574 Chronicles of the Cape Fear Rwer

hold this statue shall be a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God, and
say, in your hearts, that crooked ways are good and bad methods justi-
fiable.

We receive the statue with pride and shall count it among the city’s
most precious possessions.

ALFRED MOORE WADDELL—AUTHOR.

We feel grateful to the State press for many graceful tributes
of respect to the memory of this dead statesman, jurist, scholar
of the Cape Fear; but I think that these generous tokens of
admiration have not sufficiently emphasized the beautiful ex-
pressions of his pen. Colonel Waddell’s superior talents, his
remarkable power of speech, his pleasing personality, and his
courteous address were known to all men, but how few of our
people know of his generous contributions to literature.

I have read and reread his three charming books, A Colonial
Officer and His Times, Some Memories of My Lrfe, and The
History of New Hanover County, with ever-increasing pleas-
ure and profit.

There are flashes of wit and humor throughout his Memories,
and even Mark Twain at his best does not surpass him in his
description of Haynes Gainey, the bleeding to death of James
Dawson in the railroad accident, or the Confederate prisoner’s
estimate of the damage done to Fort Fisher by Butler’s “powder
ship”; nor have I read in Clarke Russell’s wonderful sea tales
anything comparable to Colonel Waddell’s thrilling story Pilots
in a Storm. Its descriptive, dramatic strength reminds one of
Victor Hugo’s weird “Story of the Gun”; but Colonel Waddell’s
story is true in all its details, as it tells of a tragedy in which
five devoted Cape Fear pilots went down to death, and how five
other toilers of the sea in the same gale were saved at the risk
of a life freely volunteered for theirs, for the sake of their wives
and children, and his hero, Joe Arnold, still survives.

The poetic principle is described in his closing reference to
St. Philip’s Church, and to Fort Anderson, which enclosed it,
at Old Brunswick; and as we read the lines we can almost hear
the sighing of the pines as they bend gently in the soft south
wind to the call of the sea: ‘Since then it has again relapsed
into its former state, and the bastions and traverses and para-
pets of the whilom Fort Anderson are now clad in the same exu-
berant robe of green with which generous nature in that clime
covers every neglected spot. And so the old and the new ruin

Peace Restored 575

stand side by side, in mute attestation of the utter emptiness of
all human ambition, while the Atlantic breeze sings gently amid

the sighing pines, and the vines cling more closely to the old
church wall, and the lizard basks himself where the sunlight
falls on a forgotten grave.”

In conclusion, his beautiful verses in reply to Gen. Albert
Pike’s “Every Year” appeal with peculiar tenderness to those

of us who were in sympathy with our dear friend, and who are
fast following his footsteps towards “The Better Land.”

THE BETTER LAND.

By AutFrrep Moore WADDELL.

“Time, fly he ne’er so fleetly
Every year,
Only tunes your harp more sweetly
Every year,
And we listen to its ringing,
And the minstrel swan-like singing,
More melodious numbers flinging,
Every year.

“Sing on, O grand old master,
Every year,
Pour thy mellow measures faster
Every year;
They will make our journey lighter,
And our weary pathway brighter,
As our locks grow thin and whiter
Every year.

“Yes, our loved ones go before us
Every year,

And the living more ignore us
Every year.

It is well; what need for sorrow

If the dawn of each tomorrow

Brighter tints from heaven borrow
Every year.”

BISHOP ROBERT STRANGE.

An eminent divine has said: “Among the great gifts that
God has given to men is the gift of men; and among all the
gifts with which God has enriched His Church, one of the
greatest has been the gift of consecrated men, for they are the
mstrumentalities by which the Church has been moulded and
guided and prospered in all the generations of the world.”