Ohio History Journal

226      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

 

JANUARIUS ALOYSIUS MACGAHAN.

Eulogy by William A. Taylor.

Many years ago, when a boy attending Dist. No. 6 school

in Harrison township, I was deeply, but not then favorably, im-

pressed by this sentence in Kirkham's Grammar: "The evil that

men do lives after them; the good is often interred with their

bones," which I was called on to parse, analyse and expatiate on

generally, by my teacher Philander H. Binckley, student, phil-

osopher, literary writer and profound scholar, well-known to

many, and heard of by all of you.

For a long it seemed to me that this assigned greater prom-

inence and power to evil than to good. Else why should evil

survive uninterruptedly, and good be buried at least for a great

portion of the time, with the bones of the doers?

But the lapse of time and a continuity of observation, con-

vinced me that the ancient axiom-maker was not mistaken, that

the evil that men do lives after them, not to honor their memory

but to reproach it, and warn the oncoming generations not to

erect their monuments of misshapen deeds of evil, crowned with

stinging thistles and rankling brambles. True enough, the good

that men do is often buried with them, but "often" is only a

small fraction of "always," and it is the surviving good that

not only stands as a monument of approbation, but borders the

highways, on the right and the left, with glorious flowers and

stately palms, cooling springs, winnowing zephyrs, whispering of

both the past and the yet to be, and crowning all the beckoning

vistas of the far beyond -the Ultima Thule of life and effort

and activity and self-abnegation. To attain this high altitude,

is, as it should be, the true aim of life, in whatever sphere of

activity our mission and our labors lie. None are too exalted

to fire our ambition; none too humble to deserve our fullest ef-

fort. This was the spirit which animated the men whose name

and fame and achievements are here to commemorate and dedi-

cate to posterity, the predestined custodian of terrestrial fame.

Here among the rugged and versatile beauties of his native

county, he was the child of nature and the student of that history,

which marks the alternating eras of progress and decadence of

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.