ong them and seeing only them! men's hands are not
delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is
not very flowingly fashioned in the capitals; but in the flowery
perfection of the Parthenon the palm triumphs. The forms of those
columns came from Egypt, and that which was the suspicion of the earlier
workers, was the success of more delicate designing. So is the palm
inwound with our art, and poetry, and religion, and of all trees would
the Howadji be a palm, wide-waving peace and plenty, and feeling his kin
to the Parthenon and Raphael's pictures.

But nature is absolute taste, and has no pure ornament, so that the
palm is no less useful than beautiful. The family is infinite, and ill
understood. The cocoa-nut, date, and sago, are all palms. Ropes and
sponges are wrought of their tough interior fibre. The various fruits
are nutritious; the wood, the roots, and the leaves, are all consumed.
It is one of nature's great gifts to her spoiled sun-darlings. Whoso is
born of the sun is made free of the world. Like the poet Thompson, he
may put his hands in his pockets and eat apples at leisure.

* * * * *

=_John L. McConnell, 1826-._= (Manual, p. 510.)

From "Western Characters."

=_244._= THE EARLY WESTERN POLITICIAN.

He was tall, gaunt, angular, swarthy, active, and athletic. His hair was
invariably black as the wing of the raven. Even in that small portion
which the cap of raccoon-skin left exposed to the action of sun and
rain, the gray was but thinly scattered, imparting to the monotonous
darkness only a more iron character.... A stoop in the shoulders
indicated that, in times past, he had been in the habit of carrying a
heavy rifle, and of closely examining the ground over which he walked;
but what the chest thus lost in depth it gained in breadth. His lungs
had ample space in which to play. There was nothing pulmonary even in
the drooping shoulders....

From shoulders thus bowed hung long, muscular arms, sometimes, perhaps,
dangling a little ungracefully, but always under the command of their
owner, and ready for any effort, however violent. These were terminated
by broad, bony hands, which looked like grapnels; their grasp, indeed,
bore no faint resemblance to the hold of those symmetrical instruments.
Large feet, whose toes were usually turned in, like those of the Indian,
were wielded by limbs whose vigor and activity were in keeping with the
figure t