AMENDMENT TO CHARTER OF MARKSVILLE. Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Louisiana, in General Assembly convened, That the fourth section of the act entitled "An Act to incorporate the town of Marksville, in the Parish of Avoyelles,' be and the same is hereby amended and re-enacted so as to read thus: That the said Mayor and Aldermen shall constitute a board for the government of said town, and they shall have and possess the following powers, to-wit: First, they shall have power to lay a tax upon all taxable property within their limits, not to exceed the amount of the parish tax upon the same property; second, they shall possess all the powers within said limits which have been heretofore exercised by the Police Jury of the said Parish of Avoyelles; third, they shall have power to prohibit houses of ill-fame and disorderly houses, and to impose a fine not exceeding fifty dollars for each contravention of this act in relation to said disorderly houses or houses of ill-fame; fourth, they shall have power to remove all nuisances, tax all plays, shows, billiard tables and every other species of games not expressly prohibited by the laws of this State, in such sum as to them may seem just and proper; provided, that said tax shall not exceed one hundred per cent. on the State tax; and provided further, that the Police Jury of the Parish of Avoyelles shall no longer have any jurisdiction within the limits of said town or impose any tax on persons or property therein, except such jurisdiction as may be necessary to impose such special tax as may be required to make and repair the courthouse and jail in said town, for which purpose taxes may be levied on the property within said town or corporation by the Police Jury, equal and no more than, on property in other portions of said parish; fifth, they shall have power to appoint a Treasurer, Secretary and Collector, and such other officers as may be necessary for the administration of said town of Marksville, and to require such bond and security for the faithful performance of their duties as the said Mayor and Aldermen by their by-laws may prescribe; sixth, they shall have power to remove all persons who may be seized with any contagious or infectious diseases, and establish a hospital in the neighborhood for their comfort and reception; seventh, they shall have power to prescribe fines for all breaches of this act of incorporation, or of the by-laws of said town of Marksville, not to exceed fifty dollars, and the same to sue for and recover for the use of said town or corporation; eighth, they shall possess all powers that are prescribed by law for the government of corporations in general. Section 2. Be it further enacted, That no person shall be eligible to the office of Mayor or Aldermen who does not reside within the limits of said corporation and possesses the legal quali fications necessary to entitle him to a seat in the General Assembly of this State. Be it further enacted, That the election for the officers of said town of Marksville, as contemplated in this act, shall take place on the first Saturday of June, eighteen hundred and fiftyfive, and on the first Saturday of June each succeeding year; and all laws contrary to this act are hereby repealed. JOHN M. SANDIDGE, Speaker of the House of Representatives. FROM AN INDIAN VILLAGE TO A COUNTY SEAT; FROM A TRADING POST TO A THRIVING MUNICIPALITY; FINIS. JOE MITCHELL PILCHER. MEETING OF NOVEMBER, 1917. The Louisiana Society met in the Cabildo on Tuesday, November 27th, at 8 o'clock, the usual date of meeting having been changed by the Executive Committee out of compliment to the Prison Reform Association meeting that had pre-empted all the evenings of the third week in November for their meetings. There was a good attendance of members and guests. The President was absent, but was replaced by Mr. John Dymond. After the reading of the minutes the following members were placed in nomination and eletced: Mr. James Long Wright, 617 Common Street. Mr. Robert Legier, 124 Carondelet Street. Mr. F. A. Brunet, 313 Royal Street. Miss Marie L. Points, 930 Elysian Fields Street. Miss Marie V. Denegre, 2427 St. Charles Street. Miss Grace King read the paper of the evening, "The Real Philip Nolan," the material for which, original documents and letters, were furnished by Miss Kate Minor, who was present, and who added greatly to the interest of the paper by the reminiscences she was able to contribute on the life history of Philip Nolan, who had married a great-aunt of hers. Mr. Hart made a short report about the Bienville celebration held in the City Hall on October 24th. Mrs. Gregory reported that her husband, stationed in France, had in a letter described the bi-centennial celebration of the founding of New Orleans held in Paris on the same date as this Bienville celebration in this city. He said it was largely attended and in every way worthy of the event. There was some short discussion after Miss King's paper before the Society adjourned. THE REAL PHILIP NOLAN. By GRACE KING. We are all of us acquainted with the remarkable story, "The Man Without a Country," by Edward Everett Hale; one of the classic gems of our literature. Its theme infinitely above the usual commonplace theme of the short story, coupled with a title of sinister significance, has placed it apart in a class to itself. The man without a country! What