Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1875-11-06
Growth of Ideas.

The Hon. j. Nelson, of Brooklyn
in an address to the Young Men,
Christian Association at Saratoga
! said ~
! At the sea shore you pick up peb.
! Bile, fashioned after a law of nature
with the exact angle that best resists
/ pressure, and worn as smooth as glass
1t IS so perfect that you take il as 8
keepsake. But could you know its
history from the time when a rough
fragment of rock fell from the over
hanging cliff inte the sea, to be taken
possession of by the undercurrents
and dragged from one ocean to another
perhaps around the world, for hun
dred years. until in reduced and per-
feet form it was cast upon the beach as
you find it, you would have fit
illustrate of what many principles.
now in familiar use, have endured,
thus tried, tortured and fashioned
during the ages. We stand by the
river and admire the great body of
water flowing so sweetly on could you
trace it back to its source, you might
find mere rivulet, meandering on,
joined by other streams and by secret
springs, and fed by the rains and dews
of heaven, it gathers volume and force,
makes its way through the gorges of
the mountains, plows, widens and
deepens its channel through the prov
inces, and attains its present majesty
Thus it is that our truest systems of
science had small beginnings, gradual
and countless contributions. and f.
nally took their use, as each of you,
from helpless childhood and feeble
boyhOod, have grown TO your present
strength and maturity. No such
system could be done in day. 1t
was not as when nature in ftful pulsa-
tions of her strength suddenly lifted
the land into mountain ranges, but
rather, as with small accretions, gath
cred in during countless years, she
builds her islands in the seas.
/ 1t took long time to learn the true
nature and Office of governments; to
discover and secure the principles
commonly indicated by such terms as
Magma Charta, the bill of Rights,
"Habeas Corpus" !" and the Right of
trial by Jury" to found the family
home, with its laws of social order,
regulating the rights and duties of each
member of it, SO that the music at the
domestic hearth might flow on with
out discord the household gods so Sc
curely planted that, as one has said !:
Though the wind and the rain might
enter, the king could not" to educate
noise into music, and music into mel
ody to infuse into the social code and
into the law spirit of Christian char
ity, something of the benign temper of
the New Testament, so that no man
could be prosecuted for conscience
sake, so that there should be an end of
human sacrifice for mere faith or
opinion the smouldering fires at the
foot of the stake put out, as now, thank
God, they have been, as effectually as
if all the waters that this night food
the rivers had been poured in upon
them. It took long time to learn
that war was a foolish and cruel me-
thod of settling international differ
ences as compared with arbitration !;
to learn that piracy was less profitable
than liberal commerce; that unpaid
labor was not as good as we'll requited
toll that splenetic old woman, fall
ing into frances and shrieking pro-
phecies, was a fit subject for the ylum
rather than to be burned as witch.
1t took long, long time after the
art of printing had been perfected, be-
fore we learned the priceless value,
the sovereign dignity and usefulness of
a free press.
But these lessons have been taught
and learned; taught for the most part
by the prophets of our race, men liv-
ing in advance of their age, and under
stood only by the succeeding genera
tions. But you have the inheritance