Alexandria Gazette

THE FAIRFAXES
Ninety-nine per cent. of the American
shoddies who use coat armor have not a
vestige of right to their bogus heraldic bear-
ings. But there is one per cent. of our
citizens, perhaps less, who can lawfully
bear them. Among those who have the
highest heraldic authority to do so is a
simple American village doctor, and it re-
sides at Northampton, Brandenburg, Prince
George's county, Md. In the little country
place where he lives he is known by all his
fellow-townsmen as "Doc" Fairfax. He puts
on no airs, does not wear frills or ruffles.
has not a vestige of heraldry around his
house, and once a year records his vote for
the straight democratic ticket. Should he,
however, think fit to take his walks abroad
from Northampton, Md., and find his way
to Great Britain, he would be warmly wel-
comed as an honored guest at the castles
and abbeys of the noblest English families.
Even Windsor Castle and Osborne would
open their doors to him, and the members
of the House of Lords would receive him as
had his name recorded by officious kings:
peerages as the "Rt. Hon. John Contee
Fairfax, M. D., Eleventh Baron Fairfax
be sworn in whenever he pleased as an Eng-
lish peer in the House of Lords at West-
minster. Of democracy. The Fairfaxes, although one
of the oldest Yorkshire families of aristo-
Whitehall Palace. His descendant, Thom-
nard does not tell, It is now Charlie Fair-
lnx, as he was known among the Californian
Argonaut boys, nearly lost his life at the
hands of a miserable skulking hound and
sonne fancied wrong, and not as an honest
gentleman in self-defence when his life was
in danger, Staggering, reeling like a drunk-
en man, and with a bullet in his
body. Charlie Fairfax managed to reach
for his revolver, and then he had "drop
pumber two." and this time it was on
the would-be assassin, Slowly he raised
himself to his full height, and with the
glistening barrel covering the scoundrel's
head he said: "You wretch! Your life is
in my hands. Why did you do this? But
—I forgive you, and I spare you for the
sake of your wife and your innocent child-
ren." Then he fired the deadly weapon in
the air, dropped backwards senseless and
was on a sick bed for many a long, weary
day afterwards. This was the act of an
American citizen who had repudiated aris-
tocracy, and it should furnish a lesson to
our dudish prigs and would-be heraldic
snobocrats, most of whom, as the old play
gives it, imitate, monkey-like, the vices of
the aristocrats and none of their few re-
heraldic bearings are given as follows in
the British peerages: "Arms, or three bars
gemelles gules, surmounted of a lion ram-
sable." Supporters, "Dexter a lion guardant
pant sable. Crest, 'a lion passant guardant
sable, sinister a bay horse.' " The Fairfax
motto, "Fare, Fax," a pun on the name
meaning "speak, do," it is to be hoped, will
be the watchwords for the modern patriotic
English Fairfaxes to "speak and do their
best to assist in founding Mazzini's fond ideal
of the coming "Republic of the United
States of Europe," including England, Scot-
land, Ireland and Wales on a truly demo-
cratic basis.-New York World.