Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-12-04

where the prisoner of Chillon was in
,carcerated, or Devils island, where
Dreyfus endured four years of cruel
aty."
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 those
in honor of such as have been most
efectual in saving life or improving
life rather than Of those renowned
for destroying life, we come upon an
other group of buildings that must
have been transformed from their orig
inal 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 indus
try 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 thrummed, leaning against
the piano, waiting for it's 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 suf-
fering there must have been on those
battlefields Of Sedan and Gettysburg
and South Africa one or two hundred
years ago.
New World Born.
"Bospitals 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
rheumatisms out of the dampness or
feyers out Of the heat. Consumptions
banished, pneumonias banished, diph-
liberia banished, ophthalmia banished,
neuralgiaS baniShed AS near as l
can tell from what L have read, our
atmosphere of this century is a min
Cling 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 in 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 morning
sky, and we say, each to the other:
''Who would believe that this is the
world we lived in over a hundred years
ago? Look at those men and women
we pass on the road. How improved
the human race! Such beauty! Such
strength! Such gracefulness! Such
geniality! Faces without the mark Of
one sorrow! Cheeks that seem never
to have been wet by one tear! A race
sublimated! A 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?' ''NO, 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
ter some of these temples We enter,
and 1 find that the music is in the ma
jor key, and none of it in the minor
GLORIA in Excelsis" rising above "Glo-
ria in EXcelsis." Tremolo stop in the
organ not so much used as the trumpet
stop. More of Ariel than of Naomi. More
chants than dirges.
But l say to our twenty-frst century
escort: 81 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 expe-
rienced"
Prophecy Fulfilled.
| ask again of the interpreter, HAS
death been banished from the world?"
The answer is, mo; but people die
now only when the physical machinery
is worn out and they realize it is time |
to go and that they are certainly and
without doubt going into a world |
where they will be infinitely better |
off and are to live in a mansion that |
awaits their immediate occupancy"
But how was all this effected?" l ask |
our escort Answer: ''By floods of Cos
pei power. You who lived in the |
nineteenth century never saw a re-
vival of religion to be compared with |
what occurred in the latter part of the |
txvn ri ort Of hQ
twenty-frst century. The prophecy |
boop f11IfI1o6 tbo+ 50 nation bo |