back and a "God bless you!" he was on his way before the half-frozen lips of the flagman could frame a protest.

Somebody told of it-the flagman, perhaps― but, at any rate, one of the big merchants of Birmingham, a Jew, called Mrs. Bryan on the telephone and wanted to know what size overcoat Brother Bryan wore, as he was going to send him another at once.

"It won't do a bit of good!" said Mrs. Bryan. "He'll give it away to the next person he sees, who needs it more than he does."

"All right, let him do it and notify me, and I'll send him another one and another one yet!" blurted this big-hearted merchant. That's the way they think of Brother Bryan. He is the same to all of them. He knows no denomination in his work of humanity.

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ERE is another story about Brother Bryan -and it is the truth. Mrs. Bryan returned, one afternoon, to find a dray backed up in front of the house and Brother Bryan and the colored drayman lifting her refrigerator into the vehicle.

"Why, Mr. Bryan! What on earth are you doing?" she asked.

“Well, dear; you know, I found a family of mighty poor folks-three little children and the mother all down sick-and they can't eat anything but milk, and they have no way of keeping that milk this hot weather, so I thought they needed this contraption a heap worse than we did."

And he scrambled up and drove off with the family refrigerator!

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HEN there is this story: He went home to forage for clothes for a poor family he had unearthed in some purlieu, and took nearly all of Mrs. Bryan's dresses and his only extra pair of trousers, and the only extra suit belonging to one of his boys! He never has but one suit of clothes -gives any others away. He has sent folks into his cellar and they have taken the last bit of coal there, save a scuttleful. He has often rushed in and grabbed up a meal ready to be served, and toted it off to some hungry people.

proposition by taking a certain percentage of the money won in the game.

At the table were three Jews, two Catholics, and four Protestants. It was a long game, with a lot of money moving. When it ended, there was a fund of several hundred dollars, and one of the participants was delegated to buy Brother Bryan a new horse and buggy.

He purchased a milk-white horse that was a beauty, a new set of harness, and the best buggy in Birmingham. Then came the difficulty of explaining to Brother Bryan, and the man who made the purchase, being a politician, just had to say that it was a present from him!

Brother Bryan was overjoyed, and used that outfit for many years. The other men who were parties to the purchase were perfectly content to remain in the background. This is the first time the real truth about Brother Bryan's fine white horse and buggy has ever been in print.

F any humble folk come to Birmingham

Brother Bryan hears of it, he welcomes them and lets them understand that if they are in trouble or need a friend, to let him know. And he never fails them, either.

And if any one is in real serious trouble or sorrow and wants real sympathy, help, or prayers that sound like a personal request to a loving and compassionate Father, they send for Brother Bryan. If there is a wayward girl-he can bring her to a realization of her folly if anybody on this earth can. If there is a young man going to the dogs, Brother Bryan can come nearer to straightening him out than any other force. And if there is a heart bowed down and the way ahead seems dark, Brother Bryan seems to be able to shoulder the load and point the way to the sunlit paths again.

The sorrows of others are as real to him as if they were his own. There is not a grain of pretense in his make-up. He actually loves everybody-he simply cannot help it. No one ever appealed to him in vain. The humblest negro in trouble can get his sympathy and a prayer just as quick as anybody else. He serves humanity.

If he finds a case of dire poverty he hustles around to some coal dealer and secures some fuel. Then two or three grocerymen will be visited, and food obtained. And some good women will find clothes, and some doctor will go at Brother Bryan's bidding. And some business man will furnish employment. He believes in direct action, does Brother Bryan, and he can cover more ground in a day than a deer with the dogs after it. He is a marvel of energy.

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ROTHER BRYAN rises at five o'clock every morning-and goes to bed when he can. He starts out visiting the sick and the suffering. At noon he dives into the nearest manufacturing-plant or some other place where there are a number of people, and delivers a short address. They all know him, respect him, and listen to him.

One rather precise fellow who recently joined the forces at the car barns of the Birmingham Railway, Light, and Power Company approached Brother Bryan one day, after his little sermon, and, in a North Alabama twang, asked as if it was the most important matter in the world: "And what persuasion mout you belong to, brother?"

"Law, man, I jined 'em all thirty-one years ago!" replied Brother Bryan, in the vernacular.

As a matter of fact, Reverend James A. Bryan, pastor of the Third Avenue Presbyterian Church, of Birmingham, is a graduate of the University of North Carolina. He attended a summer school for the study of Hebrew at the University of Virginia, and is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary.

He was born on a farm near Williamsburg, South Carolina, March 20, 1863, lived and worked on the farm until he was fourteen, when his father took him to the old "Lovejoy Academy" at Raleigh. Then he went to the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill. He was going to study law, but the serious illness of his father, and the wish that he study for the ministry, changed him. His father died, and he taught school one year at Gastonia, South Carolina. Then he attended the Hebrew school at the University of Virginia that summer. awarded a scholarship valued at $150 at Princeton, a cousin, W. T. Condon, agreeing to take his place on the farm and help Mrs. Bryan. That scholarship was his only asset.

