The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-11-26

n asylumS have added additional glory
to the enterprise as well as the benef-
OF the American people. Vast pub
lie works have been constructed, bridges
have been built over rivers and unnel
dug under our 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 a manager we must al
ways worship him in a barn.
Growth of National Industry.
Railroads of fabulous length have been
completed, over which western trains rush
past the swift footed deer, making the
frightened birds TO dart into the heavens
at the cough Of the smoke pipes and the
savage yell OF the steam whistle. In hot
haste our national industry advances, her
breath the air of ten thousand furnaces,
her song the voice of uncounted factories,
her footstep the fash of wheel buckets
n the tread of the shaft and the stamp
OF foundries. Talk about antediluvian Ion
gevlty. L think the average Of human
life is more now than it ever was.
Through mechanical facilities men work
SO much faster and accomplish so much
more in a lifetime that a man can afford
to die now at forty as well as one of old
at 300. 1 think the average of human life
in point Of accomplishment is now equiya-
lent to about 800 years, as near rs l can
calculate it. In all our occupations and
professions we feel the effect Of a crippled
or enlarged mechanical enterprise. We
oil have stock in every house that is
builded and in every public conveyance
that is constructed and in every ship that
is sailed. When we see the hardwo-k:ng
men of the land living in comfortable
abodes, with Injuries upon their tables
that once even kings could net afford.
having the advantage of thorough educa-
ton, of accomplishment md are, we are
all ready at this season to unite WIKI
them in praise to God for lis goodness.
You shall yet see American labor risia.
up with a stronger arm and a stouter
heart and a swarthier frame. New cities
will be built. Commerce on the lakes will
take new wings. Where new stands m
broken forests great capitals Of business
and afiuence viii rise and streams that
have idled ava COCO years will be har-
messed to pondcr0us machinery and com
PEELED to toll and sweat like the Chatta-
hOochee ard the Merrimac. At one of
our great dEyGocl:s we shall yet build the
model ocean steamship. 1t will come to-
gether under the chorus Of q thousand
American hammers. She shall start amid
q great national hurrah and move far out
at sea as though an island had been un-
anchored with it's forests of masts, or as
if some one had said in Scripture phrase
unto a mountain, "Be thou cast into the
sea-" The volcano in her heart will
sprinkle on the sea q baptism Of fire, and
as she goes up the channe Of st. George,
among the shipyards of the old world and
among the wheels of Liverpool and Man
ahncfar shall h4 nnno,.aal kho .t:lI .nl
the glory Of the American hammer.
Now / come to speak of the ~conquests
of the pen. This is the symbol Of all in
t~ellectuality. The painters pencil and
the sculptor's chisel and the philosophers
laboratory are all brothers to the pen,
and therefore this may be used as a SYM
boil Of intellectual advancement. There
are those disposed to decry everything
American. Having seen Melrose and
Glastonbury by moonlight they never be-
hold among US an impressive structure;
or, having strolled through the picture
galleries of the Louvre and the Luxem-
bourg, they are Disguised with our acad-
emies 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 talking of
moonlight on castles by the sea. I think
the biggest fool in the country is the trav-
eled fool.
dvanc In
But, considering the youth of our ma
ton and the fact that comparatively few
persons devote themselves entirely to lit
e%rature, / think we have great reason to
thank God for the progress Of our Amer
lean literature. AS historians have we
not had in the past such men as Bancroft
and Prescott, as essayists Irving and
Emerson, as jurists Story and Marshall
and Kent, as theologians Edwards and
Hodge, as poets Pierrepont and Sprague
and Longfeilow and Bryant, as sculptors
Powers and Crawford and Palmer, as
painters such men as West and Cole and
and Inman and Kensett? And among
the living Americans what galaxies of in
tellectual splendor and power! Edward
Eggleston and Will Carleton and Mark
Twain and John Kendrick Bangs and
and stockton and Churchill and Hopkin-
son 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 a score of
others, some of them fixed stars and some
meteors.
AS the pen has advanced our colleges
and universities and ~observatories have
followed the waving of it's plume. Our
literature is Of two kinds-that on foot
and that on the wing. By the former l
| mean the firm and substantial works
which will go down through the centu-
ries. When, on the other hand. 1 speak
Of literature on the wing, I mean the
newspapers of the land. They fly swiftly
and vanish, but leave permanent results
upon the public mind. They fall noise
lessly as a snowflake, but with the
strength Of an Alpine glacier. This un-
paralleled multiplication Of intelligence
will either make or break US. Every
morning and evening our telegraph Of
fees, 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 a pen out Of a thunder
bolt. 1t needs great energy and decision
and perseverance for a man to be ignorant
| in this country TODAY. 1t seems tn me