Evening star., 1896-04-11
HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS
Points from an Address Delivered BY
George Alfred Townsend
Western Maryland to the Front In
the Life Of the State-InspiratiOn
From the Mountains.


The Conocochesgue Club, the first social
enterprise of the kind in western Mary
land. occupies Judge Louis McComas' res
tdence there. and takes it's name from the
Ccnococheaguc settlement along the creek
of that name. which empties into the Po-
tcmac at Williamspcrt, spot once affirma-
lively considered by Congress for the
American capital. I'VE are to CO." wrote
John Adams. ito the place up the Potomac
with the long name" Last Tuesday night
the first literary reception of the Conoco-
cheague Club was held, and Mr.. George
Alfred Townsend. by invitation for the ac-
casioh, delivered an address, which con-
cluded as follows:
IA thousand years to a state are but as
day. Still in the throes of development
like growing boy. America perfects char
acter and completes institutions Indifferent
ly well. Like the English in South Africa,
we must overrun some other place, in
stead of halting where we were.
But stability also has its defects. Ma
ture is vast convulsion of horrid suns
consuming worlds and giving forth beauty,
like the caterpillars which eat the trees to
transform them into silk.
"Pleasurable existence, earthly satisfac-
ton, the Joy of the appetite, rejection of
thought as so much care, do not fill the
high conditions Of a society.
There must be ideals, and among them
are cultivation, appreciation n, honor and the
pursuits which lead to fame.
Animal success should follow some law
Of progress, and there is public spirit
greater than politics.
LAS we look upon Hagerstown the mind
pauses at the influence of woman so gen.
tly potent with her husband that he en-
doWs church and CT Gates a hotel where
she was horn. The hotel stimulates our
chief public man to equal or surpass it, and
Hagerstown exalts its character by it's ho-
tells. The next flower of this public instinct
is a club where ideas shall have a market
and mann erly forum. The fourth projec-
tfon might be library and its kindred
classes for mutual or competitive improve
ment
''If cities drain the rural regions it is be-
cause they minister to the higher tastes.
Ideals Lead to Truth.
II saw in Paris the pleasing, confident
pictures of Ridgway knight. one of the
great painters there. He began to paint in
Chambersburg, but what could detan him
there when he can Conquer in Paris?
'Yet I heard a self-taught artist in Get
tysburg, Mr.. Young, say Ridgway Knight
painted too much for the price, and followed
Esture less than the market.
Thus all ideals lead to truth, and truth
is both consolation and strength.
A very young place is Hagerstown, but
1t is the city, the energy of western Mary
land.
These narrow counties in one congress
sional district have obtained the new gov
ernor and the new Senator of Maryland.
The eastern shore law gives way to free
career. Something has brought western
Maryland to the front. The streaming cur
rent of health and hope from the public
r ut ha fnn tN-;a,
rising life of western Maryland.
There has been stagnaton enough
There are enough ruined towns. To me the
most discouraging picture in MARYLAND is
some old slave-halted town, with its two
institutions of pair of saloons and a pair
Of old conventicles surveying each other
across muddy street like immemorial
starveling chums. Theology which has
no growth, exists on the eastern shore
law.
THE mighty influence of Europe. the
smallest. least of continents. upon the rest
is due to her material scientific spirit
Japan has taken up Europe's torch and
waved it over China. A century of won
ders Is to end in match of economies
and discipline to exceed each other in
the practical arts.
THE power of Asia is to be in a superior
artistic feeling. which is here dulled by
too much avarice The man who lives on
nature.
No man knows what the future life of
the larger world is to be. The most in
e!lisent nation which controls it's waste
fui tendencies the best is to be the fittest
and survive. Hitherto America has con-
tested we'll
'Our weak spot is out party politics. 1t
obscures our view. Alas! the importance of
PARTIES is in attempting to be eye servants
OF the people. The people may them
selves be the tyrants over their governors
Dogmatfsm is good for nobody. The Amer
lean press Is full Of it. Government is
engine q led hx-t Z bo
spectators.
1.-The hardest of all tasks is self govern
ment, and that America has assumed to do
An Historic Event.
''The civil war was a mighty educator its
utility greater than any instrument except
the Federal Constitution in our history.
The very cemeteries of its dead grow into
sculpture and literature. Abraham Lin
coin, the Martin Luther and Shakespeare
of our composite race, made sacred text Of
Gettysburg's dedication, and on the great
Battlefield of Maryland ruminated upon the
emancipation Of his southern race from
delegating mans best blessing. labor, to
those who earned not it's rewards.
"Yet at Gettysburg the souvenirs in por-
oelain and purchased to commemorate that
battle were made in Germany.
Awake again the spirit in the colonial
potter's wheel and turn us back from q
ration of pattern automatons to be artists
in our neighborhood. The soldier in gran
lite who presides over Antietam was fash
ioned by foreign hand.
Gentlemen, our history is to be- Ideas
are to be our highest priced grain. One
chapter, the first in the New Testament,
never heard sermon thrown away upon,
but an irreverent friend once quoted it to
me thus: Abraham forgot Isaac, and Isaac
forgot Jacob, and Jacob forgot fourteen
generations
This is as far as our history has come.
The mountain forms around US only now
begin to take the expression of inhabitancy
and architecture. They were the first
mountains ever saw when I came from
the eastern shore to live at Wright's old
ferry, or Columbia, where the German pill
grim fathers of Maryland and the farther
south crossed the Susquehanna. There I
heard the dirges and guns in 1885, when
Major Ringgold was brought home from
Mexico.
'It was almost forty years before re-
newed acquaintance with these mountain
forms, and in the interval America had
been remodeled under their wand Of blue,
every pass in them become romance.
Il love to imagine them the contour of
another Greece, inclosing civilization