The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1896-09-05

woman in energizing us for good. Thus
possibly the new design on our silver GER
tifcate may come to mean more to us than
handsome engraving with just so much
purchasing power back of it.
Now, young men, strong young men
but lacking in purpose, as a second article
based upon the silver certificate engraving
History Teaching Youth, = let me spread
out before you the vista of opportunity
that is as much your heritage as anyone s.
If / be foolish enough to be impractical in
my suggestions, you will know it immedi-
ately; for common-sense is not entirely
dead within you, though you have frit-
tered away your time in things that are
worse than play You know, just as well
as |, that no amount of thrashing will ever
cause the heavy legs of Percheron to
become light and delicate like those of
Maud s. So | shall not insult your
intelligence by saying that all of us may
equal in fame those names that are already
written high in our countrys history.
But want you to open wide your mind,
your hitherto purposeless mind, to IA great
thought-the uncommon grandeur of com
mon lives that are uprightly lived, even
though they be obscure unknown, I'M
chronicled
Go to the weed that forces its way up
through the chinks of your pavement and
learn from it. You crush it with your
heel and it is gone 1t dies and you think
of it no more Yet that weed has sur
rendered its contribution of effort and jus
titled its existence. Its little lungs, Il
may SO designate them have been taking
in the poisonous gases that you and all
handwriting creatures exhale, and it has
been breathing forth its tiny share of the
oxygen that sustains you. More than that,
it has changed some few particles of inor-
ganc clay and rock and dirt into living
plant, and death can never return those
particles to their original state. The mate
rial it leaves behind when you trample on
it passes to the nOurishment of other plants,
and the humblest. feeblest, most worth
less weed may thus serve ultimately to sus-
tain the greatest thing in creation-YOU.
Go to some South Sea Island and amid
the palms and sunshine Of one of these
gems of the Pacific think of its origin.
Ages ago far below the surface the coral
insect gathered around him his calcareous
cyst He passed away but his work en-
dured and upon it others in an intermina-
bic series built their tiny but everlasting
cells until at last the surface of the ocean
was reached and another island was born.
In what respect was that pioneer insect
inferior to those who completed the work ?
In nothing He is unknown, however,
vet absolutely essential to all those who
worked with him and followed him.
Go out on the ocean and look around
you 1t is type of our humanity. Only
the surface of it is broken into waves.
Beneath them, to its most abysmal depths,
unruffied, even unlighted. waters slowly
move hither and thither. No matter how
beauteous the waves they would be no
longer ocean if the underlying mass were
lacking. Those waves are the great lead
ers in the world But the waters above
are as naught save for the waters beneath,
and you and |, if our spirits are true and
our motives Clean will rejoice at any height
our race may reach; for ace are essential to
it, We IN orr hidden sphere are holding
II mp.
Do these things teach you nothing, or
are your ears eternally deaf to truth To
me the imperishable testimony of the coral
reef. the still, small voice of the humble
flower, the gruff music of the waves, come
not merely to teach but to satisfy. They
convince us that the life properly lived and
at last snuffed out in obscurity, may yet,
by reason of setting in motion the forces
for good in those we happen against, have
its essential share in great deeds, vast ac-
compllshments, and moral victories. You
in your little place, which you must fill to
the best of your ability, are as essential to
the well-being of our country as the best
man in it. You are flesh and blood. No
more than that is he. You can influence
strongly those around you. Less than
that can he, for the higher he gets the less
of personal contact does he enjoy. What
greater breadth to narrow life could you
desire? In the world God has ordered
that matter, though it may change its form
thousand times, is yet in itself indestruct-
ible | believe it is also decreed that the
deeds and acts and thoughts that pass from
us to others are surely as enduring as the
elements of plant. Here then is the
grandeur of good life and the ce,y hor-
ror Of bad one, acting and reacting
through generations to come. Be not
alarmed because the world knows you not;
be alarmed because you have not hereto
fore understood, or cared to understand,
the glory of that manhood whereunto you
were called when your mother gave you
birth
We are nearing the point where we part
company for week This silent printed
page has possibly stirred that soul of yours
with a new determination to be and to do
Read it over second time and then ask
the one in whose Judgment you most trust
whether it is right or whether it is wrong.
| have not written regarding daily employ
ment but rather regarding the conscious
and unconscious influences you may daily
exert | am satisfied that the vista
stretched out before you thus far is wide
enough for the one most ambitious for
power Next week we will consider the
material possibilities lying before you as
an American youth.
Station d., Neio York
"A Deprecated Dollar for the
Laborer"
BY A. j. WARNER.
1t has somewhere been said that fools