Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1892-11-23
How Has The Mighty Fallen,

cussed and the nation is about to 90 Il
the ballotbOx and decide who shall rul,
in neighborhood, town. city and nation
The text chosen was Rev., xviii, I0-"A
las, alas, that great city Babylon, thai
mighty city! for in one hour is thy judg
ment come"
Modern scientists are doing a splendid
work in excavating the tomb of deaC
empire holding in its arms dead city
mother and child of, the same name
babylon. The ancient mound invites
'he spades and shovels and crowbars
/ while the unwashed natives look on in
surprise. Theseiscientists find yellow
bricks still impressed with the name of
Nebuchadnezzar, and they''go down into
the sarcophagus of a monarch buried
more than 1000 years ago. May the ex-
plorations of Rawlinson and Layard
and Chevalier end Opperto and LOTUS
and Chesney be eclipsed by the present
archaeological uncovering.
But is it possible this is all that re-
mains of Babylon? city once five times
larger than London and twelve times
larger than New York; Walls 1913 feet
high and SO feet thick. Twenty five
FURNISHED gates on each side, with
streets running clear through to CORE
spending gates on the other side. Six
hundred and twenty-five squares More
pomp and wealth and splendor and sin
than could be found in any five modern
cities combined. A city of palaces and
temples. a city having within it gar
den on an artificial hill 400 feet high the
sides of the moutains terraced. All
this built to keep the kings wife, Am
ytis, from becoming homesick for the
mountainous region in which she had
spent her gIrl-hood. The waters of the
Euphrates spOuted up to irrigate this
great altitude into fruits and flowers
and aborescence unimaginable. A
great river running fl ON north to south
clear through the city, bridges over it,
tunnels under it, boats on it.
A city of bazaars and Of market places,
unrivalled aromatics and unguents and
high mettled horses with grooms by
their side, and thyme wood, and Afri-
can evergreen, and Egyptian linen, and
all styles of costly textile fabric, and
rarest pnrples extracted from shell fish
on the Mediterranean coast, and rarest
scarlets taken from brilliant insects in
Spain, and worries brought from sue
cessful elephant hunts in India, and
diamonds whose flash was repartee to
the sun. Fortress within fortress, en-
battlement rising above en- battlement.
Great capital of the ages. But one night
While honest citizens were asleep. but
all the saloons of saturnalia were "a full
blast, and at the kings castle they had
filled the tankards for the tenth time and
reeling and guffawing and hjccoughing
around the state table were the rulers
of the land General Cyrus ordered the
besieging army to take Shovels and
spades, and they diyerted the river from
It's usual channel into another direction
so that the fOTsaken bed of the river be-
came the path on which the besieging
army entered. When the morning
dawned the conquerors were inside the
outside trenches. Babylon had fal' o.,
and hence the subliTae threnodv e 49,
text: Alas, alas, that great .i+u pohu
Ion, that mighty city, for n bonrhoa
~. ~" ~ o', LING But do nations
die? o. yes ther'e is great mortality a.
'noI *, nioii"i" Lies and republics. They
are ike ID ividuals in the fact that thew
are porn, they have middle life, they
nav decease, they have cradle and
" grave. Some of them are assassinat-
ed some destroyed by their own hand.
Let me call the roll of some of the dead
civilizations and some of the dead cities
ana let some one answer for them.
Egyptian civilization, stand up.
Dead!' answer the ruins of Karnak
ana Luxor, and from seventy pyramids
on the east side OF the Nile there comes
up great chorus, crying: "Deadi dead!"
Assyrlan empire, stand up and answer.
'Dead!' cry the charred ruins OF Nine
ven. After 600 years of magnificent op-
dead. Israelitish kingdom,
stand up. After $50 years of divine in
terposltloE and of miraculous ylcissi-
Jude and OF heroic behavior and of ap-
palllng deprayity, dead. PhRnicia.
stand up and answer, After illventing
The alphabet and giving it to the world,
ana sending out her mercha ut caravans
IN one direction to Central Asia, and
sending out her navigators Co the At
, lou ocean IN another direction, dead.
l liiars OF Herco' .es and rocks on which
One frlah ns' Iermen dried their nets,
al answer Dead Phenicia." Athens,
ai"., :" .dias, after Demosthenes, after
~" les, dead. Sparta, afterLeonidas,
~, E Euryblades, after Salamis, after
nermOpyIe; dead. Roman empire,
stand up and answer. Empire once
bounded by the British channel on the
north, by the Euphrates on the east, by
the great Sahara desert IN Africa on the
south, by the Atlantic ocean on the west.
Home of three great civilizations, own
| ing all the then discovered world that
Voc WI OA OWhAlSt ASOhAuh ChuPiAO
WEI. Gibbon in his Rise and Fall of
the Roman Empire" says Dead" and
the forsaken seats of the ruined Colise-
um, and the skeleton of the aqueducts.
and the miasma of the Campagna, and
| the fragments of the marble baths, and
the useless piers of the Bridge Trium-
phalis, and the Mamertine prison, hold
ing no more Apostolic prisoners, and
the silent Forum, and Basihca of Con-
stantine, and the arch of Titus, and the
Pantheon come in with great chorus.
crying: Dead, dead!'' After Horace.
after Virgil, after Tacitus, after Cice-
TO, dead. After Horatlus on the bridge.
and Cincinnatus, the farmer oligarch
after Pompey, after Scipio after Cas-
i