The Falls City tribune., 1909-12-03
How Things Were Done "Out in The
Wilderness"

This old adage, maxim, or what not,
a little shelf-worn perhaps, homely as
everybody knows. is quite as apt by
way of illustration when applied to a
state, a community, a character, or
even to a human life, as to a house
in process of construction; and to
h same artificial creation, after the
finishing touches have been put up
On it. The debris, and the refuse,
with the s%caffolding and remnants of
wood and stone, sand and d%ust-heaps,
mortar beds, and such like, that MAI
the appearance of the Workman's art,
must all be removed before the house,
in all its structural beauty, can be
seen and appreciated. Between his
birth in a log cabin, in poverty and
in the deepest obscurity of western
pioneer life, to his election to the
office of chief magistrate of the
greatest nation on earth, fifty years
later, lay all those concomitant back
woods experiences for character build
ing, of farm hand, flat boat man, rail
splitter, store clerk, deputy surveyor
and country law student;-thence to
a wider field of invincible advocate
and leader of the bar, and finally to the
acknowledged leadership of a great
party, then to the house of power, de-
%vestating war, victory, death by as
sassination, and eternal fame. And
thus, the house of Lincoln in the
building, did not look like the house
of Lincoln, that was built.
The narrow. strip of country be-
tween the Alleghanys and the Allan
tic s%ea-board, occupied by the col
onies that had achieved their indie
pendence from English rule, and had
formed themselves into the United
States, did not look in 1889, when
Washington was inaugurated it's first
president, like the wide spreading ma
ton of forty-siX states, reaching from
the lakes to the Gulf and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, and thence to
the Sandwich Islands and the far
away oullotI ait u IllG
in the China seas, as it did on the
4th of March, 1909, when William II.
Taft was ~inaugurated as it's twenty
sixth president. But the house is
still a-building and what it will ulti-
mately look like, when it has grid
led the earth with a Gordon of free
republics, some other generation in
some other day will be privileged to
look upon. And SO with everything
that grows in the wide expanse of
the universe, for growth is history,
whether written in books, in the
rocks, the rivers, mountains or seas,
and history in its most comprehen-
sive sense, is Gods Divine Reyela-
ton.
The old threadbare, out-at-elboWs
saw, has peculiar application to Ne
braska, as |, and a few others have
seen it. from the day of its swad-
ding clothes. a sparse settlement
along a narrow strip OF country on
the right bank OF the Missouri to its
emergence into a strong command
ing position as a leading state in the
middle west, and all within, and less
thar the ordinary space of a human
life. The building of the moral house
of a community or a state, is of
quite as much importance, if not a
great deal more, as the building of
tho phNcico1 az. national ct r11atl1rn In
this and succeeding papers | pro-
pose to give some attention to the
ciyilizing processes, forces if you
please, that enter into the mechanism
state, for they are much alike, es-
pecially those constructed by Anglo
Saxon builders. The North american
states for three hundred years have
been the thretre of the worlds
frontier in the steady march of civil
cation westward, from the birth place
of the human race on the table lands
of Eastern Asia-the land of the Par
see-till it made the circuit of the
globe on the east coast. of that con-
tinent in the closing years of the
nineteenth Century. The pioneer
, therefore, in all times, has been the
missionary and standard bearer of
the worlds redemption from barbar-
ism and sayagry. They were the out
posts of the coming millions, and as
they laid the architrave, the building
was fashioned.
The march has not always been
uniform. 1t HAS been slow in some
places and in certain times, and phen-
ominally rapid in others. This has
often been the result of adverse cir
cumstances. All the European col
nninr In Nnrth marion mnrn get