"friendliness" of which Henry Grady wrote in 1888 will not, it is feared, last to 1908. God grant they may get closer together in all that makes for the good of both races. BARBARA FRIETCHIE [J. L. Underwood.] Here is a part of the story of the Maryland woman and the Federal flag in the famous poem of John G. Whittier: "Bravest of all in Fredericktown She took up the flag the men hauled down; In her attic window the staff she set To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead: Under his slouch hat left and right He glanced; the old flag met his sight. 'Halt!' the dust-brown ranks stood fast, 'Fire!' Out blazed the rifle blast, It shivered the window pane and sash, It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick as it fell from the broken staff, Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf." This is poetry, but it is not history. It is not truth. It does not sound like it. Nobody but men like Whittier, blinded by New England prejudice and steeped in ignorance of Southern people, would for a moment have thought Stonewall Jackson capable of giving an order to fire on a woman. None of the story sounds at all like "Stonewall Jackson's way." To their credit the later editions of Whittier's poems cast a grave doubt on the truth of the story, and now Mr. John McLean, an old next-door neighbor to the genuine Barbara Frietchie, has given to Mr. Smith Clayton, of the Atlanta _Journal_, the true story showing Whittier's tale to be nothing but a myth. Mr. Clayton says: "Coming up to Washington from Richmond the other day I brushed up an acquaintance with a very pleasant, intelligent and, by the way, handsome gentleman, Mr. John McLean, a conductor on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Washington Railroad. In the course of conversation he mentioned Frederick, Md. I laughed and said: "Did you ever meet Barbara Frietchie?" "Why, my dear sir," he replied, "she lived just across the street from my father's home." "You don't say so?" "It's a fact; and let me tell you, that poem is a 'fake,' pure and simple. I was a child during the war, but I'll give you the truth about Barbara Frietchie as I got it from the lips of my father and mother." And then he told me this interesting story: "Ever been to Frederick?" "No."