The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1883-06-28
"We Are Heirs Of The Ages"
Essay, read at the Jackson High School
Commencement, Mag 25, 1888, at
Music Hall, Jackson.
BY MISS ALICE JONES.

Yes, we heirs of the ages-and what
grand estate they have left US! Grand in the
crowded cities and cultivated countries; grand
in their commerce. their manufactures, and in
material wealth; grand in the steamships and
railways, telegraphs and telephones, the means
of quick transmission of supplies, and of
thoughts and messages of business, friendship
and news; grand in the garnered wisdom of
cen turies, and the accumulated thoughts and
labor of earth's great ones.
This great estate has been gathering for ages.
All the great warriors who fought freedoms bat
ties, fought for us. Not poet but sang for us,
nor thinker but gave the children of his brain
for us. No, not even of the millions of
humble, honest workers. whose very names no
man now remembers, but made richer this great
estate for u.s. have read that quaint old wri-
ter once said, 1--WE the ancients; and we at
least are the children of the ancients, with a
chance TO inherit all their riches. Think how
many lives, and what sweat and labor have
been given to build this vast estate!
What did Moses put into this vast estate? And
Virgil, Homer, Milton and Shakespeare? Watts
Stephenson, Fulton, Morse and Field? Through
the instrumentality of Mos and his fellow-la-
borers, what inexhaustible mines of treasures
are left us within the pages of the Bible.
In this, for our benefit besides showing to us
the way of life, are left some of the best exam
pies of tropes, SMILES, metaphors, and of the
sublime in writing, than in any other book.
Milton Young and Cowper, names dear to every
one who delights in the study of poetry, made
the Hebrews before them their models, and to
their supremacy among other poets, let "Para-
adise LOST" 'The Night Thoughts of Young,
and the "Task" of Cowper, bear witness.
Shakespeares works are exhaustless banks,
whose vaults are filled with precious coin. For
us were sung the adventures of Eneas, the fall
OF Troy, and the rise of Rome; for us, Socrates
taught in the groves of life, death, and immor-
tality; for us, Plato created an ideal republic;
for us, Cicero hurled his anathemas at treason
and Cataline, and spoke of law, justice and pat
riotism; for US the great Bacon laid broad and
deep the foundations of experimental philoso-
ply; for us Hampden, and Sydney, Lafayette
and Washington fought the fight of freedom;
for us all the artists touched with the fire of i'm
mortality, the stones of Greece, Rome and
Egypt. From all the far off centuries, all the
great minds speak to us, and like the angel at
the pool of Bethesda, stir the foundations of our
being. The brilliant intellects and brave hearts
of remote ages have sent their great thoughts
and deeds down to us, as the foundations of the
Apprentices sent their pure waters through far
reaching aqueducts down to thirsty Rome All
that is valuable in religion and law, in art and
science, in liberty and philosophy, the past
pours at our feet. But, you may say this estate
has yet its bad, and SO it has. But in going over
the fields of the past, almost all the low bitches
Of appetite, and swamps of passion, have been
marked by warning posts, that we may avoid
them, and old experience has built many
wall, over which we need not climb into for
hidden and dangerous grounds. II is thought
by some that it were better, had we not been
heirs of poetry. They think it excites the fancy
and leads the young into extravanant expecta-
tion of what they are to find in the world. True
poetry is all reality. Satan, Adam and Eve, as
represented bv Milton - Lear, Hamlet and
Othello-yes, and all the fairies and spirits
which Shakespeare has depicted in his plays, are
real, as much as Rome, Greece and Carthage.
Are there in nature, no approximations to Mil
tons Satan? The divine breaches of the per-
feet nan, the Scriptures proclaim his blessed
ness, but no such man exists ever will exist.
The poet does little more.
And how much of this grand estate may we
inherit? That depends not upon the will of
our ancestors but upon the will of each of us.
We each may inherit the whole. All we need
do, is to labor and deserve it.
All the knowledge that lifetime of the great
Newton spent in laborious research, have
heard 1t said, might be acquired by good stu
dent in two years. So, thousand things that
cost a score of years to discover, we have the
benefit of, almost for the asking. And how
shall use whatever of this noble wealth we
may gain? Shall we use it vainIy, for our own
III liiOHeSs VI WISELY, W lildI
estate still greater, for richer inheritance for
| those who shall come after us? 1t now becomes
a curious and inter esting question, whether the
present condition of learning and society is fa-
vorable to the development of high poetic tall
| ent, and of that inventive genius so beneficial
! to mankind. Are we to have more Shake
speares, Chaucers, or Millions? Are we to have
no more Iliads, or Divine Comedias? Are we to
have no more Fultons, Whitneys, Fields?
| That there are so few WebSterS. CalhOunS is not
because there are SO few who could become ri
walls of these men of might, but because few
will engage and pursue that course of mental
training requisite to the development of their
minds.
''Yet, I doubt not through the ages, one increas-
ing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the
| process of the suns"