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diocre qualities. Alfred was shrewd enough to inherit the courage and persistence of his grandfather. Our D. A. R. friends are right and Mark Twain is wrong--it is really more necessary to have a grandfather than a father. English civilization begins with Alfred. If you will refer to the dictionary you will find that the word "civilization" simply means to be civil. That is, if you are civilized you are gentle instead of violent--gaining your ends by kindly and persuasive means, instead of through coercion, intimidation and force. Alfred was the first English gentleman, and let no joker add "and the last." Yet it is needless and quite irrelevant to say that civilized people are not always civil; nor are gentlemen always gentle--so little do words count. Many gentlemen are only gents. Alfred was civil and gentle. He had been sent to Rome in his boyhood, and this transplantation had done him a world of good. Superior men are always transplanted men: people who do not travel have no perspective. To stay at home means getting pot-bound. You neither search down in the soil for color and perfume nor reach out strong toward the sunshine. It was only a few years before the time of Alfred that a Christian monk appeared at Edin-Borough, and told the astonished Engles and Saxons of the gentle Jesus, who had been sent to earth by the All-Father to tell men they should love their enemies and be gentle and civil and not violent, and should do unto others as they would be done by. The natural religion of the Great Spirit which the ancient Teutonic people held had much in it that was good, but now they were prepared for something better--they had the hope of a heaven of rest and happiness after death. Christianity flourishes best among a downtrodden, poor, subdued and persecuted people. Renan says it is a religion of sorrow. And primitive Christianity--the religion of conduct--is a beautiful and pure doctrine that no sane person ever flouted or scoffed. The parents of Alfred, filled with holy zeal, allowed one of the missionary monks to take the boy to Rome. The idea was that he should become a bishop in the Church. Ethelred, the elder brother of Alfred, had succeeded Ethelwulf, his father, as King. The Danes had overrun and ravished the country. For many years these marauding usurpers had fed their armies on the products of the land. And now they had more than two-thirds of the country under their control, and the fear t
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