The Penn's Grove record., 1901-11-29

mas lOuEul Tvs way uONha WV. e.
ming to the present. Under its swing the
city of Enoch rose, and the foundry OF
Tuhal Cain ~resounded, and the ark floated
on the deluge. At its clang ancient TEN.
pies spread their magnificence and char
lots rushed out fit for the battle. Its iron
fist smote the marble of Paros, and it rose
in sculptured Minervas and struck the
Pentelican mint until from them a Par-
thenon was reared winter than a palace
of ice and pure as an angels dream.
Damascus and Jerusalem and Rome and
Venice and Paris and London and Phila-
delphia and New York and Washington
are but the long protracted echoes of the
hammer. Under the hammer everywhere
dwellings have gone up, ornate and luxu-
rious. Schoolhouses, lyceums, hospitals
and asylums have added additional glory
to the enterprise as well as the bene-
fcence of the American people.
Vast public works have been construct
ed, bridges have been built over rivers
and tunnels dug under mountains and
churches OF matehless beauty nave gone
up for Him who had not where to lay
His head, and the old theory is exploded
that because Christ was born in a manger
we must always worship Him in a barn.
You shall yet see American labor rising
up with q stronger arm and a stouter
heart and a swarthier frame. New cities
will be built. Commerce on the lakes will
take new wings. Where now stand unbro-
ken forests great capitals of business and
atl1uence will rise and streams that have
idled away 5000 years will be harnesssed
to .ponderous machinery and compelled to
toll and sweat like the Chattahoochee and
the Merrimac. At one of our great dry
docks we shall yet build the model ocean
steamship. II will come together under
the chorus of a thousand American ham
mers. She shall start amid a great ma
tional hurrah and move far out at sea as
though an island had been unanchored
with its forests of masts or as if some one
had said in Scripture phrase unto a
mountain, "Be thou cast into the sea"
The volcano in the heart will sprinkle
on the sea a 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.
Now l come to speak OF, the c~onquests
of the pen. This is the symbol Of all intel
lectnality. The painters pencil and the
sculptor's chisel and the philosophers la,
boratory are all brothers to the pen, and
therefore this may be used as a symbol Of
intellectual advancement. There are those
disposed to decry everything American.
Having seen Melrose and Glastonbury by
moonlight, they never behold among us an
impressive STRUCTURE, pr, having stioheu
through the picture galleries Of the Louvre
and the Luxembourg, they are disguised
with our academies Of art. 1t makes me
sick to hear these people who have been to
Europe come talking with a foreign accent
and aping foreign customs and talking of
moonlight on castles by the sea. | think
the biggest fool in the country is the trav-
eled fool.
But. considering the youth Of our nation
and the foot that nOr,rna ro ttt-oIr faty fAais-
sons devote themselves entirely to litera-
ture, | think we have great reason to
thank God for the progress of our Ameri-
can literature. AS historians have we not
had in the past such men as Bancroft and
Prescott, as essayists Irving and Emerson,
as j%urists Story and Marshall and Kent,
as theologians Edwards and Hodge, as
fellow 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 g~alaxies of intellectual
splendor and powerl
Edward Eggleston and Will Carleton
and Mark Twain and John kendrick
Bangs and Marion. Harland and Margaret
Sangster and Stockton and Churchill and
Hopkinson Smith and Irving Bachelor and
Julia Ward Howe and Amelia Barr and
Brander Matthews and Thomas Nelson
Page and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and
William Dean Howells and a score of 9TH
ers, some of them fixed stars and some
meteors.
AS the pen has advanced our colleges
and universities and observatories have
erature is of two kinds-that on foot and
that on the wing. By the former | mean
the firm and substantial works which will
90 down through the centuries. When, on
the other hand, l speak of literature on
the-xSnrI -naepzthe newspapers OF the
land. TC-7TT~ItIy and vanish, but
leave permanent results. upon the pubic
mind. They fall noiselessly as a snow
flake, but with the strength of an Alpine
glacier. .
This unparalleled multiplication Of intel
ligence viii either, make or break us.
Every morning and evening our telegraph
Offices, with huge wire rakes, gather. up
the news of the nation and of the whole
world, and men write to some purpose
when they make a pen out of a thunder
bolt. =,
1t needs great energy and decision and
perseverance for a man to be ignorant. III
this country to-day. 1t seems to me that
it requires more effort for him to keep out
knowledge than to let it in. The mail
bags at the smallest postofiees disgorge
large packages of intelligence for the peo.
pie. Academies with maps. globes and
philosopher apparatus have been taking
the places OF those institutions where thir-
ty or forty years ago you were put to the
torture. Men selected for their Gualifca.
tions are intrusted with the education of
our youth instead Of those teachers who
formerly with u drovcr's shout and goad
compelled the young generations up the
hill of science. Happy childhood What
with broken tops and torn kites and the
l.. -. Al. Ln,+ r,,,h1a and cfpmn-
ing your foot against a stone and some
body sticking a pin into you to see wheth-
er YOU will jump and examination day,
with four or FIVE wise men looking over
their spectacles to see if YOU can parse the
first page in Young's might Thoughts
until verbs and ~eonjunctions and partici-
pies and propositions get into a grand riot,
How things have maryelousiy changed!
We used to cry because we had to go to
school. Now children cry if they cannot
go. Many OF them can inteligently dis
cuss political topics long before they have
seen a ballot box or, leased by some poetic
muse, can compose articles for the news
papers. Philosophy and astronomy and
chemistry have been so improved that he
must be a genius at dulness VINO KNOWS
nothing about them.
On one shelf Of a 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 congress for the last
fifty years has assembled which has not
had It in rail splitters and farmers and
drovers or 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 Jeremiah
filed with tears, and Ezekiel thrust in WIS.,
ions of fire. and Matthew touched with
the blood OF a cross, and st. John dipped
in the splendors of beatific glory-that pen
has wrought marvels for all classes of our
people. To-day our libraries and colleges
and schools and publishing houses and
churches celebrate the ever growing con-
quests of the American pen, and our pros
poets are all the time Frightening.
Lift up your eyes, 0 nation of Gods
right hand, at the glorious prospects!
Build larger your barns for the harvests;
dir deeper the watts for the spoil of the
vineyards; enlarge the warehouses for the
merchandise; multiply galleries of art for
the mixtures and statues. Advance, o ma
ton Of Gods right hand, but remember
that national wealth, if unsanctiied, is
sumptuous waste, is moral ruin, is magniti-
cent woe, is splendid ~rottenness, is gilded
DEATH Woe to us for the wine watts if
drunkenness wallows in themi Woe to us
for the haryests il greed sickles theml