Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1883-08-08

PLAIN TALK TO A YOUNG MAN.
want you, my boy, always to keep up with
the times, but want you, hover fast you
reverence for the dear old past, with its
beautiful lessons of honest purpose, OF
loving, faith, of trustfulness. of kindly good
feeling, remember the past with reverence
At the same time, l don't want you to be
sleepily or stupidity conservative. This is
II apid old world, and you must sleep
with your spurs on if you will keep up
with the times. don't want you to live
forever in the past. We must live in 10,
day. | don't agree with the mshelcs
who wall about the dissertations of the
past by the noisy, vulgar, money
getting present These people who
rend their garments because a
railroad runs through Palestine and
another winds up the lava scorched sides
of Vesuvius, and put on sackcloth and
sink down in ashes because steam pro-
pelers steam aud splash through the busy
streets of Venice, and the steam whistle
tortures the gloomy quiet Of the Bridge of
Signs. Good for the steam whistle. Had
it shrieked its indignant protest again At
the hate and blindness of the past centur.
les ago, the gloomy, pitiless cruelties and
Bridge of Sighs with morbid, inhuman
interest would never have been. II were
the steam whistle OF 1883 under that shad
ow OF the dark ages, would pull my
valve wide open until my head hung
down on my back, and l would shrek and
scream until the torment of my civilized
yells shook the pathway of tears, that
monument of barbaric cruelty and pitiless
torture from its cruel and niquitous
foundations. Mr.. Ruskin lifts his feeble
voice against the clamor OF the voice of
steam. lis well enough for Mr.. Ruskin
to cry "sacrilege" now, but suppose Mr..
Ruskin bai clanked across that bridge six
hundred years ago, with fair eyed Hope
throwing him goodbye kisses from the
farther portal, he would have given worlds
for the saving shrek of the steam whistle
DO you ever 90 back to the old school
house and weep and sob, because some
hearllcss old iconoclast of farmer is
going to make iirewood of the old beech
tree9 All, no; you have wept enough on
account of that tree in days gone by. You
take the farmer by the hand and say,
''chop it down, and then grub the roots
and ill the hole with salt. Why didn't
you think of this thirty years ago" So
the tree and Bridge of Sighs must 90, for
what are school house dress but breeches
of sighsp
1t is world of change. We may not
like to see the old land marks 90, but if
they stand in the way of the railroad they
must 90. There are some links that tie
us to the past that even l dread to see
broken, but they cannot stand in the way
of manifest destiny.
Why, there are people, my boy, who
think it is PROCLAMATION and sacrilege,
because it is proposed to have railroad
wind its way up the sacred sides of Mount
O.vet, and to send the railway locomotive
steaming and pulling along the sunny
slopes that were trodden so weurily by the
aching feet that sanctiied the mountain
with their perfect holiness two thousand
years ago. But while yield place to no
man in my honest reverence for sacred
things, my boy, | can see no PROCLAMATION
in the railroad, even when it winds along
the slopes of sacred Olivct. Because, as |
look at it, it was the light that shone from
Olivet, it was the life that made the
holy ground, that led mankind
from all darkness into all the light of the
century; it was Olivet and the
of the Teacher whose prayers
and tears and sufferings were for all
that led us from barbarism to
and to all the triumphs of
from the brazen wheeled
chariot to the light running ambulance
from the solid wheeled Syrian OK cart to
Lho road wagon and the Victoria; from
the slow moving caravan to the limited
express and fast white mail, and if any
hing in the world has right to go shout
ing along the grades of the Mount of
Olives, it is the railway locomotive.
Nothing that is really progressive can be
sacrllegious. But there is great deal
that is profane and sacrilegious, my boy,
that isn't the least bit progressive.-Haeob-
eyc Burdehe.