Milford chronicle., 1891-11-27
rHE RACE IN THE STADIUM.


panl had been out there no doubt, for he
freouently uses the scenes of that place IS
a1nres when he tells us, LET us run the
race that is set before u.s." and again.
ss1'bev do it to obtain a corruptible gar
land. but we an incorruptible." The
marble and the gliding have been removed,
Inf the high mounds against which the
eeats were piled are still there. The Stadium
Is six hundred and eighty feet long, one
hundred and thirty feet wide, and held
FORTY thousand spectators. There Is today
The very tunnel through which the defeat
ed racer departed from the Stadium and
from the hisses of the people, and there are
tbe stairs up which the victor went to the
top of the hill to be crowned with the
laurel.
In this place contests with wild beasts
sometimes took place, and while Hadrian,
the emperor, sat on yonder height one
thousand beasts were slain in one celebra-
tion. But it was chiefly for foot racing,
and so 1 proposed to my friend that day
while we were in the Stadium that we try
which of us could run the sooner from end
TO end of this historical ground, aud so at
the word given by the lockers on we started
side by side, but before got through
found out what Paul meant when he com
mares the spiritual race with the race in
this very Stadium, as he says, Lay aside
every weight" Ny heavy overcoat and
INV friends freedom from such incum-
brance showed the advantage in any KIND
Of a race of "laying aside every weight"
We come now to the Acropoiis. It Is
rock about two miles in circumference at
the base and thousand feet in circumier-
ence at the top and three hundred feet
high. On it has been crowded more eitO-
orate architecture and sculpture than IN
any other place under the whole heavens.
Originally a fortress, afterward a congre-
cation of temples and statues and pillars,
their ruins an enchantment from winch
no observer ever breaks away. NO won
der that Aristides thought it the center OF
all things Greece, the center OF the world,
Attica, the center of Greece; Athens, the
center of Attica, and the Acropolis the
center of Athens. Earthquakes have
shaken it, Nerres plundered it.
Lori Elgin, the English embassadoF at
ConstantinOple, got permission oL the
sultan to remove from the Acropolis fallen
pieces OF the building, but he took from
The building to England the iinest statues,
removing them at an expense OF elgnt
hundred thousand dollars. A storm over
{ threw lnuuJ VI lAG oeettNSe' "a WY
Morosini. the general, attempted to re-
move from pediment the seuiptureu car
and horses of Victory, but the clumsy ma
chnery dropped it and all was lost
/ The Turks turned the building into a
powder magazine where the Venetiauguns
dropped fire that by explosion sent the
columns flying in the air and falling
cracked and spintered. But after all that
time and storm and war and iconoclAsm
! have effected, the Acropolis is the monarch
Of all ruins, and before it bow the learning
the genius, the poetry, the art. the history
4 of the ages. Ksaw it as it was thousands
Z of wears ago. / had reid so much about y
and dreanied so much about it that need
ed no niagician's wand to restore It,
At one wave Of my hand on that clear
morning in 1889 it rose before nie In the
oiorv it had when Perieles ordered it nnd
Ictinus planned It and Phidias ehiseled y
and Protogines painted it and pausanla'
described It. It's gates, which were care
fnlIv guarded by the ancients, open to ie
Won In and YOU ascend by sixty marble
stens the prooyl.ca, which Epaminondiu
wanted 70 Jransfer to Thebes, but permis
s;ou lam glad TO say, could not be grant
~ ~ tbe removal Of this architecture
miracle In the days when ten cents woui'
do more than a dollar nov, the nulla'nl
cost two million three bandred tpou
sand fdollars See its five ornament.
oates, the keys intrusted 70 an ON
eer kr only one day, lest the temp
tati, o 20 10 and misapproprinte IN
tree ae too great for him; its celhn
ar blue and acariet ana ikFesA