Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1901-11-29


fore been gathered, while higher prices
will help make up for any decreased sup
ply. Sure sign of agricultural prosperity
we have in the fact that cattle and horses
and sheep and swine and all farm animals
have during the last two years increased
in value Twenty million swine slaught-
cred this last year, and yet SO many hogs
left.
If the ancients in their festivals present.
ed their rejoicings before Ceres, the god
dess of corn and tillage, shall we neglect
to rejoice in the presence of the great
God now? From Atlantic to Pacific let
the American nation celebrate the victories
of the pillow.
/ come next to speak of the conquests
of the American hammer. Its iron arm
has fought its way down from the begin
ming to the present. Under its swing the
city of Enoch rose, and the foundry Of
Tubal Cain resounded, and the ark hoated
on the deluge. AT its clang ancient tenn
pies spread their magnifcence 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 mines 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 we'll 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 matchless beauty have gone
up for Him who had not where to lay
His head, and the old theory is exploded
that because Christ was born in manger
we must always worship Him in a barn.
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 score of 9TH
crs, some of them fixed stars and some
meteors.
As the pen has advanced our colleges
and universities and observatories have
followed the waving of its plume. Our lit.
erature is of two kinds-that on foot and
that on the wing. By the former | mean
the firm and substantial works which will
20 down through the centuries. When, on
the other hand, I speak of literature on
the wing, l mean the newspapers OF the
land They fly swiftly and vanish, but
leave permanent results upon the public
mind. They fall noiselessly as a snow
fake, but with the strength of an Alpine
glacier.
This unparalleled multiplication of intel
ligence will 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 pen out of thunder
bolt.
1t needs great energy and decision and
for a man to be ignorant in
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 postofices disgorge
large packages of intelligence for the PEG:
pie. Academies with maps, globes and
philosophic 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 qualifca-
tons are intrusted with the education of
our youth instead of those teachers who
with drover's shout and goad
compelled the young generations up the
hill of science. Happy childhood! What
with broken tops and torn kites and the
trial of losing the best marble and stump
ing your foot against stone and some
body sticking 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 "Night Thoughts"
until verbs and conjunctions and partici-
pies and propositions get into grand riot.
How things have marvelously changed!
We used to cry because we had to 60 to
school. Now children cry if they cannot
20. Many of them can intelligently dis
cuss political topics long before they have
seen 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 who knows
nothing about them
On one shelf of poor mans library is
more practical knowledge than in the 400,-
BOO 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
lad it in rail splitters and farmers and
Growers or men who have been accustomed
10 toiling with the hand and the foot.
Lift up your eyes, 0 nation of Gods !
light hand, at the glorious prospects!
Build larger your barns for the harvests;
Ing deeper the watts for the spoil of the |
enlarge the warehouses for the |
merchandise; multiply galleries of art for |
he pictures and statues. Advance, o ma |
ion of Gods right hand, but remember
hat national wealth, if unsanctifed, is |
waste, is moral ruin, is magniG- |
,ent woe, is splendid rottenness, is gilded |
leath! Woe to lis for the wine watts if |
drunkenness wallows in them! Woe to us
Woe to us for the merchandise if avarice |
swallows it! Woe to lis for the cities if |
nisrule walks them! Woe to the land if |
Tod defying crime debauches it! Our only
afety is in more Bibles, more churches,
more free schools, more good men and |
more good women, more consecrated print.
ng presses, more of the glorious gospel of
he Son Of God, which will yet extirpatc
II wrongs and introduce all blessedness
But the preachers OH Thanksgiving /
morning will not detain with long SER
mons their hearers from the home group.
The housekeepers will he angry if the
uests do not arrive until the viands are
old Set the chairs to the table-the easy
hairs for grandfather and grandmother,
{ they be still alive; the high chair for
he youngest, but not the least. Then put
ut your hand to take the full cup Of
Lift it and bring it toward
our lips, your hands trembling with emo
ion, and if the chalice shall overflow and
rickle few drops on the white cloth that
overs the table do not be disturbed, but
It it suggest to you the words of the
l. L I'll