The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1907-02-21
Mrs. Pinkham's Standing Invitation to Won

IIatOnlc friendship. And we have
Abigail Adams letters to her husband.
But such little scraps from the history
OF their century make us wish for SO
many more.
Now, L wish to say very earnestly to
the ladies in tWenty-three thousand four
hundred and fifty-six clubs, where this
letter will be read, that it is not as a
matter of amusement, but as a matter
of history that they ought to put on
record and keep the memoirs for the
service OF history, in the century which
is before US. The Presidents messages
will be printed, and let us say in a
whisper, that nobody will read them
The daily newspaper Will be bound; let
us say with private rejoicing that they
are all printed on pulp paper and will
be lllegible in the year 2OO6 But the
nice quarto manuscript book, half
bound in good Russia leather, which
the club in New Padua or little Gran
ford has for its records, will exist in
2006. And if the secretary, when she
reads this paper, will buy some good
black ink, such as is legible after CEN
fury, and will keep in that book the
records of this time as from month to
month she is able to put them on paper
that secretary will be blessed by men
and women yet unborn. We of to-day
know of one little speech which La
fayette made in Baltimore about the
shirts which the Baltimore ladies were
making for one regiment of the Amer
lean army in 1871. Excepting this do
not know of one word which has es-
capped hundred and thirty years as to
the work which unnumbered sewing
societies did for the army or poor Old
widows working with tallow candles in
the attics of log cabins. | cannot but
hope that among the clubs of to-day
there will prove to be girls and women
who have enough of the historical in
stinct to wish to preserve for another
century such memoirs as we do not
have of the centuries which have gone
by.
There is another special historical
duty which can always be undertaken
in an American community. 1t is the
preservation of a hundred words, more
or less, of the language of the Indians
of that region. There is a common i'm
preston that the Indian language was
one and the same for all America.
nearly hundred years ago collected
lCll vi l"CifC
entirely from each other. He did not
go much beyond the Mississippi River.
Our own generation has added thirty
or forty to the number of these differ
ent languages The dictionaries are
absolutely different. And the differ
ences of dialect, like those which part
French and Italian. The vocabulary
is different to the last word. Thus the
Six Nations, or Iroquois, had no labial
sounds, and there was not one word in
their language of which their i'm
mediate neigh6or, the Mohican, could
tell the meaning, unless he had learned
it as foreigner.
If then, you have a few struggling old
Indians who can for the moment be
made professors of language, it is a
good thing to put on paper their names
for hundred or two objects. This is
the very best key to their history and
origin.
And this backward look into old times
is one of many enterprises which
club may undertake in preserving our
history of to-day for the instruction of
tho Enf,,ra