Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-12-12

erS OF forelSh birth and of alien SYM
pathies. Then it was that the vestal
fires in the old Puritan churches
grew dim. Then it was that the
thinned ranks of the faithful hung
their harps upon the willows and
mourned the departure of the Lords
glory from his ancient temples.
This was the transition crisis in the
social history of New England, the
trial test of the vitality and repro
ductive force of that magic organism,
my Fathers House. We 90 back
to our own native hills after an alb
sence of twenty, thirty or forty years.
We find there the impresnable ram
parts of the Granite Mountains;
the deep, tortuous, fruitful valleys.
We find the same hillside farms, the
same stone-wall fences, the old un-
slightly orchards and the skeleton of
what was once" My Fathers House,"
with surroundings that reproduce to
our memory and cause US to live
> over again ali the scenes OF child
, hood, with its Saturday nights, its
hallowed Sabbaths, it's morning and
evening sacrifices, its country school
education, consisting of three months
of earnest mental work in the "read
write and CIPHER" from which we
graduated at an early age to enter
the higher and more essential school
of active usefulness on tho farm.
What we see is but the skeleton of
what was once to us living reality.
We look around and ask ourselves
the question, Is "My Fathers
House'tno more? Is it dead and
buried no more to rise into life? Or
is it resurrected into newness of life,
in form commensurate with the
march of ideas and abreast with the
social improvements of new era,
wherein "old things have passed
away and behold all things have be-
come new" The Yankee was bright
enough to see that he could not bear
the exhausting drain upon his re-
sources by plodding away upon the
rocky fields of his circumscribed do
main. He saw that his prestige was
waning at home, while his own life
blood was nourishing tue life, en-
riching the homes and giving per-
manence to the civilization of all
the new States. He saw that he
must put the handle of his plow into
hands fitted for toll and not for en-
gineering; and he himself must rise
in his conscious strength, and inas-
much as his own genius bad con-
verted the Western wild into smil-
ing Eden, had annihilated time and
space and brought the West, with its
opulent cities, it's expanding COM
merce and its overfowing abundance,
into close neighborhood with the
East. So Low he must prepare his
own way before him at home. He
must tunnel all mountains, dig down
all bills, fill up all valleys and make
a highway into his own bosom for
the compensating wealth with which
now his wandering children desire
to reward him. His rivers must no
longer run to waste, but must be
turned upon his millions of spindles
and looms, until the drain upon the
national resources from abroad for
manufactured goods be reversed.
This done ard the balance of trade
from all directions being turned in
his own favor, the Yankee stands
without rival, master of empire in
the world of affairs. My Fathers
House," though many skeletons Of
its ancient form are now visible, IS
not dead OF absolete. Home is no
less the seat of religious life and Of
social power now than when in pow
erty and in prayer it nursed the in
FAINT colonies, who braved all hard
ships laying the foundation Of this
mighty empire. If the ancient glory
of "My Fathers House," as we of u
past generation remember it, has de-
parted, the brighter glory of "My
Fathers House" as it now is, has
appeared. If in dropping the hoe
and pillow into alien hands the Yam
kee seems to have had a falling out
with the work that dignifed his
hardy ancestors, let it be remem.
bered that he has not fallen out with
work but has gone up to the more
dignifed work demanded by the new
order of things, brought about by
his own genius. If in the transition
from the ancient to the modern civil
lization, the Puritanic sanctity OF
old institutions seems to have beer
violated, causing us to mourn as We
mourn over the dead body OF frieno
, that we lay in the dust, let us re-
joice in the Immortality OF the inte
rior life which is resurrected ant
, lives in the new homes and in the
new civilization of our modern New
England. If the old homes and the
old synagogues in which our fathers
worshiped on the hillsides, have gone
! to decay, and alien tenants have
turned the old possessions OF the
Puritans into missionary fields, the
resurrected churches of the valleys
, and of the cities are pouring oil intt