ion, and listen to the anathemas that
fill the air at mention of his name.

That a world full of such men would not be at all desirable is stern
truth; but that one such man lived is a cause for congratulation. His life
holds for us both warning and example.

Beneath the strain of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see
that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and
oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and
persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right
of free speech and free thought: and he stood for political and physical
freedom, long before abolition societies became popular. He sided with the
people; his heart went out to the oppressed; and all of his fruitless
gropings and stumblings were a reaching out for tenderness and truth, for
life and love--for the Ideal.

* * * * *

The father of Byron, the poet, was a captain in the army--a man of small
mental ability, whose recklessness won him the sobriquet of "Mad Jack
Byron." When twenty-three years of age he eloped to France with the
Baroness Conyers, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen. Happiness, in a
foreign country, for a woman who has exchanged one love for another is
outside the pale of possibilities. Love is much--but love is not all. Life
is too short to break family-ties and adjust one's self to a new language
and a new country. The change means death.

Two years and the woman died, leaving a daughter, Augusta by name,
afterward Mrs. Augusta Leigh.

Back to England went Mad Jack Byron, broken-hearted, bearing in his arms
the baby girl. Kind kinsmen, ready to forgive, cared for the child. Mad
Jack didn't remain broken-hearted long--what would you expect from a man?
He sought sympathy among several discreet dames, and in two years we find
him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to
twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed
a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of
the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts
of the Mad Jack.

One child was born to this ill-assorted pair--a boy who was destined to
write his name large on history's page. But such a pedigree! No wonder
the youth once wrote to Augusta, his half-sister, expressing a covetous
appreciation of her parentage, even with its bar sinister. In passing, it
is well to no