The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1899-11-16
THE FORGOTTEN MILLIONS.
President Eliot Tells the Life story
of a TTnicnI Americana

n n
The biography of Mr. John Gilley,
which President Eliot of Harvard re-
lates in the November Century, is by no
means an exciting story, and it is for
this very reason that it is told. 1t is
typical of the lives of what the writer
calls 1.-THE Forgotten Millions:"
To be absolutely forgotten in a few
years is the common fate of mankind.
Isaac Watts did not exaggerate when he
wrote:
Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
With the rarest exceptions, the death
of each human individual is followed in a
short time by complete oblivion, so far
as living human memories are concerned.
Even family recollection or tradition
quickly becomes dim and soon fades ut
terly away. Few of us have any clear
transmitted impression of our great
grandparents. Some of US could not de-
scribe our grandparents. Even men &C
counted famous at their deaths slip from
living memories and become mere shad-
ows or word pictures-shadoWs or word
pictures which too often distort or mis-
represent the originals. Not one human
being in ten million is really long remem-
bered. For the mass of mankind abso-
lutte oblivion, like death, is sure. But
what if it is? Should this indubitable
fact affect injuriously the mortal life in
this world of the ordinary human being
Not at all. For most men and women
the enjoyments, interests and duties of
this world are just as real and absorbing
at the moment as they would be if the
enjoying, interested and dutiful indi-
viduals could imagine that they were
long to be remembered on this earthly
stage. A few unusually imaginative and
| ambitious persons are doubtless stlmu-
lated and supported by the hope Of indy
ing fame-a hope which in the immense
majority of such cases proves to be pure
| delusiOn. The fact is that forelooking is
| not a common occupation of the human
mind. We all live, as a rule, in the pres
ent and the past and take very little
thought for the future Now, in estimat-
ing the aggregate we'll being and happi-
ness of community or a nation, it is
obviously the condition of the obscure
millions, who are sure to be absolutely
forgotten, that it is most important to see
and weigh Alright, yet history and BIZ
ography alike neglect these humble
speechless multitudes, and modern fiction
finds it profitable to portray the most
squalid and vicious sides of the life of
these millions rather than the best and
the commonest Thus the facts about
the life of the common multitude go I'M
observed, or at least unrecorded, while
fiction paints that life in false cOlors.
This paper describes with accuracy the
actual life of one of the to be forgotten
millions. Is this life a true American
type? If it is, there is good hope for our
country.
This is the life of one of the forgotten
millions. 1t contains no material fol
distinction, fame or long remembrance
but it does contain the material and pre-
sent the scene for a normal human devel
opment through mingled joy and sorrow
labor and rest, adversely and success, and
through the tender loves of childhood
maturity and age. We cannot but be-
ieve that it is just for countless quiet
simple lives like this that God made and
upholds this earth.