The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1901-12-11

caves. ,
Praise God for the great harvests that
have been reaped this last year! Some of
them injured by drought or insects or
freshets were not as bountiful as usual,
others far in excess Of what have ever be-
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 s!aught-
left. SlSa 'n'S ''S' year, anu y. ~ "AA' Jugs
I come next to speak of the colquests
of the American hammer. Its iron arm
has fought its way down from the begin
ming to the present. Under it's 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 magnitcence and char
lots rushed out fit for the battle. Its iron
fist smote the marble of Paros, and it rose
in sculptured Mineryas. and struck the
thenon was reared whittier than palace
of ice and pure as an angels dream:
Damascus and Jerusalem and Rome and
Venice and Par,H and London and Pnila-
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, lyceur1s,, hospitals
and asylums have added additional glory
to the enterprise as well as the bene.
fcence of the American people.
Vast public works have heen construct
ed, bridges have been built over rivers
and tunnels dug under mountains and
churches of matchless beauty. have gone
up for Film 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 barn.
You shall yet see American labor rising
up with a stronger arm and stouter
heart and s-7arthier frame. New cities
will be built. Commerce on the lakes will
take new wings. Where now stand unbro:.
ken forests great capitals of business and
affluence will rise and streams that have
id,ed away 5000 years will be harnesssed
to ponderous machinery and compelled to
toll and sweat like the Chettahoochee and
tie Merrimac. At one of our great dry
docks we shall yet build the model ocean
steamship. It will come together under
the chorus Of thousand American ham,
mers. She shall start amid great ma
tional hurrah and move far out at sea as
with its forests of masts or as if some one
had said in Scripture phrase unto a
mountain, "Be thou cast into the sea-"
But. considering the youth Of our nation
and the fact that comparatively few per-
sons devote themselves entirely to litera-
ture, I think we have great reason to
thank God for the progress of our Ameri-
can 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,
IL uNI0 90
poets Pierrepont and Sprague and Long
fellow and Bryant, as scu.ptors Powers
and Crawford and Palmer, es painters
such men as West and Coie and Inman
and Kensett? And among the living
Americans what galaxies Of intellectual
splendor and power!
Edward Egglestcn and VIII Car'eton
and Mark Twain and John Kendrick
Bangs and Marion Harland and Margaret
Sangster and Stockton and Churchill and
Hopkinson Smith and Irving Bacheller and
Julia Ward Howe and Amelia Barr AID
Brander Matthews and Thomas Nelson
Page and Elizabeth, Stuart Phelps. and am
William Dean Howells and score OF 9TH
ers, some of them fixed stars and come
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-thet on foot and
that on the wing. BY the former l 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, / mean the newspapers OF the
land. They fly swiftly and vanish, but
leave permanent results upon the public
mind. They fall -noise.essly as snow
flake, 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 raEes, gather up
the rews of the nation and of the whole
world, and men write to some purpose
when they make pen out of a thunder
bolt. ,
It needs great energy and decision and
perseverance for man to be ignorant IN
this country to-day. Il seems to me that
it requires more effort for him to keep out
bags at the smallest postoices disgorge
large packages OF intelligence for the peo;;
pie. Academies with maps. globes and
philosophicN apparatus have been taking
the places of those institutions where tnir-
ty or forty years ago YOU were put to the
torture. Men selected fer their quali6ca.
tions are intrusted with the education of
our youth instead of those teachers who
formerly with a drovcr's shout md goad
compelled the young generations, up the
hill of science. Happy childhood! What
trial of losing the best marble and stump
ing your foot against stone and some
body sticking a 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 cen parse the
first page in Ycung's might Thoughts
until verbs and coniunctions and partici-
Piles and propositions get into grand riot;
How things have marvelorslv changed!
We used to cry because we had to go to
school. Now children cry if they cannot
cuss political topics long before they have
seen q ballot boz; or, taased by some poetic
muse, can compose articles for the news.
papers. Philosophy and astronomy and
chemistry have been so improved that ne
must be q genius at dullness who knows
nothing about them.
On one shelf of poor mans library is
more practical knowledge than in the AGO.,
coo volumes of ancient Alexandria. and
education is possible for the most indigent,,
and no legislature or congress for the last
fifty wears has assembled which has not
had it il rail spl:tters and farmers and
crovers or men who have been accustomed
to toiling with the hand and the foot.
The pen which Moses dipped in the
light of tic first morning, and Jeremiah
fiilel with tears, and Ezekiel thrust in VS.
ions OF fire, and Matthew touched, with
the blood OF o cross, and st: John, dipped
in the splendors of beati6c .glory-that pen
has wrought Earveis for all classes OF our
people. To-day our libraries and colleges
and schools and publishing houses and
churches celebrate the ever growing con-
quests OF the American pen, and or pros
poets are all the time Frightening.
Lift up your eyes, o nation of Gods
right hand, at the glorious prospects!
Build larger yolr barns for the harvests;
dir deeper the watts for the spoil OF the