He was

"I boarded in what was called "The Southern Club,'" he said. "Paid three dollars a week. Didn't have any clothes, hardly, and like to have froze. One of the boys, Charles A. Hyland, of Yokena, Mississippi, got a box of clothes from home, with a lot of warm underwear. He gave me some, and it kept me from freezing. Then some good-hearted person in Philadelphia sent

me an overcoat. Then when it looked like I just couldn't get enough funds to finish on, the good ladies of the Second Avenue Presbyterian Church, of Charleston, South Carolina, got up a scholarship of two hundred dollars and that enabled me to finish.

"I came down to Birmingham to stay a month, doing mission work on the South Side. The Third Avenue Presbyterian Church was organized and I was asked to become its pastor. I preached my first sermon to thirty-five peopleand, last Sunday, to mighty near a thousand. I've often wondered why my church hasn't 'fired' me. I devote about two hours a week to it-and the rest outside."

THE

loving cup was presented to him at a great public meeting in Birmingham, Sunday, January 23, 1921. State and civic dignitaries, notable men and women, people from the humble walks of life, sat on the platform and in the audience. Hundreds could not get in the building.

A man on the platform leaned over and whispered to a friend sitting next to him: "I'll bet you a hat that before the year is out Brother Bryan pawns that five-hundred-dollar loving cup to relieve some urgent case of distress!”

"Won't take you-he's liable to do that very thing!" replied the other.

Brother Bryan had no idea he was going to win the prize. It was my privilege to talk to him soon after he had heard the news.

"I had never thought that I would be called ‘a public benefactor,"" he said. "I look upon this merely as a call from God to be more faithful. I feel mighty grateful-and mighty humble. I know it is not me, but the work I have tried to do.

"I fear this award. I fear that it may put pride in my heart. I pray to God that it may not do anything to divert me from the main issue-that of humanity and its sufferings and wanderings seeking the light and the way. I know it is not myself not a personal matter-but my work that brought this designation. I don't think I have done any more than my duty, and what I love to do, and I have not done those things as fully as I should. But, I reckon, I have done the best I could."

We believe in a man in proportion to his immovableness from principle, the fixity of his faith in his mission.

An hour's industry will do more to produce cheerfulness, suppress evil humors, and retrieve your affairs, than a month's moaning.

I would rather be a nobody and be loved than a world-famous figure whom everybody hated.—Uncle Jerry.

Salt your food with humor, pepper it with wit, and sprinkle over it the charm of good fellowship. Never poison it with the cares of life.

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OTHING is more common than to hear people say, "I have a right to do as I please with my own." But have we? When the thing you please to do with your own works to the injury, the demoralization, the discomfort, or the unhappiness of others, even though you may be within the law, do you think you have a right to do it?

Has a man a right to spend his money as he pleases, regardless of how it affects his neighbors, his employees, or others? Simply because he has a lot of money, which, perhaps, someone left him, has a man the right to buy up the water-front and build high walls for a mile or more, shutting out the landscape and the sea view from his neighbors?

For example, I know of an instance where a whole neighborhood was recently cut off from its view of the beach and the sea by a ten-foot solid wall. Not one of the poorer neighbors who had always previously enjoyed this beautiful view can now get a glimpse of the water without climbing a tree or climbing on top of the wall. And if they do this, they are liable to be ordered off as trespassers! There are other places in this land-which boasts of its democracy-where many families never get a glimpse of the sunset because of miles of high fences or walls constantly saying to them, "You can't see the sunset or the water or the skyline again. They belong to me. I've bought the right to them!" In many instances, these barriers have been put up by men who have made their money largely through the labor of the very people whose view they have shut off-men and women, and even children, who are working in their factories, their shops, their mines, and have made their palatial homes possible.

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brothers and sisters, if your father and mother, had to face, every day, a wall that shut them out from a glimpse of God's beauties, the things He has given, as an inalienable right, to every human being? Is it human, is it just, to shut off whole families, an entire neighborhood from the sources of health and happiness? You know it is not. If you would only try to imagine yourself in the position of these poor people, you would realize that your selfishness is a crime against humanity.

nature.

No man has a right to spend his money as he pleases when it deprives his poorer neighbors of that which God has given to every human being indiscriminately as his right-the beauties of Poor people have just as much right to God's beautiful sunset or sunrise as you have, Mr. Millionaire. Your title deed does not give you title to the sky, to the horizon, to the water view. Your rights cease when they cut off or interfere with the rights of your neighbor, no matter how poor he may be or how rich you may be.

