Milford chronicle., 1901-10-04
VOL XIV NO. 40. WHOLE NUMBER, 1918

sruue ana national libraries today are
| only morGues, in which dead books are
waiting for some one to come and recog-
nize them. What if all the people that
/ had been born were still alive? We
would have been elbowed by our ances-
| tors of ten centuries ago, and people
/ who ought to have said their last word
1900 years ago would snarl at US, say
/ ing, What are you doing here p There
would have been no room to turn around.
/ Some of the past generations of mankind
were not worth remembering. The first
/ useful thing that many people did was
/ to die, their cradle a misfortune and
their grave a boon. This world was
hardly comfortable place to live in be-
fore the middle of the eighteenth CEN
fury. 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 forget
| fitness, are a healthful draft. The his
| tory we have of the world in ages past
is always one sided and cannot be de-
| pended on. History is fiction illustrated
by a few struggling facts.
In all the Pantheon the weakest god
| dess is Clio, the goddess of history, and
instead Of being represented by sculptors
as holding a scroll might better be repre-
scented as limping 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 recognition in some
| encyclopedia is an immortality unworthy
| Of ones ambition, for it will cease and is
80 - Ill
| dred years. But while l 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. 1t is a phrase we
have all pronounced, Il hope you missed
me-" Meeting some friends from whom
we have been parted many years we in
| quire, Did you ever see me before ?"
| And they say, "Yes," and call us by
name, and we feel a delightful sensation
| thrilling through their hand into our
hand and running up from elbow to
| shoulder and then parting, the one cur
rent of delight ascending to the brow and
the other descending to the foot, moving
round and round in concentric circles I'M
| til every nerve and muscle and capacity
| of body and mind and soul is permeated
with delight. Some time ago, visiting the
place of my boyhood, met one whom I
| had not seen since we played together at
| ten years Of age, and l had peculiar
! pleasure in puzzling him a little as to
who l was, and l can hardly describe the
sensation as, after awhile, he stumbled
out: Let me see. Yes, you are Dewitt"
| We all like to be remembered.
Why We Should Be Remembered.
Now, have told you that this oblivion
of which l have spoken has it defeats
and that there is no more reason why we
should not be distinctly and wildly and
| glOriously remembered five hundred mil
lion billion tyillion quadrillion quintillion
years from now than that we should be
remembered six weeks. l am going to
tell you how the thing can be done and
will be done.
We may build this Everlasting remem-
brance," 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 treacher-
GUS faculty which we now call memory
is in the future state to be complete and
perfect. Everlasting remembrancew
Nothing will slip the stout grip Of that
celestial faculty. Did you help a widow
pa., her rent? Did you find for that man
released from prison a place to get hon
est work? Did you pick up child fallen
on the curbstone and by a stick of candy
put in his hand stop the hurt on his
scratched knee? Did you assure a bust
ness man swamped by the stringency Of
the money market that times would after
awhile be better2 Did you lead a Mag
dalen of the street into a midnight mis-
sion, where the Lord said to her: "Nei-
Their do l condemn thee. Go and sin no
mOre~ Did you tell man clear discour-
aged in his waywardness and hopeless
and plotting suicide that for him was
near by laver in which he might wash
and n cOronet of eternal blessedness he
might wear? What are epitaphs in
graveyards, what are eulogiums in pres
ence Of those whose breath is in their
nostrils, what are unread biographies in
the alcOves of a city library, compared
with the imperishable records you have
made in the illumined memories of those
to whom you did such kindnesses? For
get them? They cannot forget them.
Notwithstanding all their might and
splendOr there are some things the glori-
fed Of heaven cannot do, and this is one
of them. They cannot forget an earthly
kindness done. They have no cutlass to
part that cable. They have no strength
to hurl into oblivion that benefaction.
Has Paul forgotten the inhabitants Of
Malta who extended the island hos.
pitality when he and others with him
had felt, added to a shipwreek, the
drenching rain and the sharp cold? Has
the victim of the highwayman on the
road to Jericho forgotten the good Sa.
maritan with a medicament Of oil and
wine and a free ride to the hostelry
Have the English soldiers who went VI
to God from the Crimean battlefelds for
gotten Florence Nightingale? Through
all eternity will the northern and south
ern soldiers forget the northern and
southern women who administered to the
dying boys in blue and gray after the
awful fights in Tennessee and PennsyI
vania and Virginia and Georgia which
turned every house and barn and shet
into an hospital and incarnadined tn,
SusQuehanna and the James and til,
Shattahoochee and the Savannah witt
brave blood? The kindnesses you do t
, others will stand as long in the apprecia
/ ton Of others as the gates of heaven viii
} stand, as the "house Of many mansions
: will stand, as long as the throne Of Co
will stand.
t Defeat of Oblivion.
Another defeat of oblivion will b