CHAPTER XXVII

ITEMS FROM “THE OLD NORTH STATE”

Two of the most interesting things we saw in Raleigh were the model jail on the top floor of the new County Court House, where a lot of very honest looking rustics were confined to await trial for making “blockade” (otherwise moonshine) whisky, and the North Carolina Hall of History, which occupies a floor in the fine new State Administration Building, opposite the Capitol.  At the head of the first stair landing in the Administration Building is a memorial tablet to William Sidney Porter ("O Henry"), who was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a bust of the author, in relief, by Lorado Taft.  Porter, it may be mentioned, was a connection of Worth Bagley, the young ensign who was the only American naval officer killed in the Spanish-American War.  Bagley was a brother of Mrs. Josephus Daniels.  A monument to him stands in the park before the Capitol.  Aside from Porter, the only author well known in our time whom I heard mentioned in connection with North Carolina, was the Rev. Thomas Dixon, whose name is most familiar, perhaps, in connection with the moving-picture called “The Birth of a Nation,” taken from one of his novels.  Mr. Dixon was born in the town of Shelby, North Carolina, and was for some years pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, Raleigh.

The Hall of History, containing a great variety of State relics, is one of the most fascinating museums I ever visited.  Too much praise cannot be given Colonel Fred A. Olds and Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood, of the North Carolina Historical Society, for making it what it is.  As with the Confederate Museum in Richmond, so, here, it is impossible to give more than a faint idea of the interest of the museum’s contents.  Among the exhibits of which I made note, I shall, however, mention a few.  There was a letter written from Paris in the handwriting of John Paul Jones, requesting a copy of the Constitution of North Carolina; there was the Ku Klux warning issued to one Ben Turner of Northampton County; and there was an old newspaper advertisement signed by James J. Selby, a tailor, dated at Raleigh, June 24, 1824, offering a reward of ten dollars for the capture and return of two runaways:  “apprentice boys, legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson.”  The last named boy was the same Andrew Johnson who later became a distinctly second-rate President of the United States.  Also there was a peculiarly tragic Civil War memento, consisting of a note which was found clasped in the dead hand of Colonel Isaac Avery, of the 6th North Carolina Regiment, who was killed while commanding a brigade on the second day at Gettysburg.

     Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy.

These words were written by the fallen officer with his left hand, his right arm having been rendered useless by his mortal wound.  For ink he used his own life blood.