ii

only the tree
downed by ice
will keep its leaves

*****

cold afternoon
ducks paddle in circles
to break up the ice

the final selfie--
a head of ice-white hair
bright clouds crumbling into snow

waiting for spring
three ducks
asleep on the ice

in the cloverleaf
circled by cars
geese break
the ice with their bills

Posted: 29 December 2024

Artists: Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi (ca. 1440 – 1460). Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art. Downloaded December 2024.

The Occasion: August 2012
 
One month before the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, my son and I happened to visit the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. We began at the Dunker Church and then, on foot and by car, followed the battle as it spread across the landscape. 

Photo and text: downloaded December 2024

The Painting
 
Later that day, or possibly the next, we went to the National Gallery of Art. As usual, we separated: John likes to take in as much as possible; I tend to find a handful of paintings to contemplate at leisure. The tondo by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi caught my attention, and I lingered. I caught the eye of a docent walking by, and she stopped.

​“Do you see the man who sees the star?” she asked.

“No, please show me.” 

This led to a conversation in which she explained the symbolism—the iconography—of the painting. It was one of those rare moments when the need-to-know encounters a willing guide.

The Man Who Sees the Star

​The docent was tiny, with short, gray hair, and she talked with quiet authority; she reminded me of the actor Linda Hunt. She confessed to not knowing the precise meaning of the figures among the ruins—poor and outcast, obviously; possibly lepers. Whoever they are, they are invisible to the crowd pushing downhill.

That day they were for me the dead of Antietam waiting for God to restore them to life and to bring them into the fellowship of the Kingdom and the communion of the saints.
 
The Pomegranate

The docent asked me if I understood the meaning of the pomegranate on the Christ Child’s thigh. I had not noticed it. Its red flesh is (she said) a symbol for the crucifixion, its many seeds an emblem of the resurrection. The pomegranate was thought to be the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, the fruit of the tree of knowledge—good and evil, happiness and pain, trauma and joy: the burden we are born to carry, for ourselves and others; the infinite burden the Lord took upon himself in Gethsemane and Golgotha.
 
 
Star and Pomegranate
 
Do you see the man in the painting--
the one in the procession
who alone has seen it
shining directly overhead?
Hands raised, fingers spread,
half in surprise, half in worship,
he’d like to stop and ponder
but is jostled by the crowd,
all of them pushing
downhill towards what they
are able to imagine—a father,
a mother, an infant on
her lap—and what they cannot:
on the child’s thigh, the red-fleshed
fruit, half-peeled and bloody.
     Agape Review, 8 Dec 2021
 
The Peacock and the Cow
​

A peacock, symbol of immortality. roosts on the roof of the stable, an apt symbol of our everyday world—folks at work, the horses being fed and shod in the rich smell of manure and hay, the stolid horned cow, with the pretty fringe hanging between her horns, all oblivious to the scene in the drama of redemption playing before us. 

​Christmas 2021
 
Months fly by, the older you become--
the day of thanks gives way to boisterous Christmas,
the turkey drumstick then the Christmas drum.

Years fly by, the older you become.
Healthy today, tomorrow a fatal symptom,
a gasp for breath, a fall. Enjoy the rush

as life flies by. The older you become,
each day of thanks is a joyous Christmas.

******

Below is a depiction of the painter in threadbare clothing, humbly worshipping the Savior. This figure also represents us as our contemplation of the painting becomes an act of worship.

i.
cold wind
leaf over leaf
will scrape across the snow

*****

In my posts for each of the thirteen weeks of winter, I imagine colder days than we consistently get in my part of North Carolina. But over the years we have experienced winter weather—sleet that knocked out the power for several very cold days, knee-high snow (it usually melted quickly), rivers frozen so hard a few hardy souls dared to step out on the ice. Late fall here has been unusually cold this year, perhaps portending an icy winter. I am writing on Wednesday 18 December. The high today will be 70, but a low of 19 degrees is forecast for Sunday, the planned date for this post. We may remember this as a cold winter.

