St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1901-10-26

scribe the style Of the hat she wore,
and how did she and your great
grandfather get on in each others
companionship? Was it March wealth
er or June? Oblivion! That noun
tain surge rolls over everything.
Even the pyramids are dying. Not
a day passes but there is chiseled off
a chip of that granite. The sea is
triumphing over the land, and what
is going on at our Atlantic coast is
going on all around the world, and
the continents are crumbling into the
waves. And while this is transpiring
on the outside world, the hot chisel
of the internal fire is digging under
the foundations of the earth and cut
ting its way out toward the surface.
It surprises me to hear people say
they do not think the world will
finally be burned up when all scien-
lists will tell you that it has for ages
been on fire.
Why, there is only crust between
us and the furnaces inside raging to
get out. Oblivion! The world itself
will roll into it as easily as school
boys india rubber ball rolls down q
hill, and when our world goes it is so
interlocked by the law OF gravitation
with other worlds that they will go,
too, and SO far from having our mem
DRY perpetuated by monument OF
Aberdeen granite in this world there
is no world in sight of our strongest
telescope that will be sure pediment
for any slab of commemoration OF
the fact that we ever lived or died at
all. Our earth is struck with death.
The axletree of the consultations will
break and let down the populations
of other worlds. Stellar, lunar, solar,
mortality. Oblivion! It can swallow
and will swallow whole galaxies OF
worlds as easily as crocodile takes
down frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or
swallow everything that had better
not be removed or swallowed. The
old monster is welcome to his meal.
This world would long ago have been
overcrowded if not for the merciful
removal of nations and generations.
What if all the books had lived that
were ever written and printed and
published? The Libraries would by
their immensely have obstructed in
telligence and made all research i'm
possible. The fatal epidemic of books
was a merciful epidemic. Many OF
the state and national libraries to-
day are only morgues, in which dead
books are waiting for some one to
come and recognize them. What it all
the people that had been born were
still alive? We would have been ell
bowed by our ancestors OF ten cen
turtles ago, and people who ought to
have said their last word 5000 years
ago would snarl at us, saying: What
are you doing here?" There would
have been no room to turn around.
Some Of the past generations OF man
kind were not worth remembering.
The first useful thing that many peo-
pie did was to die, their cradle mis-
fortune and their grave boon, This
world was hardly comfortable place
to live in before the middle of the
eighteenth century. 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 forgetfulness,
are a healthful draught. The history
we have of the world in ages past is
always one-sided and cannot be de-
pended on. History is fiction illus
trated by few struggling facts.
We may build this Everlasting re-
membrance," 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 treacherous faculty which we now
call memory is in the future state to
be complete and perfect. Everlasting
remembrance" Nothing will slip the
stout grip of that celestial faculty.
Did you help a widow pay her rent?
Did you find for that man released from
prison place to get honest work? Did
you pick up child fallen on the curb
stone, and by stick OF candy put in
his hand stop the hurt on his scratched
knee? Did you assure business man
swamped by the stringency OF the
money market that times would after
awhile be better? Did you lead Mag
dalen of the street into midnight
mission, where the Lord said to her:
Neither do condemn thee. Go and
sin no more?" Did yontell man clear
discouraged in his waywardness and
hopeless and plotting suicide that for
him was near by LAYER in which he
might wash and coronet of eternal
blessedness he might wear? What are
epitaphs in graveyards, what are eulo'
gums in the presence of those whose
breath is in their nostrils, what are
unread biographies in the alcoves of a
city library, compared with the i'm
perishab.e records you have made il
the illumined memories of those t
whom you did such kindnesses? For
get them? They cannot forget them
notwithstanding all their might ane
splendor there are some things the
plorified of Heaven cannot do, and this
| IS one of them. They cannot forget ar
.4l,r, l;ndnass done They have NJ