The Green Forest tribune., 1912-06-07

Meador, editor Okolona Messenger, before the Arkansas Press Associa- tion at Hope, Ark, May 23, 1912) MT. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
 Blot from the memory of American citizenship the sentiment that clus- ters around the historic monuments of our earlier history, and you take from us and our posterity one of the noblest impulses to noble deeds.
 Sentiment! What would this world be without sentiment? Truly a full fillment of Byrons 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 Were chilled into selfish prayer for
 light
 Impossible to conceive of a condi- tion more awful than world without sentiment. Could you conceive of woman, devoid of sentiment? Un- 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 despot, a 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, SIT, Mir President sentiment is one of the moving forces of the universe. Sentiment is the cement that holds together the mason ny of our civic and social structures Sentiment is a part of our nature. Il is part of our being. It is the souls l impulse.
 Every child born on American soi l since the seventeenth of June, 1715 has drunk deep into his soul with his mothers milk that eternal, that everlasting, that God-given something that we call sentiment.
 What raised the obeiisk high tc 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 entertainment to those 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 l the beloved Martha lived and died i Is it the little mouldering mausoleum under the hill, where rest the remains of the once gallant chieftain of the Revolution? An, no! It is the patriot | ic sentiment of century and a guar | ter. crystalized into 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 oi those days long gone nas been burn ed into our souls.
 Arkansas has no Bunker Hill She has no Mount Vernon. But overlook 1 ing the majestic river that bears the splendid name of Arkansas stands the old statehouse at Little Rock, as l dear to the people of Arkansos as are | Bunker Hill and Mount Vernon to the people of this nation. True, the old statehouse is out of date. It has been | left far behind in the march of pro | gross. But the old statehouse repre- sents our civic attainments of fifty years ago. It serves az a basis, a view point from which to reckon our advancement.
 The old statehouse was built by ou1 fathers. Their money, their labor | their love, is in every stone of that l old building. We, Jne children oi | pioneer parents, should revere the old 1 building as we revere the memory ot our parents; we should preserve the old statehouse from decay and keep il 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 1t as will our | children and our childrens children l Time will lend sentiment and enchant | ment to it's beauty. Age will increase | it's historic value. But today it is the | one great historic monument in Ark l ansas. Its walls have echoed the | speeches of all the great men of the state. In the legislative halls tho his | tory of the state has been made. As | state we lived in it Tn our infancy | We lived in 1t in our youth We have | lived in it in our manhood. It has EADM MATES