Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1901-12-07

move far out at sea as though an ts
land had been unanchored with iti
forests of masts, or as if some one had
| said in Scripture phrase unto a noun
| tain, BE thou cast into the sea-" The
volcano in her heart will sprinkle on
the sea baptism of fire, and as she
goes up the channel of St. George,
among the shipyards of the old world
and among the wheels of Liverpool and
Manchester shall be announced the
skill and the glory of the American
hammer
Advance in Literature.
But, considering the youth of our
nation and the fact that compara-
lively few persons devote themselves
entirely to literature, 1 think we have
great reason to thank God for the
progress of our American literature.
AS historians have we not had in the
past such men. as Bancroft and Pres
cott. as essayists Irving and Emerson,
as jurists Story and Marshall and
Kent, as theologians Edwards and
Hodge, as poets Pierrepont and
Sprague and Longfellow and Bryant,
as sculptors Powers and Crawford and
Palmer, as painters such men as West
and Cole and Inman and Kensett? And
among the living Americans what gal
axies of intellectual splendor and
power! Edward Eggleston and Will
Carlton and Mark Twain and John
Kendrick Bangs and Marion Harland
and Margaret Sangster and Stockton
and Churchill and Hopkinson Smith
and Irving Bacheller and Julia Ward
Howe and Amelia Barr and Brander
Matthews and Thomas Nelson Page
and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Will
liam Dean Howells and a score of 9TH
ers, some of them fixed stars and some
meteors.
Some Marvellous Changes.
How things have marvelously
changed! We used to cry because we
had to go to school. Now children
cry if they cannot go. Many of them
can intelligently discuss political top
les long before they have seen bal
lot box or, teased by some poetic muse
can compose articles for the newspa-
pers. Philosophy and astronomy and
chemistry have been so improved that
he must be a genius at dullness who
knows nothing about them. On one
shelf of poor mans library is more
practical knowledge than in the 400,-
900 volumes of ancient Alexandria,
and education is possible for the most
INDECENT, and no legislature or con-
gress for the last fifty years has as
sembled which has not had in it rail
splitters and farmers and drovers OF
men who have been accustomed to
toiling with the hand and the foot
The pen which Moses dipped in the
light of the first morning and Jere-
miah filled with tears and Ezekiel
thrust in visions of fire and Matthew
he 1f
st. John dipped in the splendors of
beatific glory-that pen has wrought
marvels for all classes of our people
Today your libraries and colleges and
| schools and publishing houses and
churches celebrate the ever growing
conquests of the American pen, and
| our prospects are all the time bright
ening
The Glorious Prospects.
The grainfields have passed their
harvests above the veto of drought
| and deluge. The freight cars are not
large enough to bring down the grain
to the seaboard. The canalboats are
crowded with breadstuffs. Hark to the
| rushing of the wheat through the great
Chicago corn elevatorsi Hark to the
rolling of the hogsheads of the Gin
cinnati pork packers! Enough to eat
and at low prices. Enough to wear
and of home manufacture. If some
have and some have not, then may
God help those who have to hand over
| to those who have noti Clear the
| track for the rail trains that rush on
| bringing the wheat and the cotton and
the rice and the barley and the oats
and the hops and the lumber and the
leather and everything for man and
| everything for beast.
Lift up your eyes, o nation of Gods
right hand, at the glorious prospects.
Build larger your barns for the har-
vests. Dig deeper the vats for. the spoil
of the vineyards. Enlarge the ware
houses for the merchandise. Multiply
galleries of art for the pictures and
| statues. Advance, o nation of Gods
| right hand, but remember that nation
| al wealth. if unsanctified, is sumptu-
GUS waste, is moral ruin, is magnif-
cent woe, is splendid rottenness, is
gilded death. Woe to US for the wine
watts if drunkenness wallows in them.
Woe to us for the harvest if greed
sickles themi Woe to us for the mer-
| chandise If avarice swallows it, Woe
to us for the cities if misrule walks
| them! Woe to the land if God defy
| ing crime debauches it. Our only
safety is in more Bibles, more church
es, more free schools, more good men
and more good women, more conse-