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VOL UME TO UR
MUMU Ell TWO
A LITERAK-Y ‘BENEFACTOR GONE
OHN H. SEALS is dead —but he yet
lives in thousands of homes, hearts and
human lives!
The editor of The Golden Age cannot
speak of Col. Seals with the formal
editorial “we.” I must be allowed to
be personal. His paper, The Sunny
South, and his own personal kindnesses
J
I most needed such blessings and friendship, that my
peart is unspeakably stricken while I bedew his
new-made grave with tears.
Away back in 1888 when the ‘ 1 dear old Sunny
South” was in the Augustan age of its popularity
and usefulness as the literary and family weekly of
the South, I yielded to the generous and persistent
entreaty of Beatrice Christian, a brilliant, beautiful
girl of Powder Springs, Ga., to write for the “Boys
and Girls” and departments of that
paper, which she had been sending or bringing to
my bedside for several months —introducing me, her
self, in an interpretive and refreshing way to many
of the unseen correspondents and throwing about
my then narrow world all the glow and glamour of
wholesome inspiration which such a paper alone
could give to a shadowed life in the “rosy realm of
youth.” I wrote my first letter under the pen name
“Earnest Willie,” a name that she gave me, and a
new world —a new dream broke in upon me. An
other letter was written or dictated, and from far
and near personal letters “like white winged mes
sengers from above,” began to pour into my then
secluded life.
Soon the brilliant editor, Col. Seals, reached out
his own personal hand of encouragement to the
prostrate boy in Cobb county and the realm of new
found joy brightened while a sphere of possible
usefulness hitherto undreamed of, began to unfold
before me.
Over the wreckage of youthful hopes and golden
ambitions a new splendor 'began to fall, kissing the
shadows into sunlight with the “alchemy of hope”
and transforming and transmuting the debris of
fallen castles into ladders of opportunity and wings
of flight.
Over all these early efforts —amid all the kindling
glory of these new-born dreams, John H. Seals
smiled the priceless benediction of his confidence and
his cherry “God bless you, my boy!”
He Sells “The Sunny South.”
And then, feeling age creeping upon him, and
worn and weary in body from the tong, hard battle
of successfully launching the only literary weekly
that had ever lived in the South, he sold the paper
after twenty odd years of love and labor and de
cided to spend life’s evening in the rest he so much
needed and had so richly earned.
A sad day for the editor —and without disparage-
. ■ > ' ... f .
A;Fascinating Free Scholarship Proposition: WRITE VS RIGHT NOW
Col. John H. Seals, Founder of The Sunny South, Passes Alvay A Personal Appreciation.
ATLANTA, GA., FEBRUARY 25, 1909.
Sy WILLI A M D. UPS HA W.
ment —for the paper as well. Never mind about
the money and the genius put back of it, no
man could love the beautiful paper like its father
and founder had done and no man could give its
pages the magic touch and tone which the pen and
name of John H. Seals had gvien it when his gifted
and consecrated wife stood by 'his side and Mary E.
Bryan poured her brilliant richness on every page.
A sadder day came. Col. Seals was unfortunate
in his investments. The earnings of a lifetime
slipped through his hands, untaught and unwise,
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maybe, in commercial endeavors. He became dis
couraged—utterly dispirited —and his financial and
mental decline brought great grief to his devoted
friends. It is a sacred pleasure now for those who
loved him to remember the privilege of trying to
give back to him some little reflex of that sunshine
which he had so long and so widely given unto
others.
Teacher, Orator and Editor.
John H. Seals was a graduate of Mercer Univer
sity before that famous institution was moved from
Penfield to Macon, and, as many a brilliant son of
an educational institution has done, he married the
President’s daughter—the queenly and gifted Lillian
Saunders, daughter of Billington Saunders, the first
President of Mercer University.
For a time in the school room, then as editor of
The Temperance Crusader, then through all the try
ing days of the early struggles of The Sunny South,
this great woman was his daily inspiration.
Millard Seals, their only son, who inherited the
oratorical gifts of his father and who was just com
ing into prominence as a young orator whose elo
quence would be dedicated through life to the cause
of temperance and Christianity, was drowned on a
vacation trip to Charleston, and Ihe editor of The
Sunny South never recovered from the terrible
shock. And when, a few years later, his stricken,
loyal wife went home, he felt himself marked for
“sorrow’s crown of sorrow.” The light had gone
out of his home and the star and the glow of human
inspiration had faded from his sky.
Col. Seals was never the same again. And while
he continued for several years to successfully pub
lish The Sunny South, yet for him “a splendor from
the earth had fled.”
When in his prime and at his best, Col. Seals’was
an orator of magnetic power. He used to come out
to my country home in Cobb county to attend the
annual gatherings of the Mcßeath Literary Circle,
and he always electrified the crowds with his inspir
ing eloquence.
I did not wait to tell him, but now that he is
gone I rejoice to tell the world that contact with
T'he Sunny South and its editor ignited the spark
from Which much of my present life-work on the
platform and in the columns of The Golden Age
has grown.
So it may be said that John 11. Seals and The
Sunny South were the real parents, so to speak, of
The Golden Age and also of Uncle Remus’ Monthly
Magazine, of which The Sunny South was the basis
and builder.
Whatever these publications have meant, and may
mean for good to the country, should be traced in
loving acknowledgment to the real source of their
inspiration’.
For these reasons, therefore, .John H. Seals should
be given an honored place in the South’s literary
“Hall of Fame.”
His brother, Prof. W. B. Seals, himself an emin
ent educator, died a few years ago and Col. Seals
is survived by one brother, Rev. T. A. Seals, one of
the most consecrated men on the superannuated list
of the Methodist ministry.
The writer had personal assurance from Col. Seals
that in life’s evening, before the mental break-down
came, religion was his comfort, hope and stay.
In the State Sanitarium at Milledgeville Death
came, we trust, as a sweet release to a tired soul —
touching the dear old heart that had been the throne
and the inspiration of so many thousands, the play
ground of many reflected joys and the grave, alas!
of so many sorrows—into everlasting rest and peace.
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