The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1909-06-04

For the fourth Years Work.
First Kilbourne prize Grace Adele
| Stricken.
Second Kilbourne prize Mabel
Bland.
| Presentation of Diplomas and prizes
DIR. A. B. Hughes of the board of
education.
Benediction Rev. John Wesley Pot
ter, Phi. B.
/ Music.
Hon. Theodore A. craig's address.
IN the ancient city of Shirawan, in
Persia, there stands temple dedicat-.
| ed to the fire god of Parsees. Within
its venerable walls there stood until
recently an altar, and upon the altar!
burned sacred fire. No man knows
how long the temple has stood, nor
how long the sacred fire had famed
above the altar. Tradition says that
the temple had counted thousand:
years before the Christian era began
and that the fire, constantly and
jealousy guarded by the priests of the
fire-worship. had burned continuous
ly for more than eight centuries. The
temple had become shrine towards
which many weary pilgrim of that
strange faith had wended his way,
there to offer his devotions and seek
consolation within those hallowed pre-
cincts.
During the closing hours of the
| nineteenth century, as night drew
its silent length toward the dawn, and
the worshipers were wrapped in con-
temptation of the sacred relic, the
flame began to grow strangely dim
and feeble. The attendants in fever
ish haste poured the sacred oil upon
the altar, but the flame grew DINNER
and DINNER and more family shed It's
radiance upon the anxious faces of
the devotees. Slowly and almost i'm
| perceptibly 1t sank lower and lower,
a tiny point of light lowered for a
moment above the altar and then fad
ed away. Overwhelmed by the catas-
/ trophe and dismayed by tle ill-omen,
priest and pilgrim fell upon their.
/ faces in loud lamentations and adj
dressed their supplications to their
1god. But when at last they arose. the
1 glorious dawn of new morning pour
ed a flood of light through the portals
of the temples and bathed its gray
walls in the sunshine of new day.
Since that day the temple gates
/ have been closed and, deserted alike
by priest and zealot, the dark recess
es Of tae shrine hold nothing but the
memory of discredited worship. But
without, the faces of men are turned up
ward to the glory of Gods sunlight,
which had always shone for them, but
of wilich they in their ignorance were
unmindful.
This story Of a heather temple is
symbolic of the change that in man,
ways has come over the world. The
narrowness. the ignorance and super
stition of past ages has paled before
the flood Of knowledge in which the
world is bathed as it enters upon thu
twentieth century Each generation
prides itself upon being more advanc
ed than those which have preceded it
but we today may surely be forgiven
if we believe that we live in a COLDER
age, an age that has outstripped al
others, not alone in the dissemination
of knowledge, but in the zeal and in
genuity with which knowledge is ar
piled.
The crawling stage-coach no longe
& satisfies us, but we enter luxuriousl
appointed car and are whisked ava
over a road of cleaning steel, GU
. ships no longer await the caprice &
the wind-god, but our monster vessel
dart across the deep, regardless alik
. of the storm and the calm; our ele,
trio messenger speeds along his slel
der track across the continent in
T. second of time. Tie horse is goin
out of fashion. We have the electri
:. light, the moving picture, the phon'
graph the telephone, the trolley ca
the aeroplane, and, more wonderfl
. than all, from ship afar at sea, "
= can talk to our friends on shore.
Nor is our progress evidenced in IL
mechanical arts alone. Medical Sc
ence has robbed many dread disea.
of its terrors. and is constantly d
creasing our death-rate. The chemi
has given us the anaesthetic and t.
antiseptic. The botanist has given
the seedless orange and the thornle
cactus. The astronomer turns h
spectroscope to the sun and tells
what clements comnosa IL or reach