Most of my memories of cold weather in the South come from two winters. First was the winter of 1959-1960 in the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia: unusually heavy snow fell on four consecutive Wednesdays and remained on the ground through an unusually long cold snap; in some places it was blown into drifts over 20 feet high. On our farm in Southwest Virginia, we could walk on the drifts over fences; the tops of the fence posts protruded only an inch or two above the snow. The storms and persistent snow cover caused major disruptions and hardships for many, though not for my family. In remote areas, food was helicoptered in for people and livestock. In North Carolina, children missed so much school, a special act of the legislature was required to allow them to advance to the next grade.

The second landmark winter was January 1994, when an unusual cold snap in the Raleigh-Durham area caused rivers to freeze over. My son and I walked out on ice over shallow spots on the Eno. Falling through would only have wetted our boots, but we didn’t fall through. The ice cracked but did not bend or break.

Eno Winter 1994

i. Feeder creek
above water
stump ends ice-encased
end game

ii. Islets of ice, eyelets of sun
“If she cracks she bears”
coronal splendors teethe the light

avid as tongue for water
the eye creases the ice

nuzzle pivots and frays
the wind: shoots

of man-smell flag the woods
like common grass

rive from river the high-tailed fear
the white-tailed beauty

“if she bends she breaks”
with crack of fire

iii. Great blue
The heron bides on one leg stumped
the kingfisher's harangue. Exiled inland
these solitary birds shy as bats

beat their wings like dirty rugs.
Trapped by winter they stoicize:
can freeze upright and fall with a clatter.

Mired in the Eno, their bodies are baled
with log and leaf, bottle, carcass of tire
foul and indispensable.

iv. The air this side
Brazen airings attack
us napped and felted inside-
outed by bluer breathings

They cap the riffles with foam
pour unvoiced over the river
the mercies of God

Shuttle steaming from lights
to heart, bolted to iron
swimming in us as we in them

Fluvial days, rivers
of exhalation: the noon light shivers
shivers and drowns the trees.

v. The bluer book
What matters cannot be said: in this field
of vision that obtuse angle of ridge and river
form of air and light, it is what you see
you cannot say, for you see nothing:

the opposite ridge sheared (like this) of woods,
the ice-mottled brush-lined river, the arc
of power lines carving the space:  these--
palpable and opaque—permit the void

to fill the eye. Moved inwardly by that glow,
we speak—must speak—though what we say, whatever
we can say, does not matter.  What it means, if it
means anything, is beyond our saying.

vi. Are these
The green pastures promised the righteous? The grass
is all browns, yellows, and grays, like a barbershop’s
day’s end sweepings. Where are the hoppers, the fiddlers,
the leg-scraping white-winged shit-spitters?

Like the rich, they are different: wear
their bones outside, breathe from the gut, sing
all summer long. Come back in July, climb
the high grassed hill before the power company

bushhogs it back to lawn, and they will rise
before you clickety-click in a green-brown tide,
in an arcing shoal of alien life. They will be
almost as strange to you as your own life,

if you ever see it for what it is; almost
as strange as the life you haven't lived.

vii. The king of hearts
Under the bridge, Twan of New York
has painted hearts in red and black.
Overhead the cars pass up and down Guess Road.
Climb the embankment—it's terraced
in red dirt, like a ziggurat--
and you can touch the roadway
with the flat of your hand.

Here you can escape the rain and sun
and even the traffic noise.
This is a sturdy bridge: 
at rush hour it doesn't shake or groan,
but hums like a big cat
after a kill. Twan
whose middle name is Dante

has sprayed on a lengthwise beam
just under the road bed, a red beetle--
the people's car, humped like a bison--
and on the concrete support
a rural mailbox labeled Old Farms.
Any escape is good, if you can find it. 
Here others, or Twan himself, warn

'fagots' of an imprecise wrath,
and you can inspect the products of the age--
flattened beer cans, Xmas paper
still in shape of the box,
a price list (suggested retail) for barstools,
flecks and shards of styrofoam.
As for every other spot of land,

someone no doubt has died for this.
Twan, perhaps, could live for it.
--Crucible, Fall 1994; winner of Sam Ragan Prize
  
Notes
ii. Italicized lines are from John Gordon, "If She Bends, She Breaks," in Aidan Chambers, ed., A Haunt of Ghosts.
iv. “airings”—a pun on airain, the French word for bronze
v. “the bluer book”—a joking allusion to the published notes of lectures by Wittgenstein called the Blue Book.
 
