The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1912-05-23
WALDO COUNTY TEACHERS
Hold Successful Session in Winterport


Winterport, president of the association, called
the morning session to order at 10 o'clock.
Rev. A. J. Lockhart of Winterport offered
prayer and gave cordial address of welcome
to the visiting teachers. to which Miss Caroline
W. Field of Belfast responded. The records
of the last meeting were read and approved.
After music paper, "The Teacher and the
Recitation" by Superintendent Alonzo J.
Knowlton of Belfast, was read by Principal C..
W. Proctor of the Belfast High school in the
absence of Mr.. Knowlton. The paper, by re-
quest, will be printed in full in our next issue
Rev. Ashley A. Smith of Bangor gave the
following address on Stevenson, taking for
his text Rom. 8: %:
That brilliant essayist and journalist, Mr.. G.
X. Chesterton says: ''1t may not be impos-
sible, or even unusual, for man to lie on his
back in sick bed in dark room and be an
optimst. But it is very unusual indeed for a
man to lie on his back on sick bed in dark
room and be a reasonable optimist. Reasonable
optimst; could two words better express the
spirit of Stevenson and of the great les
sons of his life? Now there is plenty of that
somewhat unreasonable optimism which we
sometimes find in Browning and which caused
Matthew Arnold to remark, that he "would
like him better if his optimism wasn't so de-
pressing" Stevenson did not forget or ignore
all the darkness and difficulty of life, its sor-
row and blood and pain. Sydney Smith the un-
reasonable optimist resolutey refuses to think
of these things; a more common optimist still
admits them and asserts that life is good and
glorious and well worth the living in spite of
them, but the best optimism is that reasonable
kind, which, like Stevenson's, finds life good,
glorious, and worth the living because of them.
They add kind of spur and zest and chal
lenge to life. Thus the darkness and difficulty
of life become vital part of the hopeful
spirit, of the tap-roots of optimism.
Stevenson said that "this planet on which we
live is more drenched with blood than pirate
ship" and yet he believed in what he some-
where calls "the ultimate decency of things"
and he probably meant by that what the great
apostle meant when he said, "that all things
work together for good" "God, in the long
run, means kindness by you" He is preach
er, in the fine true sense of that word,
with mans message, bracing us to the
virile virtues of kindness, courage. SYM
pathy, helpfulness. He is no happy. heartless
pagan singing mere Bacchanalian songs of JOY
Gus revelry. His life and his words are touch
ed by Lies sorrow. its gloom, its tragedy, but
he is not hopeless and despairing; he sings not
like James Thomson of 1.-THE City of Dread
full Night" nor like Poe chants the mournful
dirge of "Never- -Nevermore." He worked
always with the shadow of death lowering
over him. and a few months before the end
came he wrote these words to a friend. "For
fourteen years l have not had days real
health: / have wakened sick, gone to bed
weary and have done my work unf1inchingly.
have written in bed and written out of it,
written in hemorrhages, written in sickness,
written torn by coughing, written when my
head swan for weakness and for so long, it
seems to me have won my wager and received
my glove. | am better noW-have beer, light
ly speaking, since first came to the Pacific:
and still, few are the days when l am not in
some physical distress And the battle goes
on-ill or well is trif1e-so it goes. l was
made for contest, and the Powers have SO
willed that my battlefield should be this dingy,
inglorious one of the bed and medicine bottle.
At least l have not failed, but l would have
preferred place of trumpetings and the open
air over my head" African Bird. This hero
ism is lesson to our age. No story of his is
more touched with the spirit Of bravery, or
herosm than the life that he lived. He braved
the storm, faced the darkness, fought the fight,
and placed his standard on the heights. At
bottom there is a great religious faith in
life like that How easy for weighed
down with disease and torn by pain, with the
wing of death always touching him asleep or
awake, to sing the mere mourning songs of the
sentimental rhymster. He would not fill the
air with weak cries of despair or cowardly
songs of defeat. A like that 'seems to
hear a heavenly friend and thro' thick wells to
apprehend a labor working to an end"
Stevenson heard the cries of these unseen
allies, relied on the great unseen forces of
life, he yielded no inch of ground but worked
and fought till the end, when the pen fell
from his nerveless grasp by sheer exhaustion
and weakness. His courage, his indomitab-e
hope, sprang from the very difficulties of life
These were a challenge to him-to these
spectres of disease and death, he threw down
the guage of battle. His gauntlet was flung
I ~ ,f1 Il
Knight of King Arthur, he was there to do
battle for it. He walked the ways of the
Fathers world and in spite of a lifelong sick
ness, found those ways pleasantness and
peace; yes, even in his suffering and gltom
found a voice with which to sing to his fellows
and to praise his Maker; even in his weakness
found strength with which to climb the hills
of hope to rest on the heights of vision and
! behold the world bathed in the light of Eternal
| love.
| Stephenson, then preached bracing gospel
and what is better still lived it. 1t is easy
and natural for man in all the vigor of a
! splendid full-blooded, sound fibred physical
manhood to preach"th the strenuous life" as our
ex-Presdent breaches and practices it-all hon.
or to him-but itneeds the spirit of the hero, if
not indeed the martyr. to proclaim it and live
it as did Stevenson. Il should bear false wit
ness if l did not declare life happy" he once
said, and just before his death he could write
"Sick and well, have had splendid life of it. F."
There is very familiar letter which he
wrote to his mother, "A Christmas Sermon"
you remember, he calls it, in which he reveals
the real inwardness and substance of his re-
| ligious thought and belief. His mother was
always little troubled by his departure from
the old covenanting theology, but we shall see,
as we read that like many another in this last
age he faced the specters of the mind and
laid them, thus he came to find stronger
faith his own" l will make apology for
the following extended quotation because, as
you will see, it expresses in a few sentences his
faith and outlook upon life, which it would take
a long time to describe.
"1he assurance you speak. of is what we all
ought to have, and might have and should
not consent to live without. That people do
not have it more than they do is, believe,
because persons speak so much in large
drawn, theological similitudes, and won't say
out what they mean about life, and man, and
God, in fair and square human language.
wonder if you my father ever thought Of
the obscurities that lie upon human duty from
the negative form in which the Ten Command
ments are stated, or of how Christ was so con-
tinually substituting affirmations. "Thou
shalt not is but an example; "TLou shalt" is
the law of God. But what led me to the re-
mark is this: A kind of black, angry look goes
with that statement of the law of negatives
"To love ones neighbor as ones self" is Ger
tainly much harder, but states life SO much
more actively, gladly and kindly, that you can
begin to see some pleasure in it; and till you
can see pleasure in these hard choices and bit.
ter necessities, where is there any Good News
to men? 1t is much more important to dc
right than not to do wrong; further, the one is