One of the most damnable traits of some of the very rich in this country is their selfishness, their greed, their utter disregard of the rights of the less fortunate. They boast of their "Americanism," of their democracy even, while they are slavish imitators of the most selfish and undemocratic classes of the Old World. They hold themselves above those who have been less successful in amassing material things, who, perhaps, have not had the long head, the long arm, the shrewdness, the cunning to exploit others as they have had. Not only will they not asso

ciate with them, but, like their Old World models, they build high walls, high fences of some kind, around their beautiful homes and grounds, so that the poor people in their vicinity, whose lives are none too bright, cannot get a glimpse of their beauties.

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OW, we are all brothers and sisters, because we all came from the same Source. We are children of the same Father. This is the fundamental principle of democracy, and until we recognize it in our living, in our conduct toward others, we have no right to prate of our

Americanism or our democracy. Before you wealthy snobs dare to speak of democracy, let democracy, let human brotherhood, let even common decency, open up your minds and your hearts to the wrong you are doing your brother when, by the selfish use of your money, you

deprive him of what God made for the enjoyment of all His children! Before you try to make him believe in your democracy, fraternize with him. Instead of robbing him of his rights, share your privileges with him. Tear down your high sea-walls; Do not be a hog and continue to shut off the glorious sea view from your poorer neighbors who cannot buy up the shore front. You ought to feel mean-if you are normal you will despise yourself-every time you see poor children climbing trees or scaling high walls to get a glimpse of the ocean, the lake or the river, the God-given views of land or sea, of which you have robbed them. If you would be democratic, then, tear down your high walls and your tight fences, Mr. Rich Man. and let your neighbors, let the kids, enjoy God's beautiful scenery, the sky, and water, and sunset. Don't cut them off from the beautiful beaches, the bathing privileges just because you happen to own the title deed to the shore front. Let them

enjoy your beautiful grounds, trees, shrubbery and flowers; the architecture of your beautiful home. It won't hurt you and it will be a great privilege to them. In fact it will be an education to them to see these beautiful things.

The time will come, when you will look back upon your life and regret your selfish acts, your exclusiveness. You don't want these neighbors you have shut out from their rights to point you out as a man who has money-a fortune, but no man back of it. Treat them so they will admire you, look up to you because you are human, because you are kindly, because you are sympathetic. They won't admire or love you for selfishness. Everybody, hates greed-hates a grasping, greedy disposition. Everybody hates exclusiveness and snobbery. It doesn't go with the American people.

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HE appalling selfishness of the wealthy in just such instances as I have cited, and their wanton extravagance in spending enormous sums to gratify their every whim and desire, to satisfy their vanity and love of ostentatious display, is one of the things that creates class hatred. Piling up wealth in the hands of non-productive spenders, men and women who do not work, is feeding Bolshevism. The idle rich are the real menace to our democracy, to our American ideals. They are creating an irresistible demand among the laboring classes for fair play, a tremendous protest against the injustice of a privileged class being allowed to consume all the good things in our civilization, without putting anything back in return, without earning one cent to compensate for all they have taken-the fruits of others' toil.

Only a short time ago, one of these drones, a rich New York woman, testified in open court that she could not dress properly on less than sixty thousand dollars a year! This was only one item in the personal expenditure of this woman, who. perhaps, never did a useful thing in her life. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are often spent in the decoration of a ballroom in a private residence in our great cities. Not long ago a half-million-dollar contract was made for the decoration of a ballroom in a New York residence.

Fifty thousand dollar fur coats, ten and twenty thousand dollar automobiles, balls and dinners and costly entertainments of all sorts, on which hundreds of thousands of dollars are lavished, personal indulgence and gross dissipation-this is all that money with its great responsibilities means to thousands of rich idlers.

"But," people often say, "the spending of the rich puts money in circulation, benefits trade, and gives a lot of people employment. If this woman does spend thousands of dollars on dresses; or if that rich man does spend fifty thousand dollars for a dinner, why dressmakers, milliners, florists, market men and many other workers get the money.”

Yes, but what about the demoralization of such wicked waste? What about destroying the standards of right living? What about the effect upon the character of the people who waste the money, and the influence of their example upon the people who work for them?

HERE is no truth in this theory, plausible

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as it may sound. The woman whose conscience pricks her for her extravagance, may console herself by thinking that she is giving the poor women who ruin their eyesight making her fine laces and rich gowns needed employment. But giving people employment in worse than useless work, in making things that cater to one's weakness, that really injure one, does not help any one. It is not a useful service and does not add anything to the world's wealth.

You can't justify wasteful extravagance by saying that you are giving people employment. If you are not putting your surplus wealth into enterprises that give people a chance to do useful work, something that will educate and develop them, something that will improve them, that will make their lives better and sweeter, more worth while, something that will be of some value to the world, you are not helping any one. are only catering to your own vanity and selfishThe street cleaner or the hod carrier is doing more to help the world along than you are. (Continued on page 137)

ness.

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