Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1901-06-03


comparison in usefulness between that
man with the one talent of honesty and
.he dashing operators of the money
market?
Genius Unnecessary.
The chief work of the people with
many talents is to excite wonderment
and to startle and electrify the world.
What use is there in all that? No use
at all. 1 have not so much interest in
the one man out of a million as /
have in the million. Get the great
masses Of the world right and it does
not make much difference about what
the exceptional people are doing. Have
all the people with the one talent en-
listed for God and righteousness, and
let all those with five or ten talents
migrate to the north star or the moon,
and this world would get on splen-
didly. The Woodworking, industrious
classes of America are all right and
would give no trouble, but it is the
genius who gives up work and on a big
salary goes around to excite dissatis-
faction and embodiment, the genius
who quits work and steps on the stage
or political platform, eats beefsteak
and quail on toast and causes the COM
mon laborers, compelled to idleness, to
put their hands into empty pockets and
eat grist1e and gnaw bones The world
would be nightly improved if it could
slough off about 5000 geniuses, for
there are more than that on our planet.
Then the man or woman of one talent
would take possession of the world and
rule it in common sense and Chris
tian way. There would be less to
amaze and startle, but more to give
equipoise to church and state and
world. ITO another one.''
The most brilliant and many sided
man that ever trod this world, in my
opinion, wa& Napoleon Bonaparte, and
no man that ever lived did the world
more damage. I have read a book adj
vocating him as a great emancipation
and refOrmer. l was not surprised at
the book, for I have heard of a pam
phlet in defense of Judas IscariOt. l
suppose it may set forth the idea that
he was out of money and needed the
80 pieces Of silver, and the money was
not spent for himself, but to open a re-
spectacle graveyard. 1 would not be
surprised to find a book in honor of
satan, the chief miscreant of the uni
verse. We all admire industry, and
there is no more industrious being
than satan. But when a man tells me
Napoleon was a reformer and enamel
pator I would like to take him out and
show him $4,000 corpses in the Russian
snow banks and ask him if he likes
that, and l would show him the grave
trenches of those who fell in the year
1899 during the NapoleOnic wars. Only
10000 men butchered in four months!
I would ask him how he likes that.
The country is beautiful, and l would
ask our friend to cross with me to
LeipSic and examine the grave trenches
operad there. Only 101, 100 fallen on
both sides! That is all. Come on, my
friend, and see the further work of
<ae great emancipation and refOrmer at
Borodino, which l had an opportunity
of looking at last summer. Only 1OO,-
900 dead men as a result of the battle!
Pass by as hardly worth looking at
AuSterlitz, where the work of our re-
former left $4,000 of the slain, and
come to Waterloo, to find that only
$4,000 dead men were left on the field!
Alas for the work of this great enamel
patOr and refOrmer! He turned Eu-
rope into a charnel house and filled Eu-
rope with widowhood and Orphanage
and childlessness. Though he was the
brilliant man of the ages, would it not
have been better for the world if he
had died in his cradle six weeks after
he was born? Compare that with the
man who had one talent and that the
talent of invention. He was born on a
II
went to the district school in the win
ter and never had any other literary
advantages. He became a machiniSt.
In 1916 he came on to a battlefield
where more women have been slain
by the needle than in the wars l spoke
of men were slain by the sword. Elias
Howe! He could not make an Grafton.
He could not marshal host. He could
not write a constitution. But he could
contrive a sewing machine, which said
to millions of beggared, consumptive
bent over, half blinded sewing women:
eco free! Take back your health!
Recover your eyesight! Come down
out of that garnet! Go free!'
Make Good Use of Your Talent.
Is your talent that of persuasion?
Make good use of it. We all have it to
some extent, yet none Of us think of it
as a talent. But it is the mightiest of
talents. Do you know that this one
talent will fetch the world back to
God? Do you know it is the mightiest
talent of the high heavens? Do you
know that it is the one talent chiefly
employed by all the angels of God
when they descend to our world-the
talent of persuasion? Do you realize
that the rough lumber lifted into a
cross on the hill back of Jerusalem was
in persuasion as we'll as sacrifice? That
is the only. absolutely the only, persua-