Connecticut western news., 1893-11-16

LOW uUyCQlnS UIldG udu DebIeT uOI p0 AO- moved or swallowed. The old monster is welcome to his meal. This world would long ago have been overcrowded if it had not been for the merciful remov- al of nations and generations. What if all the books had lived that were ever written and printed and published? The libraries would by their immensity have obstructed intelligence and made all re- search impossible. The fatal epidemic of books was merciful epidemic.
 Many of the state and national libra ries today are only morgues in which dead books are waiting for some one to come and recognize them. What if all the people that had been born were still alive? We would have been elbowed by our ancestors of ten centurie&ago, and people who ought to have said their last word 5000 years ago would snarl at us, saying, "What are you doing here? There would have been no room to turn around. Some of the past generations of mankind were not worth remembering. The first useful thing that many people did was to die-their cradle misfortune and their grave boon.
 This world was hardly comfortable place to live in before the middle of the last century. So many things have come into the world that were not fit to stay in we ought to be glad they were put out. The waters of Lethe, the fountain of forgetfulness, are a healthful draft. The history we have of the world in ages past is always one sided and cannot be depended on. History is fiction illus trated by few struggling facts. In all the Pantheon the weakest goddess is Clio, the goddess of history, and instead of being represented by sculptors as holding scroll might better be repre- sented as limping on crutches.
 Faithful history is the saving of a few things out of more things lost. The i'm mortality that comes from pomp of .ob- sequies or granite shaft or building named after it's founder or page of recognition in some encyclopedia is an immortality unworthy of ones ambition, for it will all cease and is no immortality at all. Oblivion! A hundred years. But while I recognize this universal submergence of things earthly, who wants to be for gotten? Not one of us.
 Absent for a few weeks or months from home, it cheers us to know that we are remembered there. Itis phrase we have all pronounced, 'I hope you missed me-" Meeting some friends from whom we have been parted many years, we in- quire, "Did you ever see me before?" and they say .'Yes," and call us by name, and we feel delightful sensation thrilling through their hand into our hand, and running up from elbow to shoulder, and then parting, the one current of delight ascending to the brow and the other de- scending to the foot, moving round and round in concentric circles until every nerve and muscle and capacity of body and mind and soul is permeated with de- light.
 A few days ago, visiting the place of my boyhood, met one whom had not seen since we played together at 10 years of age, and I had peculiar pleasure in puzzling him little as to who I was, and can hardly describe the sensation as after awhile he mumbled out: Let me see. Yes, you are De Witt" We all like to be remembered.
 Now, have to tell you that this obliv- ion of which have spoken has it's de- feats, and that there is no more reason why we should not be distinctly and viv- idly and gloriously remembered five hundred million billion trillion quadril- lion quintillion years from now than that we should be remembered six weeks. am going to tell you how the thing can be done and will be done.
 SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE EFFACED.
 We may build this everlasting re- membranes" as my text styles it, into the supernal existence of those to whom we do kindnesses in this world. You must remember that this infirm and treacherous faculty which we now call memory is in the future state to be com plete and perfect. Everlasting remem- brancew Nothing will slip the stout grip of that celestial faculty. Did you help widow pay her rent? Did you find for that man released from prison place to get honest work? Did you pick up child fallen on the curbstone, and by a stick of candy put in his hand stop the hurt on his scratched knee? Did you as- sure business man, swamped by the stringency of the money market, that times after awhile would be better?
 Did you lead Magda1en of the street into midnight mission, where the Lord said to her, Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more?' Did you tell 8 man, clear discouraged in his wayward- ness and hopeless and plotting suicide, that for him was near by 8 layer in which he might wash and coronet of eternal blessedness he nightwear What are epitaphs i'll graveyards, what are eulogiums in presence of those whose breath is in their nostrils, what are un- read biographies in the alcoves of & city library. compared with the imperishable records you have made in the illumined memories of those to whom you did such kindnesses? Forget them? They cannot forget them.
 Notwithstanding all their might and splendor, there are some things the glori- fled of heaven cannot do, and this is one of them. They cannot forget an earthly kindness done. They have no cutlass to part thatcable. They have no strength to hurl into oblivion that benefaction. Has Paul forgotten the inhabitants of | Malta, who extended the island hospital | ity when he and others with him had felt, added to shipwreck, the drenching rain and the sharp cold? Has the victim | of the highwayman on the road to Jeri- | cho forgotten the Good Samaritan with | 8 medicament of oil and wine and free | ride to the hostelry? Have the English soldiers who went up to God from the Crimean battlefelds forgotten Florence | Nightingale2
 Through all eternity will the north. ern and southern soldiers forget the | northern and southern women who ad. rainistered to the dying boys in blue and | gray after the awful fights in Tennessee and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Georgia, which turned every house and
 barn and shed into hospital and incar. nadined the Susquehanna, and the James, and the Chattahoochee, and the Savannah | with brave blood? The kindnesses you