -
drowning! that regular orgies of the plrit world forever
: blung the unfortunate departed in tbe waving surf and
that there Is no escape from these ministration
When the Mohammedan reads hi Koran he learns.
In one chapter describing the future n'tate of the wicked.
h. "rtam.ir.a smoke shall enveloo them and smokeless -
; flame' end In another, that '"tljey shall be dragged lnt-
' hell by their forelocks and their feet-and there shall b
cut out for them garment of fire."
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