The Nevada County picayune. (Prescott, Ark.) 190?-current, 1912-06-07

Mr.. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Blot from the memory of American
| citizenship the sentiment chat clus-
| tiers around the historic monuments
of our earlier history, and you take
| from us and orr posterity one of the
noblest impulses to noble deeds.
Sentiment What would this world
| be without sentiment? Truly a full
fillment of Byron's dream of darkness,
| when
"The bright sun was extinguished,
and the stars
Did wander darkling In the eternal
space,
Rayless, and painless, and the icy
earth
Swung blind and blackening in the
moonless air;
Morn came and went-and came, and
brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in their
dread
OF this their desolation; and all hearts
We're chilled into a selfish prayer for
light"
Impossible TO conceive of a condi-
ton more awful than world without
sentiment. Could you conceive of
woman, devoid of sentiment? In
thinkable What would man be with
out sentiment? Man, the builder of
empires, the weilder of power the CHI
valric protector of womanhood-man
without sentiment would be a despot,
criminal, an outcast upon the face
Of the earth, despised and loathed by
his fellow men. A citizenship without
sentiment would be as cold and cheer
less as the icy waters of the Atlantic
that swallowed up the unfortunate
victims of the Titanic.
Sentiment, Why, SIR, Mr.. President.
sentiment is one of the moving forces
of the universe. Sentiment is the
cement that holds together the mason
ry of our civic and social structures.
Sentiment is a part of our nature. 1t
is a part of our being. 1t is the souls
impulse.
Every child born on American soil
since the seventeenth of June, 1115,
has drunk deep into his soul with
his mothers milk that eternal, that
everlasting, that GCd-giyen something
that we call sentiment.
What raised the obeiisk high to
heaven above the historic battlefield
on Bunker Hill? What leads thous-
ands every year to visit the old home
stead of General Washington? What
lends enchantment to thoae historic
grounds? Is it the beautiful, undu-
lating landscape, the grassy slopes,
the forest trees. all high above the
surrounding country and overlooking
the eddies and currents of the blue
Potomac? Is it the old colonial man
sion in which George Washington and
the beloved Martha lived and died?
Is it the little Wondering mausoleum
under the hill, where rest the remains
of the once gallant chieftain of the
Revolution? All, no! 1t is the patriot
ic sentiment of century and a quar-
ter, crystalized into a vital, living,
moving force that centers in Bunker
Hill and Mount Vernon as two tangible
points from which TO View the stirring
scenes of the Revolution.
We worship at the shrine of these
historic monuments because they are
enshrouded in a mantle of enduring
sentiment. The patriotic spirit of
those days long gone mas been burn
ed into our souls.
Arkansas has no Bunker Hill. She
has no Mount Vernon. But overlook
ing the majestic river that bears the
splendid name of Arkansas stands
the old statehouse at Little Rock, as
dear to the people OF Arkansas as are
Bunker Hill and Mount Vernon to the
people of this nation. True. the old
statehouse is out OF date. II has been
left far behind in the march OF pro-
gress. But the old statehouse repre-
sents our civic attachments of fifty
years ago. 1t serves az basis,
view point from which to reckon our
advancement
The old statehouse was built by our
fathers. Their money, their labor,
their love, is in every stone OF that
old building. We, the children OF
pioneer parents, should revere the old
building as we revere the memory of
our parents: we should preserve the
old statehouse from decay and keep it
in our possession as a sacred legacy
handed down to us from our fathers
and our mothers.
No matter how much we may love
the old building We who are living to-
day do not appreciate It as will our
children and our children's children.
Time will lend sentiment and enchant-
ment to its beauty. Age will increase
its historic value. But today it is the
one great historic monument in Ark
ansas It's walls have echoed the
speeches of all the great men of the
state. In the legislative halls the his
- he -f,fo 10, 4 -.