The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1909-02-19
is IT ALL VANITY?


Powers of Maine. a former distin-
guished member of that body.
Among others who addressed the
congress on this sad and a.iemn &C.
casion was Mr.. Edward l.. Hamilton
of Michigan. In the course of his
remarks he said;
There are waits between acts; adj
ministrations come and go; new mes
sages arrive from new presidents;
but the curtain is never finally lung
down, and when you and l behind the
veil have passed" others will crowd
upon our footsteps.
Every man arrives here more or
less a legislative experiment, and any
dream that he may have had about
his work holding his name forever
above the food of years" suffers a
change.
His identity becomes merged with
that of many others in connection
with some policy which may or may
not survive to become a part of his
tory on which the ayes and noes were
called.
Down on the avenue a blear-eyed
old man on sunshiny days sits in front
of his secondhand book store, smok-
ing his pipe, and waiting while the
feculent dust of the streets blows in,
and We go by on our way to the cap
itol on the hill to help to make more
history to be sold at secondhand.
And some men have made great
noise and vociferation here on the
hill; some have even become famous,
but the dust of the street will after
time blow over their works sold at
secondhand, just as it has blown over
the works of thousands who have
gone before them.
But the curtain is never finally
rung down here When it is. there
will be an end of popular government.
Out of the stress and rush and ri
valry of this scene Llewellyn Powers
went the way of all fesh-prince,
peasant, harlequin and sage-beckon-
ed by hooded figure in the wings.
He had finished his work. Whether
he was satisfied with it or not depends
upon his ideals.
Few men are satisfied with what
they accomplish George Frederick
Watts spoke of his paintings as only
studies for the picture that might
have been"
Bacon says:
"If man mediate much upon the
universal frame of nature, the earth
with men upon 1.-THE divineness of
the soul excepted-will not seem
much other than an ant hill, where
some ants carry corn and some carry
their young, and all go to and fro, a
little heap of dust"
Bacon's exception, 'the divineness
of the SOUL is the only element that
makes the ant heap explainable.
If the reason of life is that life shall
reproduce itself, run its short course,
and then die, then life is a tragedy,
and the greater the intelligence the
greater the tragedy.
The acquisition of knowledge, the
development of character under dis
cipline of circumstance only serve to
educate a keener consciousness of the
stinginess of happines and the opu-
lence of misery.
But the soul idea gives purpose to
existence and dignity to effort.
mo philosophy will ever satisfy
men which cannot throw a plank
across the grave"
If the hope of continued, conscious
existence after death ever fades out
of humanity, then the light will have
gone out of the world; the deepest in
spiration to right living will have
gone out of human conduct, the hu-
man existence will have become a
meaningless tragedy.
With that hope we are on a journey
toward superlative issues.
/ With that hope we are as much in
eternity now as We ever shall be, and
every day is a part of the evolution
OF a personality being trained for a
I higher destiny.
/ That hope transforms Bacon's ant
] heap and glorifies human endeavor.
Mr.. Bryce. in his American Com
monwealth, says:
Sometimes, standing in the midst
of a great American commonwealth,
one is startled by the thought of what
might befall this huge yet delicate
| fabric of laws and commerce and so
cial institutions were the foundations
ii has rested on to crumble away
Suppose that all these men ceased to
! believe there was any pOWer above