Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1889-08-09
DUST.

1t was the year $685. The Stanford uni
versity was holding its twelve hundredth an
niversary. For three centuries and moro the
great stone wall and bridge across the bay at
Ravenswood had been completed so that
most of the professors from the elder univer-
sity at Berkeley came by this route, looking
down on the upper bay, changed into fields,
with orchards of two hundred and fifty years
establishment growing where the Nineteenth
century sloops and oyster boats came to the
prehistoric embarcaderos of Mowry's Land
ing and Alviso. A great industrial univer-
slty. Workshops reaching for miles along
the beautiful slopes of San Mateo, training
schools, art schools, language schools, scen-
tific schools Berkeley for the classics and
the humanities, Stanford university for an
unparalleled grouping of the great industrial
and scientific activities Of the race. For mile
beyond mile ran the gardens, the green houses,
the intensive horticulture which for more
than thousand years had made the valley
regions of California the richest and most
thickly populated district in the world
Statistics from the census of the year 3090
Population of California, forty-seven mil
| lions; population of the valleys which impinge
upon San Francisco, including the valleys
caused by the drainage of Suison bay, San
Pablo bay, and the upper half of San Fran
cisco bay, twenty eight millions. One-half Of
these are in the Sacramento San Joaquin
valley the other half within fifty miles of
San Francisco city"
The president of the university, Leland
Stanford Ainsworth, a descendant of one of
the Oregon Ainsworths of the Nineteenth
century, delivered his address: 'Scence is
endless" he said; ''the race goes on, ever i'm
proving Those were foolish fears of the
men of the dark ages, now almost prehistoric,
when this state was founded, this institution
established The social order has changed
What they called revolution, and yainly
fought, has proved evolution. We have
come together, on this twelve hundredth an
niversary, under these ancient stone arches,
less to celebrate the past than to plan for
the new conquests of nature. Whispers have
gone forth to the world that in our chemical
laboratory strange discoveries have been
made. These discoveries we give to you to-
day, whether for human happiness or human
misery will depend upon yourselves"
The audience listened with some bewilder-
ment. In that great hall, with its arches of
weather beaten stone, more than 40 900 peo-
pie were assembled, but delicate electrical
machinery made the speakers voice audible
and the speakers face clearly visible to every
one i'll the building, and even to the thou
sands who sat beneath the stately oaks outside.
What was this new discovery? Would it
make life better worth living? Would it give
man longer life? AT least it was evident
that the discovery was one of thrilling i'm
portance in the mind Of the president He
spoke with the utmost earnestness. "For
more than 100 years this university has held
as sacred trust group of scientific discov-
| H. 1rr@ -
his formulas down and sealed them for this
twelve hundredth anniversary Three days
before its celebration the faculty of this uni
versity was to assemble, break the seals, test
the formulas and decide whether to reveal
the secrets or to destroy them forever We
met; we have decided; we create a new pro-
fessorship, more important, perhaps, than
any other in existence on the face of the
earth We have chosen a lineal descendant
of the discoverero of this group of secrets, Pro-
fessor Lemuel Jones Carey, and, going back
to one of the almost forgotten writers of the
Nineteenth century, we name his chair the
chair of The Ethics of Dust'n
! A ripple of half annoyed amusement ran
over the audience. Was that all? Only an
other of those interminable modern subdivis-
ions of biology, or psychology, or both?
| But the president went on: professor
Carey was Oh the right track when this went
occurred. 1t is remarkable that all his in
designations have fitted him to utilize and de-
velop this group of new facts. Without him
the Ethics of Dust would have had to wait
fifty years for an interpreter. With him
you can catch a glimpse of its scope today. 1t
is nothing that you imagine. 1t is not long
life; it is not money, OF happiness, except in
cidentally. But, perhaps, it means all the
things which any of you, or all of you, have
ever dreamed about" And the president sat
down. The wall at the back of the stage
opened and revealed laboratory, strange
even to the eyes of chemists there. Professor
Carey came toward, and set curious micro
scope on the stand. Then he looked over the
audience and spoke Of the great subject.
"What we have done is to conquer the ul-
innate atom, and discover whether it is
healthy or not. If it is diseased, it will pro-
duce disease-mental, moral OF physical, as
the case may be. Every one of us has dis
eased atoms in his system. That is what
makes us die too soon; sometimes that is
what makes us do wrong. When we find the
diseased atom, we cannot destroy it. Moth
ing can But we can now isolate it so that it
can do no harm-at least not for ages to
come, perhaps never again. We can force
each atom-each dust mote which floats
about the world-to tell its story; can dis
cover where it has been, and what it has
done, and whether it is helpful or hurtful.
Since the number of atoms in the atmosphere
of the earth is now definitely ascertained, it
only remains for the human race to isolate
from further evil the diseased atoms as fast
as possible. Then, few centuries from now,
only healthy atoms will remain. This, as
need not explain to you must mean perfect
health, and a great many other things which
the newspapers will tell you about"
A great hush fell on the audience, as they
understood this stupendous claim. Then muir
murs and cries began to break forth, as peo-
pie suddenly spoke to each other, forgetting
Ill else in the presence of the fact. The ulti-
mate atom had been conquered. That was
what science and theology for thousands of
years had said could never be DONE Did it
mean wipirg out the secret sins, taking away
the daily temptation from each ones A wo-
man, rich, beautiful, fashionable, rose in the
audience and reached out her hands 10 Pro-
fessor Carey !iTake away my seldshness!"
she cried. y man in the prime of life,
famous over the continent rose and called
with deep voice of passion, 'eIake away that
which once made me false to my oathr' The
professor reached his hards out, and said in
tone which stilled the tempest:
II cannot. No one cam You live and die
in the race. If the atoms which WORK you
evil come to me, | will bind them fast. |
cannot draw them from yau CAST thcm out
SO that humanity may put them in chains.
Help others to cast them out. Help me in
my work. 1t is atom by atom that we re-
build the human temple"
The man and the woman sank back in their
places and a great pent up sigh swept over
the audience, but no one spoke agaiA
The professor went on: "All tFngs tell
their secrets at last. Every mote Of dust has
its story, from the pollen dust of the wild
rose on the slopes of Chimborazo to the star
dust left but yesterday in our atmosphere
by the great comet Hierophanta. Here, in
this room, there is dust from the ruins of an
Gent London, arthquake-swallowed five cen
turtles ago Out of the caves of the giant
cave bear Of Eurone, ogt 81 the castles of
robber harons on the Rhine, out of the
depths of the ocean and the heart of the
earth, these dust NOTES come in our midst,
after myriad wanderings, and our science can
now reveal the story of each one of them all. "