St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1908-09-30
The Value of Books.
Judre staffOrds rrisut.tO their Usefuins'

Sept. 81, was delivered by Judge Wen
dell p. Stafford. The address opened
with charming series of "reminiscences
of the boyhood life of the speaker. In
closing Judge Stafford paid the following
mastery tribute to books and their
value:
'He who can read and write and
cipher" said a teacher, "holds in his
hands the keys of the kingdom" And if
you will stop to think oft, is it not so?
When education has once delivered those
keys into our hands, it has thrown upon
us the responsibility of deciding whether
and what-we will possess and rule.
We may use the keys or not at our
pleasure. We may only jingle them in
mems ears We may use them to enter
some petty province. Or we may push
on our victorious invasion like Alex
ander, but with the unconcerned assur-
ance that whatever realms we rule we
shall never have cause to weep for want
of other worlds to conquer. The posi-
bilities are boundless.
To read and write and cipher. The
teacher was speaking with eyes upon
the future. He might have been speak
ing with eyes upon the past and then
those keys would have appeared to him
as trophies. the splendid symbols of
achievement, won by uncounted ages of
human effort. To read But something
must be written before there can be any
| thing to read; and so the two must have
come together, the setting down of some
sign or symbol OF thought bv one, to be
taken in and comprehended by another
By what age-long and laborious pro-
cesses was this simple fact achieved that
man could communicate his meaning to
those far distant or to those that should
come after, without the intervention of
the spoken word? In what strange and
crude attempts it had its origin; by the
piling of one rude stone upon another
to commemorate some great event,-by
the carving Of grotesque hieroglyphics
on the rocks and tombs by the draw
ing of coarse pictures on the skins OF
animals or the bark of trees. and last of
all by letters? Who is not awed when
he thinks upon it? Who wonders that
Cadmus was sometimes accounted a
godl
All that man has ever done or tried to
do. all that he has thought or dreamed
or felt, all that he has learned, by pain
full cropping, of this universal house in
which he lives, has been embedded or
enshrined in books. Whispered tradi-
tons of the antique world that fingered
in the ears of early man till he had
learned the art of writing legends hoary
with the grave dust of incalculabe time
| l.,
ness, which countless years could not
eface, of catastrophes that moved his
solid world from its foundation, del
uges that swept away his mighty tribes
like insects; simple adventures that
shook his untaught heart with fear,
when natures friendiest, most familiar
powers were weird and unexplained
when the ocean rolled an insurmountable
barrier before his feet or hid itself in
mists and awed him with the terrors of
a world unseen; vestiges of leoples that
lived and reigned and passed from sight
and left no chronicles fierce iliads of his
Ions. forgotten wars and odyssies of his
first strange wanderings around fearful
shores migrations that unpeopled con-
tinents; battles in which whole nations
disappeared; temples where unheard of
gods were worshipped; palaces and
pyramids, the homes and tombs of unre-
membered kings; traces Of mans first
weak tumbling efforts to save some frag-
ments of the wisdom he had gained for
generations that should follow myth
and memory commingled, fact and fable
interfused little by little some believable
report, some faint, far semblance of the
thing that was; and then at last the
wide unfolding regions of historic truth
For all these teachings we must go TO
books. But not for these alone The
seers and poets; those who have heard
the notes OF music from another realm
sensitive spirits, TO whom the beauty of
the world was positive pain, on whose
hearts the hills have laid the spell of
their religious silence, over whose eyes
the sea has woven the glamour and ever
changing charm of her sweet scorcery-
these have bequeathed to us their souls
in books and they TO whom the hidden
secrets of the hearts were like an open
scroll, whose intuitions touched the
source of things, whose voices so accord
ed with the song of Fate that they could
teach US all we need to know of life and
death and destiny Thank God, thank
| God for books
What possibilities Of learning and en-
lightenment will be presented in this
library! Think how many departments
| of life it will embrace. Here will be the
history of man from the first Syllable
of recorded time" What an impressive
spectacle the history of the world pre-
sents. tie mixed and wondrous pagean-
try OF human life How the contempla-
tion of it teaches us modesty in our
claims for ourselves, our country and
our time Why should we take ourselves
so seriously when ages upon ages have
passed with the same interests and hopes
as ours attended by the same sweet
joys, the same bitter ppointments?
We see at last that the world is not run
on our account, that the race is one
great living whole and we but smallest
parts of it. We find it easier to accept
the profound saying of the imperial
stole, that nothing is good for the bee
that is not good for the hive" The
study of history is not chiefly to teach
us names and dates and happenings, but
to subdue our spirits,-to lead us to
appreciate our true position in the
scheme of things. So too of science
The more we ponder its pages the more
childlike we become,-the more deeply
impressed with the inviolability of law.
We feel for ourselves the intangible
EnLe that hind causes ~ effects We