The Red Cloud chief., 1893-11-24

what Is going on at Coney Island ~ 60
ing on all around tie world, and Ito con-
tinents are crumbling into tho waves.
Aud while this is Transporting Oh tho out
side OF the world the hot chisel of thein-
ternal ire Is digging under the founda-
ton OF the earth and cutting its way cat
toward the surface.
1t surprises me to hear people say they
do not think the world will finally be
burned up, when all scientists will tell
you that it has for ages been on fire.
Why, there is only u crust between us
and the furnaces inside raging to get
out. Oblivion! Tho world itself will
roll into it as easily as u schoolboy's in
dia rubber ball rolls down a hill, and
when on world goes it is SO interlocked
by the law of gravitation with other
worlds that they will go, too, and so far
from having u memory perpetuated by
a monument of Aberdeen granite in this
world, there is no world in sight of our
strongest telescope that will DO u sure
pediment for any slab Of commemora-
ton Of tho fact that we ever lived or
died at all. Our earth is struck with
death. The axletreo Of the constella-
tions will break and let down the popu-
lations of other worlds. Stellar, lunar,
solar mortality. oblivion! 1t can swal-
low and will swallow whole galaxies OF
worlds as easily as q crocodile takes
down u frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or swal.
low anything that had better not be re-
moved or swallowed. The old monster
is welcome to his meal. This world
would long ago have been overcrowded
IL 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 immensely have
INSTRUCTED intelligence and made all re-
search impossible. The fatal epidemic of
books was a 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 centuries 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 q misfortune
and their grave a boon.
| Tb;o ,,,nr1J ,vao horJ1, m cny,cnrtoh1 a
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 f~orgetfulness, are q 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 a 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 a scroll might better DO 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 OBJ
sequies or granite shaft or building named
after its founder or page Of recognition
in some encyclopedia is an immortality
unworthy of ones ambition, for it will
all cease and is no immortality ut all.
Oblivion! A hundred years. But while
/ 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. 1t is a phrase we
have all pronounced, II 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 Eyes" and call us by name, and
we feel a delightful sensation thrilling
through their hand into IL hv |, and
running up from elbow to shoulder, and
then parting, the n 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, l met n whomI had not
seen since we played together at 10 years
of age, and l had peculiar pleasure in
puzzling him a little as to who l was,
and l 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, l have to tell you that this obliv.
ion Of which ! have spoken has its de-
feats, and that there is no more reason
why we should not be distinctly and viz
idly and ~gloriously remembered five
hundred million billion trillion quadril
lion quintillion years from now thar
that we should be remembered six weeks
/ am going to tell you how the thing car
be done and will be done.
SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE EFFACED.
We may build this everlasting re
membrance," as my text styles it, into
the supernal existence OF those to whom
we do kindnesses in this world. Yor
must remember That his infirm AMI