The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1899-12-15


years Of cruelty"
After passing on amid columns and
statues erected in memory of those
who have been mighty for goodness
in the worlds history, the highest and
the most exquisitely sculptured are
those in honor Of such as have been
most efiectual in saving life or improv-
ing life, rather than those renowned
for destroying life, we come upon
another group of buildings that must
have been transformed from their
original shape and adapted to other
uses. What Is all this?" we ask our
escort. He answers: Those were
almshouses and hospitals, but accuracy
in making and prudence in running,
machinery of all sorts have almost
abolished the list of casualties, and
sobriety and industry have nearly
abolished pauperism, so that those
buildings, which once were hospitals
and almshouses, have been turned into
beautiful homes for the less prospered;
and If you will look in you will see the
poorest table has abundance, and the
smallest wardrobe luxury, and the
harp, waiting to have its strings
tnrummed, leaning against the piano,
waiting for its keys to be fingered. Yes,
we have on the shelves of our. free
libraries the full story of dispensaries,
| and crutches, and clinics, and surgery,
| and what time of suffering there
must have becnTon those. battlefields OF
Sedan and Gettysburg and south Az
RIGA one or two hundred years ago.
We can hardly believe now that the
science of wholesale murder and multi
| form assassination was so popular that
in the United States in four years 50O-
900 men on one side went forth to put
! Hospitals and almshouses must
have been a necessity once. but they
would be useless now. And you see all
| the swamps have been drained. The
sewerage of the great towns has been
perfected And the worlds climate is
SO improved that there are no pneu-
monias to come out of the cold, or
rheumatism out of the dampness, or
fevers out of the heat. Consumptions
| banished. Pneumonias banished. Diph-
liberia banished Ophthalmia banished.
| Neuralgias banished AS near as | can
tell from what have read, our atmos-
| phere of this century is mingling OF
the two months of May and October
of the nineteenth century"
And we believe what our escort says,
for as we pass on we find health glow
ing on every cheek and beaming in
every eye, and springing in every step,
and articulating in every utterance,
and you and whisper to each other
as our escort has his attention drawn
to some new sunrise upon the morn
ing sky, and we say to each other,
who would believe that this is the
world that we lived in over hundred
years ago? Look at those men and
women as we pass on the road! How
improved the human race! Such
beauty! Such strength! Such grace
fulness Such geniality! Faces with
out the mark of one sorrow! Cheeks
that seem never to have been wet by
one tear! A race sublimated! new
world born!"
But l say to our escort: did all
this merely happen so? Are all the
good here spontaneously good? How
did you get the old shipwrecked world
afioat again, out Of the breakers into
the smooth seas?" mo, no" responds
our twenty-first century escort. do
you see those towers? Those are the
towers of churches, towers of reforma-
tory institutions, towers of Christian
schools Walk with me, and let us
enter some of these temples" We en-
ter, and find that the music is in the
major key, and none of it in the minor
Gloria in Excelsis rising above Gloria
in Excelsis. Tremolo stop in the or
gan not so much used as the trumpet
stop. More of Ariel than Of Naomi
More chants than dirges. Not thin
song, the words of which no one under
stands on the lip of the soloist, but
mighty harmonies that roll from out
side the door to chancel, and from floor
to groined rafter, as though Handel
had come out Of the eighteenth century
into the twenty-five and had his foot
on the organ pedal, and Thomas Hast
ings had come out of the early part OF
the nineteenth century into. the TWEEN
ty-first and were leading the voices.
Music that moves the earth and makes
heaven listen. 40
But say to the twenty-first century
escort Il cannot understand this.
Have these worshipers no sorrows, or
have they forgotten their sorrows?'
Our escort responds: Sorrows! Why,
they had sorrows more than you could
count, but by a divine illumination
that the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries never enjoyed, they under
stand the uses of sorrow, and are COM
forted with a supernatural coincidence,
such as previous centuries never ex-
perienced."
ask again of the interpreter: "Has
death been banished from the world?"