Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1901-10-05


and Psalms exit, s. The righteous shall
be in everlasting remembrance.
or oblivion and its defeats l speak to-
day. There is an old monster that swal-
lows down every hing. Ii crunches in
| diyiduals families, communities, states,
nations, continents, helGispheres. worlds.
Its diet is made up of years, of centuries,
of ages, of cycles, of millenniums, OF
cons. That monster is called by Noah
| Webster and all the other dictionaries
Oblivion" 1t is a steep down which
everything rolls. Ii is contagration in
| which everything is consumed Ii is a
| dirge which all orchestras play and
| period at which everything stops. 1t is
| the cemetery of the human race. 1t is
| the domain of forgetfulness. Oblivion.
| At times il throws shadow over all of
us, and | would not pronounce it to-day
| If did not come armed in the strength
of the eternal God on your behalf to at
| tack it, TO route it, to demolish il.
Why, just look at the way the families
of the earth disappear. For awhile they
are together, inseparable and to each
| other Indispensable. and then they part,
some by marriage going 10 establish other
|
century is long enough t. plant a family.
develop it, prosper it and obliterate it.
| So the generations vanish. Walk up
| Pennsylvania avenue, Washington;
Broadway, New York; State street, Bos-
| ton; Chestnut street, Philadelphia; the
Strand, London; Princess street. Edin-
burg; Champs Elysees. Paris; Inter
den Linden Berlin, and Won will meet
| in this year 1901 not one person who
walked there in the year 1861 What en-
gulfment! All the ordinary efforts at
perpetuation are dead failures. Walter
/ Scotts Old Mortality may 20 round
with his chisel TO recut the faded cpl
taphs on tombstoues, but Old Oblivion
has a quicker chisel with which he can
cut out q thousand epitaphs while Old
Mortality is cutting one epitaph. Whole
| Libraries of biographies devoured of
| bookworms or unread OF the rising gem
| erations. All the signs of the stores and
| warehouses of great firms have changed.
unless the grandsons think that ii is an
advantage 10 keep the old sign up be-
cause the name of the ancestor was more
commentators than the name of the de-
scendant. The city of Rome stands to-
come -. another Rome, buried. and go
down still farther, and You will find r
third Rome. Jerusalem stands to-day,
but dig down deep enough, and you will
find Jerusalem underneath and go on
and deeper down third Jerusalem
| Alexandria, Egypt, on the top Of an
Alexandria, and the second on the top Of
the third. Many of the ancient cities are
buried thirty feet deep or fifty feet deep
or 100 feet deep. What was the matter:
Any special calamity No The winds
and waves and sands and flying dust are
all undertakers and gravediggers, and IL
the world stands long enough the present
| Washington and New York and London
will have on top of them other Washing
tons and New Yorks and Londons. and
only after digging and boring and blast
! ing will the archaeoogists OF far distant
centuries come down ss far as the high
est spires and domcs and turrets Of our
present American and European cities.
The Roll of Armies.
Call the roll of the armies of Baldwin l.
or of Charles Marte or of Marlborough
or of Mithridates or of Prince Frederick
| or Of Cortes. and not one answer will
| you utdT. SStdUO tHcn III tlut ana 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 1,000,OOG men
| Of Sesostris, the 100000 men of Aria
Xerxes at CunaXa, the 2,G4I 900 men I'M
! der Xerxes at Thcrmopylae and call the
| long roll. Not one answer. At the OPEN
| ing of our Civil War the men OF the
| Northern and Southern armies were told
that il they fell in battle their names
would never be forgotten by their coun-
| try. Out of the million men who fell in
| battle or died in military hospitals you
cannot call the names OF thousand nor
| the names of 500 nor the names Of 100
nor the names Of fifty. Oblivion. Are
| he feet of the dancers who were at the
| ball of the Duchess of Richmond al Brus-
| sells 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
liyion. A hundred years from now there
viii not be being on this earth that
knew we ever lived.
Yet oblivion does not remove or swal
low everything that had better not be re-
moved or swallowed. The old monster
is welcome to his meal. This world
would long ago have been oyererowded
If not for the merciful removal Of ma
tons and generations. What IL all the
books had lived that we're ever written
and printed and publishedi The libraries
would hy their immensely have obstruct-
ed intelligence and made all research iIsi-
possible The fatal epidemic OF books
was a mercifal epidemic. Many Of the
State and national libv@-.ies to-day are
only morgues, in which dead books are
waiting for some one to come and rec0g-
nize them. What if all the people that
had been born we're still aiivei We
would have been elbowed By our ances-
tors Of ten centuries ago, and people
who ought 10 have said their last word
5000 years ago would snar Al us. say
Ing, What are y0n doing heteFi There
would have been no room to tHrn around.
cors4 *t1n q tft4to ~ nrlrfud