The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-10-04

OiSbS VIII Ceu you tnaI IL has Luz ages
been on fire.
Why, there is only a crust between
us and the furnaces inside raging to
get out. Oblivioni The world itself
will roll into it as easily as school
boys india rubber ball rolls down a
hill, and when our world goes it is so
interlocked by the law of gravitation
with other worlds that they will go,
too, and so far from having our men,
DRY perpetuated by a monument of
Aberdeen granite in this world there
is no world in sight of our strongest
telescope that will be a sure pediment
for any slab of commemoration of
the fact that we ever lived or died at
all. Our earth is struck with death.
The axletree of the consultations will
break and let down the populations
of other worlds. Stellar, lunar, solar,
mortality. Oblivionl 1t can swallow
and will swallow whole galaxies of
worlds as easily as a crocodile takes
down a frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or
swallow everything that had better
not be removed or swallowed. The
/ old monster is welcome to his meal.
This world would long ago have been
overcrowded if not for the merciful
removal of nations and generations.
What if all the books had lived that
were ever written and printed and
published? The libraries would by
their immensely have INSTRUCTED in
telligence and made all research i'm
possible. The fatal epidemic of books
was a merciful epidemic. Many of
the state and national libraries to-
day are only morgues, in which dead
books are waiting for some one to
come and recognize them. What if all
the people that had been born were
still alive? We would have been ell
bowed by our ancestors of ten CEN
turtles ago, and people who ought to
have said their last word 5000 years
ago would snarl at us, saying: "What
are you doing here?'' There would
have been no room to turn around.
Some of the past generations of man
kind were not worth remembering.
The first useful thing that many peo-
pie did was to die, their cradle mis-
fortune and their grave a boon. This
world was hardly comfortable place
to live in before the middle of the
eighteenth century. So many things
have come into the world that were
not fit to stay in we ought to be glad
they were put out. The waters of
Lethe, the fountain of forgetfulness,
are a healthful draught. The history
we have of the world in ages past is
always one-sided and cannot be de-
pended on. History is fiction illus
trated by few struggling facts.
In all the Pantheon the weakest
goddess is Clio, the goddess of his
tory, and instead of being represent
ed by sculptors as holding a scroll
might better be represented as limp
ing on crutches. Faithful history is
the saving of a few things out of
more things lost. The immortality
that comes from pomp of obsequies
or granite shaft or building named
after its founder or page of recogni-
ton in some encyclopedia is an i'm
mortality unworthy of ones ambi-
ton, for it will cease and is no i'm
mortality at all. Oblivion! A hum
dred years. But, while 1 recognize
this universal submergence of things
earthly, who wants to be forgotten?
Not one of us. Absent for a few
weeks or months from home, it cheers
us to know that we are remembered
there. It is a phrase we have all
pronounced: 81 hope you missed
me-" Meeting some friends from
whom we have been parted many
years, we inquire: ''Did you ever see
me before?" And they say: eyes"
and call us by name, and we feel a
i ell thri11inor thrnJoh
their hand into our hand and running
up from elbow to shoulder and then
parting, the one current of delight as
cending to the brow and the other
descending to the foot, moving round
and round in concentric circles until
every nerve and muscle and capacity
of body and mind and soul is perme-
ated with delight. Some time ago, Wis
iting the place of my boyhood, L met
one whom I had not seen since we
played together at ten years of age,
and I had a peculiar pleasure in Puz-
zling him a little as to who l was,
and 1 can hardly describe the sensa-
ton as, after awhile, he stumbled
out: ''Let me see. Yes, you are De-
Witt" We all like to be remembered.
Now, I have told you that this OBJ
livion of which / have spoken has its
defeats and that there is no more
reason why we should not be distinct
lv and wildly and gloriously remem-
bered five hundred million billion trll-
lion quadrillion quintillion years from
now than that we should be remem-
bered six weeks.
We may build this 'everla sting re-
membrance," as my text styles it, into
the supernal existence of those to
whom we do kindnesses in this world.
You must remember that this infirm
and treacherous faculty which we now
call memory is in the future state to
be complete and perfect. Everlasting
remembrance" Nothing will slip the
stout grip of that celestial faculty.
Did you help a widow pay her rent?
Did YOU find for that man released from
prison place to get honest work? Did
YOU pick up child fallen on the curb
stone, and by a stick of candy put in
his hand stop the hurt on his scratched
knee? Did you assure a business man
swamped by the stringency of the
money market that times would after
awhile be better? Did you lead a Mag
dalen of the street into a midnight
mission, where the Lord said to her:
Neither do L condemn thee. Go and
sin no more?" Did you tell man clear
discouraged in his waywardness and
hopeless and plotting suicide that for