Posted 22 December 2024

My father killed himself forty-seven years ago on Monday, 12 December 1977. This week is the 13th and final week of fall. 

A Good Death
Fall 1977

I take my yellow pad and felt pen.
They’ve told me not to come to work again.
Your nerves are shot, they say. Get some help.
But they’re afraid I’ll talk. And I’m afraid,

sure they’ve bugged the house. Again
the do-re-mi in my head, as I slide
out of my car, wondering how I got here,
on the ridge I’m walking up, thinking

of the old man who could stand at the top
and see nothing he didn’t own but sky. Too tight
to spend his cash on fire, Jones wore his coat
indoors all winter and ate his supper cold.

I sit on a root and write, conjuring
the old man in his 80’s scything grass
with an easy, fluid motion, laying it down
in swatches as neat as a schoolmarm’s letters;

the muscles rippling across his back
as he swung the blade; the rhythm he settled into,
paying out no more effort than needed
to finish by dark. I write, I wish I’d learned

to die like Jones at harvest, a well-worn
tool in hand, a ripe field beckoning.
Now I’m back in the car, the Fury
starting, the world streaming by like water,

the road beneath my tires turning liquid.
Now I swallow the pills as if I were a child
and they were candy corn—a handful—two handfuls
like shaped notes in the mouth, the darkness

singing fa-sol-la, ‘tis eventide,
the stupor will abide with me,
and I know how the dead wake, eating
grains of dirt to get back to the light. 
      Skating Rough Ground, 2022; Bay Leaves, Spring 2012
 
******

Closing the Account
December 1977
 
The solstice nears. Slush of old snow funds
the Yadkin with dirty commerce. Clay banks
dictate their depositions to the river. 
The river is not satisfied. I write

over each doorway in the house
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The flamboyance
is for myself, to show God I really
suffer. What is it I’ve forgotten? 

I begin the last words on my pad: 
I rise with dawn and feel like hell. 
Voices in my head, voices among
the waking birds, ‘Come and see,

a bushel of barley for a penny.’
They led me like a child through court
to testify against my kind, my friends
from childhood. I did it for my children,

to look them in the eye. As my sole
bargaining chip with God. I’ve blazed all
the lintels with black magic marker,
but the angel will not pass over. 

Pill bottles by the bed, in the library
a rack of guns. But this is how it ought
to end: like cut grass, blanched. Like morning glory
shriveling to a pin. What will the milk cow do?

Go on chewing what she has chewed before,
her milk vein swelling to feed her bag. 
Cast into the fire, I will smoke like fat. 
The world we love will go on being the world. 
      Skating Rough Ground, 2022; Bay Leaves, Fall 2011

*****

Ripeness Is All

Weighting the low branches, vermilion
splotched with apple green, it hangs
in easy reach—not quite ready
to pick, but turn your eye away one
moment, it will bruise with neglect.

The exact moment never comes
when it falls easily to hand.
By day it holds the stem like
a hooked redeye, then over night
spikes itself on the stubble.

When is my time, you wonder,
when will I, trembling with plenty
let go into the ripe void?
When will I steer
drunkenly into the blade?
     Night Weather, 2010; Visions International, 2005


*****

hawk in the dripping tree
can soar and dive and kill
and sit still in the rain

Miguel de Cervantes:
     Let me tell you, answered Don Quixote, that there is no remembrance that time does not efface, nor pain that death does not end.
    But what greater misfortune can there be, replied Sancho Panza, than one that waits for time to efface it and death to end it?

Vaclav Havel:
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world . . . Either we have hope or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.
     Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons . . .
     Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is.
     Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. (quoted in comment by Tatiana to blog post, "On Hope," by J. Nelson-Seawright)

The prophet Mormon (Moroni 7):
41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.
42 Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.
43 And again, behold I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be meek, and lowly of heart.

