OLD FATHER WILLIAMS.
An Old Man Stout and Brisk Nearing his Hundredth Anniversary.

“Old age is honorable.”  We have always entertained a religious sentiment towards old people.  We have always liked them, especially if they are good old people.  It is not very often we have our veneration excited over the nineties, and scarcely ever up to one hundred.  Oh, how few reach such an age, and, indeed, how few reach three score and ten, the allotted time for men to live at best.  And yet, now and then, we stumble on an old pioneer of humanity that reaches the nineties but rarely see a centenarian.  We are now only acquainted with one person over a hundred, and that is Mrs. Hazleton, of Rome, who is yet spry and vivacious, retaining her physical and mental faculties to an astonishing degree.  In early life she traveled a great deal in foreign countries and still retains the memory of the scenes she witnessed with a vividness truly remarkable.  We know an old man in Floyd county, Mr. Lewis B. Floyd, a grand uncle of the writer of this article.  If old uncle Lewis takes a notion to do so he can take “his foot and hand” and trip off five or six miles quite lively, although he is now some ninety-four.  And, here we have in Cartersville, old Father Joseph Williams who will be ninety-seven years old next Tuesday.  He is the man we commenced writing about.

Some forty years ago, when we were a little boy, we first knew a man of middle age who was called Uncle Joe.  He was active and spry in those days.  We had lost sight of Uncle Joe entirely until we cast our fortune in Cartersville.  We had been here but a short while when old father Williams was pointed out to us as being a well settled man of ninety-six!  His firm tread and steady walk daily upon our streets excited a curiosity to know something of the man who had stuck to this world so long, with all its troubles and vexations, and still retained a vast deal of vitality and vivacity.  It was simply astonishment to find him to be old Uncle Joe Williams, formerly of Newnan, Georgia, where we first knew him.  It is strange how we unexpectedly find ourselves face to face with those long forgotten, and when we do meet them the mind reverts so vividly to things of the past!

As we have said Father Williams will be ninety-seven years old next Tuesday.  If any one thinks he is a helpless old man he will banter for a wrestle with the youngest of us.  And you needn’t think the man never talks with the boys and cracks his jokes as lively as can possibly be expected of any gay old boy.  He is as lively as a cricket, and you seldom hear him grunt or complain.  He is one of those old time, lightwood knot sort of humanity who began his life with a purpose to stick to the top side of the earth as long as he could hold his legs under him.  We believe him to be good for a hundred and twenty!

The old man ought to do something next Tuesday, or something ought to be done for him in order to remind him of his ninety-seventh birthday.  But the old man never forgets that day that makes one mile post to his venerable age.  The truth is, he is egotistical on the subject of his age.  He is proud that he has lived so long and so stoutly.  We hope to tip a mug of foaming lager to his health next Tuesday.

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The Assassin.

On Saturday night some person went to the house of Mr. Martin Sanford, who lives in Paulding just over the line of Bartow, and assassinated himself and wife.  Mr. S. was shot in the hand and his wife struck in the head by another ball which buried itself below the skull and had been extracted there from the last we heard from the victim who was not expected to live.

Up to Monday no clue had been discovered as to the perpetrators of the outrage.  Mr. Sanford shot at his assailant, but does not know whether he was struck or not.