Ohio History Journal

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228 Ohio Arch

228      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

by assumed super and supra-natural means, but in accordance

with the laws which govern in the every day world of to-day.

The twelve labors of Hercules were not more onerous, nor more

beset with impending perils, than were his efforts in the council

chambers of chancellories and the closets of cabinets, none the

less along nervous lines of gathering armies, in his task of arous-

ing supine Europe to the point of stamping out the nameless

atrocities being heaped upon the people of a helpless principality.

His unattained and interdicted ride from the headquarters

of the Russian army to Khiva, in open defiance of the orders

of the grim commander, with drumhead court martial and sum-

mary execution, as the alternative of disobedience, has no par-

allel in classic literature, where poetic imagination supplies every

gap in the continuity of events.

The final rounding out of his life's mission, the deliverance

of the Principality of Bulgaria from the merciless hand of the

Moslem Spoiler, is one of the established facts in the nineteenth

century history, more heroic, more knightly, more god-like, in

every respect than the fabled achievement of Perseus in rescuing

Andromeda, the daughter of the king of Ethiopia, from the

greedy jaws of the Sea Monster.

Our Perry county Knight was indeed a hero; one, without

fear and without reproach.

 

 

A BULGARIAN'S TRIBUTE TO MACGAHAN.

By Svetozar Tonjoroff.

To a Bulgarian the name of MacGahan is fraught with

memories that stir the soul and send the blood coursing faster

through the veins. For MacGahan was the first champion of

an oppressed people before the world's tribunal. It was MacGa-

han who, in the Bulgarian revolution against savage tyranny in

1876, closed the lying mouths of British diplomats and British

bondholders, thirsty for the payment of maturing Turkish cou-

pons, by placing the damning facts of Turkish misrule before

the collective conscience of the English-speaking races. It was

a service which the Bulgarians will never forget so long as

history lasts.