Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1878-11-22
AsHTABULA, OHIO FRIDAY NoYE3fBER 22 1878
POsthuIaOus HOnors.

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The saying that ''the evil men do lives
after them and the good is often inferred
with their bones" would seem to con-
tain lar more of truth than poetry, judg-
ing by the want of respect paid to the
last resting places of many whom the
world delighted to honor when living.
There is, an unfinished monument pur-
posed to glorify the great father Of the
country IN the city named after him,
which better had never been commenced
than to sand as it does disgrace to the
American nation. 2 The remains Of
Thomas Jefferson, the author Of the I'M
mortal Declaration of Independence. and
advocate of religious freedom, has long
renamed without fitting monument,
and, though tardy justice IS talked of,
It IS not yet accomplished. So 100 is
1t with many another hero of the past
who might be named. Great in their
day and generation, honored with
q nations tears when passing to the
tOmD, but next to forgotten when hid
den there from sight. With the grow
ing Of the first grass above, their mem
ories began to fade, to be only recalled
spasmodically at times, and looking
doWn from the centuries, they might
at the treatment their pooI bones have
received at the hands Of those for whom
they pledged life, fortune and sacred
honor, and dared the gibbet's rope and
the headsman's axe in the days when
courage and nerve were tried as by fire.
The great of yesterday are showed
aside by those who have stepped into
shoes (which they were unworthy to
- TEo
power brushes aside the patriot dust of
the past IS useless cobwebs, and the
monumental marble is suffered to black
en- in storm, and decay as if the names
engraved thereon were not holy, and
the memory it would perpetuate the
dearest that can ever be given to any
country.
ItWOuld seem as if the gigantic minds
that stood between bondage to foreign
crown and liberty of body and con-
science that isuniversaI in its welcoming
and protection, died with the age that
called them into being. Their places
are but little filled, and we look around
in vain for those who could do 50; the
places remain, but where are the Anaks
Of mind and craftsmanship and pure
patriotism. Weneed not make mention
of a single one. They readily rccur, and
in the doing comes the blush to honest
faces that their remains have not been
better cherished, and that mankind so
much ignore great deeds and great men
in the changes of the present.
Call the long roll of century ago, and
the bones of how few appear to have
been properly cared for, as they had a
right to expect when iving-as would
have been to our credit when gone.
The heroes of the Revolution, where are
they? Upon the tips of our fingers can
almost be counted the names perpetu-
ated beyond the devastation of the
elements, save as shrined by the pen of
the historian and the ink of the printer.
We look for the towering marble and
the massive bust, and, save in few in
stances, find them not. Washington
and lafayette and few, very few
others, have been so embalmed, but for
the rest they sleep In unknown grave
yards, and decay has made the place its
own.
1t is not that the public or republic
are ungrateful; is more on account Of
thoughtlessness than for any other rea-
son for no nation gives as literally as
America. Yet so it is, and the truth an
unpalatable one aye, more, it is asternly
bitter lesson how little even the greatest
will be remembered, and how much bet
ter for the man to carve out his own
epitaph as well as his own destiny while
living; if he would have fitting monu-
ment build tiff he would 60 down
honored to future generations to write
his name high upon the pages of history,
and so beindependent of the busy world
that will follow,
Somebody = one of another land,
we believe = has remarked that in
America when great man dies, the first
thing is to hold meeting and resolve to
build monument for him. and the next |
thing is not to do it. There is a sad |
truth in this. We have become in this !
fast rushing age a people rather of re-
solves than execution, and for the most |
part those who die might well have ex-
claimed, "Here lies onewhose name was
written in water" 1t is lasting shame
and disgrace that the monument (gro-
tes4ue and inartistic as it would be) has |
never been finished; shame and dis |
grace that Jefferson should so long have |
remained unremembered but is it any |
more so than that others who have |
passed on through the dark valley have
never a sign to tell who they were, how |
they lived, what great good accomplished |
and when they died? "When my coun-
try" said Emmett, "takes her place
among the nations of the world, then, |
and not until then, let my epitaph be |
written" Has not America yet taken |
her place? Are the honors due to the |
great minds and sterling patriotism to |
wait until she does? Heaven be praised, |
the heart of humanity is better than
brass and marble, and upon it is written
"the immortal names that were not born |
to die"