a mournful echo the title arouses in the heart! It conveys, and apparently was meant to convey, a severe moral, appearing, as it did, in the period closely following the Civil War. The moral did not commend it at first. to Southern readers, who have since had to learn to accept and admire it for its pure literary beauty and exalted ideals, and as we see to-day, its impartial sincerity of sentiment. When the story first appeared, it was taken in such sober seriousness, so much curiosity was aroused as to its origin, whether the hero, Philip Nolan existed in romance or in real life, that Hale, in a preface to one of its numerous editions, felt constrained to state that the story lacked all foundation in fact; but later he wrote a novel called "Philip Nolan and His Friends," a story built upon historical records, which with a different fate from "The Man Without a Country," is to be found now only in the limbo of unread books in public libraries, where it holds its position merely by virtue of the preface containing Hale's reflections on his hero. "I feel," he writes, "that I owe something to the memory of Philip Nolan, whose name I took unguardedly for the name of a hero of my own creation." The part that the real Philip Nolan played in the history of our country is far more important than that of many a hero who has statues raised in his honor. He was murdered by the Spanish government, who dishonored its own passport for his murder. Spain was strong then, and America was weak, and Mr. Jefferson a "pacifist." Philip Nolan was a Southerner, and his story, in truth, belongs to us in Louisiana. How it was captured and made, as we may say, a spoil of conquest, is one of the interesting memories of our distinguished co-member, Miss Kate Minor, of Southdown plantation, Terrebonne Parish, whose life seems held together by a chain of such memories. This one, with the papers belonging to it, she has graciously put at the service of the Historical Society. She, and she alone, can explain why Philip Nolan's name should have been singled out to typify a rare incident of disloyalty, with its unnecessarily cruel and harsh punishment. Hale while traveling in leisurely, philosophical fashion through the South after the close of the Confederate War, came to Louisiana, and was, no doubt, glad to leave the sad war-beaten City of New Orleans for the country, particularly for so beautiful a region of the State as Terrebonne Parish, where if anywhere in the world Nature was strong and opulent enough to conceal, if not cure the ravages of war. In Terrebonne, he enjoyed further the hospitality of a typical Southern home, that of Mr. William J. Minor, on the plantation which green, fertile and prosperous bears so well the pleasant English name of "Southdown." Miss Minor relates that she recalls with vivid distinctness the picture of her mother sitting and talking with the distinguished, handsome stranger, lately numbered with the foes of her country, entertaining him in the charming way that Southern ladies have always known how to entertain strangers in their homes, so that to alter the Biblical expression, when they have passed on, they have found that they have often been entertained by angels unawares. Naturally the conversation did not turn on the recent bloody past; that would have been a poor way to entertain, at that time, a courteous and courtly Northern visitor; but it went back to the farther past, to the stately colonial past, with its romance and poetry and glamorous life of abundant prosperity and wealth; and as it seems to the descendants of that time, of unmeasured pleasures and ease. And, àpropos, perhaps, of a compliment to the beautiful green land outside the window, it must have been explained that Southdown plantation did not belong to the colonial past of the Minor family, but to their more recent history. The present owner of Southdown and his forebears, as we know, but of course Mr. Hale did not, belong to Natchez, where their home was the famous "Concord Mansion," the most famous mansion in its time in the Mississippi Valley. Would that we could have heard Mrs. Minor's descriptions of it! And of the stories connected with it! No woman in the world, I firmly believe, can relate such stories as beautifully and simply as the Southern woman, of the generation of our mothers. Mrs. Minor, evidently, as such story tellers did, went back to what they called their "beginning," that is to what their mothers had told them; and their mothers invariably in the narrative went back to their "beginning," that is to what their mothers. had told them. And so, in the easy, leisurely course from reminiscence to reminiscence (the hours are long on a Louisiana plantation), the name immortalized by Hale came in due succession in the story of Mrs. Minor's grand-aunt, Fannie Lintot; and this was the first time that the name of Philip Nolan ever fell upon Hale's ears. Mrs. Minor's story must have been as follows: Fannie Nolan was the daughter of Bernard Lintot, one of the early settlers of Natchez. He was the son of William Lintot, of the Inner Temple, London. His will, dated 1753, with a deed of sale of certain property in the County of New Haven and Colony of Connecticut, dated 1774, is still to be seen in the Minor family archives. Bernard Lintot emigrated from Old England to New England, and he later moved southward from New England to |