Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1902-08-28

expressed. | bear alone the RESPONSE
bility Of this advocacy. Neither have
/ been moved to SO speak by the fact
that ] am resident of the city of Lam
caster. The court house we are build
ing will not belong to the city, the city
cannot use it. It will belong wholly to
the county, and the glory of it will be
the courty's alone. Ispeak but words
of candor when | say that if it we're to
be built in any other place in the coun-
ty I would advocate as strongly as do
now that it should be in all respects
fifty constructed. 1t would be as much
mine elsewhere as here. My pride III
it would be the same. / speak today
not from choice. / consented to do so
with reluctance for / we'll knew that
there were many others within our
county that could deliver better ad-
dress than l. Twenty years service up
on the bench where one may not speak
without need and then only for a pur-
pose, and briefly, have untitled me for
the part of an orator, If there ever was
fitness in me- The habit Of the bench
is with me now and has impelled me
to make my discourse not purposeless,
but to have it, if it may be, help us to
a determination in uniting this corner
stone to this building that there shall
arise from it an edifice perfect in
strength and beauty; one that will be
a faultIess monument to us the build
erS.
Civilized man in all his important
acts considers the future as much or
more than the present. Cicero said:
There resides in the human breast
know not howa certain anticipation of
future ages" He who has no thought
for posterlty, who will make no sacri-
flee for those who will come after him,
who acts only for self and the present
time. his life is dead, even while he is
alive and sees. To the noble asplra-
lions to do future good and to deserve
future commentator, we owe all that
we are today. From it has sprung all
noble thoughts, all high achievement,
the works of art and the glories of
architecture all that has made for a
higher civilization. The builders of
Greece and Rome built not for their day
alone but for all time Structures they
erected more than two thousand years
ago are still glorious in their ruins.
Their present condition is less from
the ravages of time than from ruthless
war and vandal hands. They teach us
architecture, and better than history
tell us what manner of men lived in
those days. They lift up and refine all
beholders. Macaulay tells us that the
early Christian pilgrims of Britain re-
turned from Rome "with awe deeply
impressed on their half opened minds,
and told the wondering inhabitants of
the novels of London and York, that
near the grave Of ST. Peter, mighty
race, now extinct, had piled up build
ings which would never be dissolved
till the judgment day." Gibbon says
of these Britons: "Their rude enthusi-
asm broke forth in this sublime ex-
preston, GAS long as the Colosseum
stands Rome shall stand; when the Col
loseum falls, Rome shall fall; when
Rome falls the world will fall"
we SnOulO emuldCe CHe SpIIlU VI Cnooo
early builders and in erecting this
court house we should keep in mind
these words of Ruskin concerning the
erection of public edifices, "When we
build let us think that we build forever.
Let it not be for the present delight,
nor for present use alone, let 1T be such
work as our descendants will thank us
for. and let us think as we lay stone on
stone, that a time will come when those
stones will be held sacred because our
hands have touched them, and that men
will say as they look upon the labor and
wrought substance of them, "See!
This our fathers did for u.s."