Posted 15 December 2024

​Cynthia Reeves, “Of Rhythm and Season,” mid-1970s

xii

first hard freeze
the scalded hog
hangs by its feet

*****

Traditional rural life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina was marked by seasonal activities. In early fall, the community gathered to harvest sorghum cane and make molasses. On October 12, 2024, Patti and I drove with my sister to Caldwell County to watch molasses being cooked. The cane had been cut and juiced the day before. The harvest was unusually difficult: Helene knocked the cane flat. It was not ruined even though many of the canes were broken. One of the farmers told me that gathering the canes was like pulling noodles from a plate of spaghetti, another that the canes were woven like a basket. Normally, the standing cane would be stripped of its leaves while standing in the field then cut and taken to the device for squeezing the juice out. Helene made this part of the job much more difficult.

The juice was placed on a long rectangular pan over a woodfire about five in the morning and cooked for eight hours. By the time we got there, about 10:30 in the morning, the juice had been cooked down about halfway and was constantly being stirred, removing the green scum of exploded cell walls (cellulose) and DNA (protein) (one of the farmers has a PhD in plant science). By 1, it was ready. The pan was removed from the fire and set on two sawhorses, one slightly higher than the other, so that the molasses could flow out the spigot at the end of the pan into a large washtub. The washtub was moved to a platform and the tub’s spigot was opened to let the molasses flow into jars. A crowd of people were waiting to buy each jar as soon as it was full. We had bought our jars earlier, from the batch cooked on the previous day. It is freer flowing than molasses I’ve had in the past, but unusually tasty, wonderful on hot biscuits with melted butter.

*****

After the first hard freeze in the fall, on Thanksgiving Day if it was cold enough, the community came together to slaughter and butcher their hogs. It had to be cold so that the hog’s body heat would rapidly dissipate and “the meat would … cure instead of spoil.” (

It was an important day. As my father put it in his memoirs, “Hog meat … was the main source of fat and protein in the mountain man’s diet” (“The Travles [sic] of John,” unpublished). My father learned to butcher hogs at a young age and was quite proud of his skill. He described the process in detail. The hog is shot in the head. “An expert slips a sharp knife between the shoulders at exactly the right place and severs the jugular artery so that the hog bleeds freely thus removing the blood from the meat.” The men lift the hog—it weighs 220 pounds or more—onto “a table above the vat of hot water” that has been heating up over a woodfire since 4:30 am. “The expert checks the temperature of the water with his finger. Water that is too hot will set the hair until the devil couldn’t scrape it off.” If the “water … is just right,” turning the hog over a time or two in the vat will remove the hair.” Any remaining hair is removed by scrapers.

“The hog is clean and ready for the butcher, but first it must be hung up where the butcher can work and out of the way of the killing and scraping crews.… The butcher splits the skin on the backside of the hind leg about six inches from just above the foot exposing the tendons or leaders. A hook from the single tree [or a gambling stick] is slipped behind the tendons on each leg and now by means of rope block and tackle the hog is pulled up to the hanging pole. The hog head swings just high enough above the ground so that a dishpan will slip under the head. The head comes off first and is set aside out of the way until one of the men splits it apart to be made into souse meat by one of the women. The butcher then takes a very sharp knife and marks a line starting dead center between the hind legs and down the hog to dead center between the front legs.” Then the butcher carefully ties off the anus and works downward, toward the head, removing the lungs (“the lights”) and other internal organs and carefully cutting away the intestines without nicking them.

I won’t describe the rest of the process, but the long day ended in a feast of fresh tenderloin and hams, shoulders, and side meat ready to feed the families for the next twelve months.

*****

the cow's wet nose
flecked with oats
sweetened by molasses

*****

winter coming
how comforting
to watch the groundhog
fill its belly

*****

December 7, 1941

One of my maternal grandmother’s brothers was Bower. I probably met him a time or two, but I don’t remember him.

He would have been worth talking to. He landed at Utah Beach on D-Day (80 years ago on June 6, 1944) and later was in charge of the burial detail at Arlington National Cemetery and worked on security at the White House during the Truman administration.

