The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1901-12-26
sAxm in praise to God for His good

sASm in praise to God for His good
ness.
Now, I come to speak of the con.
quests of the pen. This is the SYM
boil of all intellectually. The paint
er's pencil and the sculptor's chise1
and the philosophers laboratory are
all brothers to the pen, and there
fore this may be used as a symbol
of intellectual advancement. There
are those disposed to decry every
thing American. Having seen Mel
rose and Glastonbury by moonlight,
they never behold among us an inn
pressive structure; or, having strolled
through the picture galleries of the
Louvre and the Luxembourg, they
are disgusted with our academies Of
art. 1t makes me sick to hear these
people who have been to Europe come
home talking with a foreign accent
and aping foreign customs and talk
ing of moonlight on castles by the
sea. I think the biggest fool in the
country is the travelled fool.
But, considering the youth of our
nation and the fact that compara-
lively few persons devote themselves
entirely to literature, / think we
have great reason to thank God for
the progress of our American litera-
ture. AS historians have we not had
ia the past such men as Bancroft
and Prescott, as essayists Irving and
Emerson, as jurists Story and Mar
| shall and Kent, as theologians Ed
wards and Hodge, as poets Pierre
pont and Sprague and Longfellow
and Bryant, as sculptors Powers and
| such men as West and Cole and In
man and Kensett? And among the
living Americans what galaxies of in
tellectual splendor and power! Ed
ward Eggleston and Will Carleton
| and Mark Twain and John Kendrick
Bangs and Marion Harland and Mar
garet Sangster and Stockton and
| Churchill and Hopkinson Smith and
Irving Bacheller and Julia Ward
| Howe and Amelia Barr and Brander
Matthews and Thomas Nelson Page
and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Will
liam Dean Howells and score OF
others, some of them fixed stars and
some meteors.
| How things have marvelously
changed! We used to cry because we
had to go to school. Now children cry
if they cannot go. Many of them can
intelligently discuss political topics
long before they have seen ballot box
or, teased by some poetic muse, can
compose articles for the newspapers.
Philosophy and astronomy and chem
istry have been SO improved that he
must be genius at dullness who
knows nothing about them. On one
shelf of poor mans library is more
practical knowledge than in the 4OO,-
900 volumes of ancient Alexandria, and
education is possible for the most in
digent, and no legislature or congress
for the last so years has assembled
which has not had in it rail splitters
and farmers and drovers or men who
have been accustomed to toiling with
the hand and the foot.
The grainfelds have passed their
harvests above the veto of drought and
deluge. The freight cars are not large
enough to bring down the grain to the
seaboard. The canalboats are crowd
ed with breadstuffs. Hark to the rush.
ing of the wheat through the great
Chicago corn elevators! Hark to the
rolling of the hogsheads of the Cincin-
natl pork packers! Enough to eat and
at low prices. Enough to wear and Of
home manufacture. If some have ard
some have not, then may God help
those who have to hand over to those
who have not! Clear the track for the
rail trains that rush on, bringing the
wheat and the cotton and the rice and
the barley and the oats and the hops
and the lumber and the leather and
everything for man and everything
for beast.
Lift up your eyes, 0 nation of Gods
/ right hand, at the glorious prospectsl
Build larger your barns for the har-
vests. Dig deeper the watts for the
spoil of the vineyards. Enlarge the
warehouses for the merchandise. Null
tiply galleries of art for the pictures
and statues. Advance, o nation Of
Gods right hand, but remember that
national wealth, if unsanctified iS
sumptuous waste, is moral ruin. 10
magnificent woe, is splendid rotten
ness, is gilded death. Woe to us for the
wine vats if drunkenness wallows in
them! Woe to us for the harvest il
greed sickles them! Woe to us for the
merchandise if avarice swallows it!
Woe to us for the cities if misrule
walks them! Woe to the land il God
defying crime debauches it! Our only
safetyisin more Bibles, more churches,
more free schools, more good men and
more good women, more consecrated
printing presses, more Of the glorious
Gospelof the Son of God, which will yet
extirpate all wrongs and introduce all
blessedness.
But the preachers on Thanksgiving
morning will not detain with long ser
: mons their hearers from the homo
group. The housekeepers will be
, angry if the guests do not arrive until
| the viands are cold. Set the chairs to
the table-the easy chairs for grand
father and grandmother if they ara
| | ns,n ol;ue Tho kick AZ !.