By Irving Browne.
CURRENT TOPICS. "Born Free and Equal." — An attentive read er — of the Declaration of Independence as well as of this poor "Easy Chair" — reminds us that in criticising Mr. Astor's "Pall Mall Gazette" for at tributing the phrase quoted above to the Declaration, we ourselves were in error in rendering it "created free and equal," and points out that it -really stands, "created equal." Hut as he also points out, this renders the original misquotation all the worse for Mr. Astor. We may add that the phrase, "created equal," taken with the context, is not an assertion of intellectual or moral equality, but only of an equality of natural rights, among which are " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
A Beautiful Life. — The death of Judge Erskine, of Georgia, came with something of suddenness, although he was eighty-three years of age, and his strength had been gradually declining for a number of years. Few lives of public men have been so useful, so well rounded, so full of honors. Few men have had such a serene and cheerful old age. He had within himself the elements which enable a man to retire from life's bustle and tread the declining path with contentment. His judicial career is famil iar to the readers of this magazine and to the bar of this country. He was one of the few Federal officials who won the love and respect of the people of the South during the period of reconstruction, not by undue favoritism, but by even-handed and highminded justice. His portrait hangs in two court rooms in Georgia. His declining years have been passed at Atlanta in the companionship of friends and books. There the beautiful old man sat and chatted and read and wrote and smoked; hearty but dignified; simple, but investing his manners with a touch of old-fashioned courtesy : pure and warm hearted; full of culture and familiar with the best literature; with a humor that brightened intercourse, and a vivacity that appealed to young as well as old. Among his latest occupations was the writing of some part of his autobiography, the first part of which the writer of these lines has read — a graphic picture
of his toilsome and adventurous youth, and of his life as a sailor and his miraculous preservation from death by shipwreck. It is to be hoped that this may be made public, but it can hardly be possible that he completed the task. For many years it has been one of the present writer's pleasantest privileges to correspond with this charming old man. One of the last letters that he could have written (dated Jan. Iith) is now before us, which is characteristic of his fondness for the stage and of his wide reading. He says : — "I was on pleasant and cordial terms with the late Edwin Booth for several years before his death. Some three or four years ago, in the month of November, he in vited me to lunch with him at the Players' Club, of which I am a member. It was his 59th birthday. We sat alone. I was speaking of his Sir Giles Overreach, when something was said about literary felonies. I remarked that Bulwer's line in Richelieu was a palpable theft. He said, ' Ah, my dear Judge! where did he get it?' I replied, 'From Henry the Fourth of France. Bulwer's line is this,' said I, ' and you are the only man to give it. I have heard Macready — you excel him there. Here it is,' said Erskine: ' The pen is mightier than the sword.' Conchini (whom you know of) had been maltreated in the Court of Re quests, which was an integral part of the Parliament. Conchini went to the king and complained; to which the monarch replied (I give the words from the second volume of my History of Henry the Great, p. 315) : ' Do not pre tend to pick a quarrel with my parliament; the sword you carry, sir, is not so keen-edged as are the pens of those gentlemen.'" Bartlett in his new Dictionary of Quotations does not allude to this, although he gives Burton's " The pen is worse than the sword." It reminds the present writer that his body is waxing old when he reflects that three of his four most intimate correspondents no longer address him — Charles James Folger, David Dudley Field, and John Erskine, men strong and wise, but as widely different in characteristics as men can be, save that they all loved books and scholarship. Many charmed hours have we spent in this good man's company, and seldom have we found one so free from preten tiousness. Once we complimented him in entire good faith on his superb head of flowing white hair. "Man, it's a wig!" said he. But Judge Erskine's '97