According to his obituary, he was already in the army when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, eighty-three years ago today. He married on the very next day. One can only imagine the emotions that he and his bride felt, knowing that his duty would call him away and put him in danger for an unknown period of years.

They were married till he died 63 years later.

​Posted 7 December 2024

​Our anonymous writer from Ruffin in Rockingham County accurately captures the logic of the Democrats’ campaign strategy in 1898. He was writing almost two months before the Wilmington coup and massacre. Source: “The Democratic Plan of Campaign,” Union Republican, 15 Sept 1898, 4.

In the first part of the letter, the anonymous writer discusses the various false arguments and rhetorical devices and subterfuges by which the Democratic party kept advancing its racist and white supremacist message.

In the second part of the letter (see below), the writer discusses the Democrats’ abuse of language and their use of a false analogy between the period of Reconstruction after the war and the period of Republican-Populist rule after the elections of 1894 and 1896. The main “argument” of the Democrats in defense of “the Democracy” is a threat of violence to enforce their electoral ambitions, a threat carried out most notoriously in Wilmington. (Wikipedia’s article on the coup and massacre provides more background.) The writer perceptively notes: “it is difficult to see how the [Democrats’] campaign is to proceed without some show of quelling disorder in which there shall be blood shed.”

However, the writer fails to acknowledge the weakness of the coalition (the Fusion) of Republicans and Populists opposing the Democrats. After their successful campaigns in 1894 and especially 1896, the coalition had achieved many of the legislative goals they agreed on, for example, capping interest rates, moving control of local government from the legislature to local voters, and reforming the election machinery to ensure an accurate count of the vote. But they disagreed on the way forward. All they offered in the 1898 election was opposition to the Democrats.

The Democrats were advancing a constitutional provision that would require literacy of voters, a provision that would disenfranchise most African American voters and many poor white voters. The writer thought that the citizens would rebel at being disenfranchised, but there was no rebellion: Democrats controlled most of the media in the state, white Republicans abandoned their African American allies, and violence (or its threat, suppressed any overt sign of rebellion.

*****

The letter continues:

