Milford chronicle., 1901-10-04

AE nun "a AEAAAGHs
Call the roll of the armies of Baldwin I.
OF of Charles Martel or of Marlborough
or of Mithridates or of Prince Frederick
or of Cortes, and not one answer will
you hear. Stand them in line and call
the roll of the 100000 men in the army
Of Thebes. Not one answer. Stand them
in line, the 100000 infantry and the
100000 cavalry Of the Assyrian army
under Minus, and call the roll Not one
answer. Stand in line the 100000 men
of Sesostris, the 100000 men of Arta-
xerxes at Cunaxa, the 2,641 900 men I'M
der XerXes at Thermopylg and call the
long roll. Not one answer. At the open
ing of our civil war the men Of the north
ern and southern armies were told that
if they fell in battle their names would
never be forgotten by their country.
Out of the million men who fell in battle
or died in military hospitals you cannot
call the names of a thousand nor the
names of 800 nor the names Of 100 nor
the names Of fifty. Oblivion! Are the
feet of the dancers who at the ball of
the Duchess of Richmond at Brussels
the night before Waterloo all still? All
still. Are the ears that heard the guns
Of Bunker Hill all deaf? All deaf. Are
the eyes that saw the coronation Of
George III. all closed? All closed. OBJ
livionl A hundred years from now there
will not be being on this earth that
knew we ever lived.
In some old family record a descendant
studying up the ancestral line may spell
out our name and from the faded ink
with great effort find that some person
by our name was born somewhere in the
nineteenth century, but they wiz know
no more about us than we know about
the color Of a child's eyes born last night
in village in Patagonia. Tell me some
thing about your great-grandfather.
What were his features? What did he
do? What year was he born? What
year did he die? And your great-grand-
mother? VIII you describe the style OF
the hat she wore, and how did she and
your great-grandfather get on in each
others companionship? Was it March
weather or June? Oblivion! That noun.
tain surge rolls over everything. Even
the pyramids are dying. Not a day
passes but there is chiseled off a chip OF
that granite. The sea is triumphing over
the land, and what is going on at oul
Atlantic coast is going on all around the
world, and the continents are crumblina
into the waves. And while this is trans
piring on the outside of the world, the
hot chisel of the internal fire is digging
under the foundations of the earth anC
cutting its way out toward the surface
1t surprises me to hear people say the!
do not think the world will finally b,
burned up when all scientists will tel
you that it has for ages been on fire.
Why, there is only a crust between u
Bnd the furnaces inside raging to ge
: out. Oblivion! The world itself will rol
into it as easily as a schoolboy's indi
rubber ball rolls down a hill, and whel
our world goes it is so interlocked by tn
law Of gravitatiOn with other worlds tina
they will go too, and SO far from havin
our memory perpetuated by a monumen
= of Aberdeen granite in this world Their
is no world in sight of our stronges
telescope that will be a sure pedimeI
for any slab of commemOration of tn
fact that we ever lived or died at al
Our earth is struck with death. II
aXletree of the consultations will brea
and let down the populations of 9th,
worlds. Stellar, lunar, solar, mortalit
& Oblivion! 1t can swallow and will swa
low whole galaXies of worlds as east
as a crocodile takes down a frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or swa
low everything that had better not
- removed or swallowed. The old monst
=, is welcome to his meal. This wor
!, would long ago have been overcrowd
I; if not for the merciful removal of n
J! lions and generations. What if all t
u books had lived that were ever WRIT
3, and printed and published? The librari
20 would by their immensely have obstru,
&. ed intelligence and made all research il
IG possible. The fatal epidemic Of boo
was a mereiful epidemic. Many of t