     [Threat of violence] This self-constituted custodian of “law and order,” the State Democracy puts before the good people of the State in this year of grace, this alternative: if you want to avoid a reign of terror and bloodshed return us to power. Listen to Bellamy, who is peculiarly fitted to speak for Democracy, a sort of pet, has been to Europe and speaks Henglish fluently. Referring to [the] ancient regime of 1868 he said in [a] Monroe speech, “This record has demonstrated beyond question that if bloodshed, strife and unhappiness shall be avoided, the Democratic party must rule the State.” [Possibly a speech to a large gathering on August 23, 1898; see coverage in Wilmington Star issue of 26 Aug, page 3; ] Here is Democracy with the masque off, and the Democratic press applauds the sentiment. Here is candor which is refreshing because of its very boldness. What does it mean? That the Democratic party gets moribund and has fits in cycles. It has been thirty years since it had a spell, and now notifies the public that it feels another coming on.
     [para break added; definition of terms] To appreciate the contradictory and self-destructive position of the Democracy in making law and order secure by unlawful methods, it is necessary to understand the Democratic conception of the import of the above terms. This conception is that “law and order” are synonymous with Democratic rule, and that any other rule is unlawful and destructive of order, that it is the inalienable right of the Democratic party to abrogate law and suppress this order—that is rule by any other party—by a resort to extra legal means. To state it differently, it is the prerogative of the Democratic party to hold office and govern at all hazards. Under this conception, that blot on the civilization of the South, lynch law is justified and sustained by Democratic sentiment. Under it that other highly refined product of Democratic civilization, the Ku-Klux institution, the peculiar glory of the North Carolina Democracy, flourished and shed imperishable luster on the fame of the State. Bellamy did not fail in his Monroe speech to make due acknowledgements of the invaluable services rendered the party by “bands of protection” singling out the “Ku-Klux” for special mention. For the assassins of Stephens to longer conceal their identity is to miss fame and immortality at the hands of Democratic speakers and press. For them to come forth now with the details of that patriotic taking off is to be crowned heroes in the evolution of the Democratic idea of how to make “law and order” secure” [sic]. [NOTE: John Walker "Chicken" Stephens, a Republican state senator and justice of the peace from Caswell County, was murdered by the Klan in 1870, a fact not proven  until the ringleader's confession was opened after his death in 1935; see NCPedia.] 
     The logic of the Democratic argument, as voiced by speakers and press is that is a parallel between existing conditions, and the conditions which existed from the close of the war till Democracy came into power; and that as desperate expedients had to resorted to then, so now what are adroitly called “heroic measures” must be employed. To translate the diplomatic tone of speakers and press into plain speech we would read: To the slum/glum element in our party, greeting: Our party is in desperate straits, the cry of “n***r” failing to solidify the white people. Organize “bands of protection,” and if a goodly number of you can manage to provoke a riot with n***rs in which you shall lose your lives, the more the better, we promise to keep your memories green. Nothing would so fire the Democratic heart and set in motion billows of enthusiasm just now as a bloody shirt. In fact from the logic of the situation, it is difficult to see how the campaign is to proceed without some show of quelling disorder in which there shall be blood shed. [emphasis added].
     With Democratic purpose and methods so clearly revealed, what is the duty of the loyal citizens of all parties? Is it not clear that the highest interest of the State demands the sinking of minor issues for the time, the suppression of personal rivalries. The yielding of personal resentment in the interest of united and harmonious actions to smash the Democratic conception that law and order are secured by resorting to illegal and insurrectionary methods, and to silence, forever the hypocritical subterfuge of “negro rule” by which the Democracy hopes to cover its return to power? Just now, strong emphasis is given by Democratic speakers and press to the fact that the State, by her election laws, is isolated from her sister Southern States. This is only a half truth which is said to be worse than a straighout [sic] lie. It is true that she is out of line with the Southern States when there is political decadence and dry rot [in] South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, but she is in line with the progressive states of West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey.
     But what of the argument? It means that[,] if the Democrats get the control of the next Legislature[,] the passage of an educational qualification law. To make law conform to the Constitution it must apply alike to white and black. In other words in order for the Democracy [to] strike the ballot from the hands of thirty to forty thousand negroes it must disfranchise fifteen to twenty thousand whites. Will the white man who, from poverty or lack of opportunity in childhood, failed to learn to read barter away his political birthright at the Democratic barbecue? “Surely in vain the net is spread in sight of any bird.” And if incendiary appeals by Democratic speakers and press shall precipitate not [sic; riot] and disorder as fore-shadowed, will not the liberty and peace loving people rise in their majesty and consign to utter political oblivion, the party having the hardihood to resort to such means?
     To Republican and Populist Insurgents, a word to you. It is your purpose to play the role of your namesakes in Cuba and the Phillippines? They deserted their benefactors at the critical moment and thereafter contented themselves with seizing American rations and supplies, and doing nothing. It is possible that you are more concerned about the loaves and fishes than the success of your respective parties? Are you not by factious opposition to co-operative candidates giving aid and comfort to the common enemy, the Democratic party? If Gen. Wheeler had contested the authority of Sh[a]fter at the battle of Santiago; and instead of meeting in combined assaults on the enemies [sic] works, had stirred up division and attacked his own lines[,] what would have been thought of his conduct in this country? Gen. Garcia did fail to come to [in] time and took the sulks. Did his conduct rise or lower, him in the estimation of his friends or even his enemies?
     [para break added] Just now Republican and Populist forces are lining up for combined assault on our ancient enemy, the Democratic party. Are you are this critical juncture, going to forment [sic] division in your our [sic] ranks and thereby forfeit the good opinion of your best friends for the empty reward of the temporary applause of your oldtime enemy, with his subsequent contempt after the victory is over? This is not the year for the so called independent candidate. The people are waging a crucial contest in this State, and will tolerate foolishness. Wherever independent candidates, so called, are up let them make haste to come down.
Let resentment in the 8th district, especially be silenced at the grave of Dr. Wilcox, whose untimely loss Republicans everywhere deplore, and for whom they sincerely mourn.
Let our ranks close up, and Democracy must meet its Santiago in November.
                                           Republican,
Ruffin, N.C., Sept 10, ‘98.