The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1913-09-02
THE NAN HIMSELF.
And the Important Part He Plays
in the Worlds Progress.

marvellous things are done by mach
inery, living men still are indispensa-
BILE. Beings compact of soul and
brain and heart in the serviceable
body must always be more TO the
work of the world than insensate
collections of cogwheels, or even the
fluid fire that inspires the purring
dynamo or sends a message thrilling
around the earth through the ether,
Things never yet created things.
Mind rules. The electric furnace, the
travelling crane or the steam-hammeT
nightly has its way only by kind
permission of a man. We may be de-
voured by our creature, but it is our
creature still. Behind all that is set
in. motion is the prime movershlp OF
the man himself We look on tow
cred cities" rising mountainously
skyward under blue wells of smoke
commingling with the actual clouds,
and it seems incredible that so great
and awesome an architecture could
have been upreared by man. We go
through the Culebra Cut at Panama
and the fssure in the hills is not to
be accounted for by the records OF
the steam shovels biting into the clay
embankment A bridge across
wide, deep river seems to have been
supernaturally set in place; 1t must
have been dropped there by nocturnal
magic like a palace when you rubbed
a lamp in a tale cf Arabian Nights
enchantment. The railway that
winds among the hills and over them
that finds way Where there never
was a way before-one cannot Tlsua-
lie the multitude of men who toiled
like Pyramidbuilders in the leveling
and filing. Even the buried and for
gotten cities sleeping under the sand
where the date palms and the wild
asses gave up the struggle long ago
even these had their builders who
looked about them and were swollen
with pride and bade the world look
upon the Babylon that they had
builded. Go where you will, man
was there and left footprint, though
the forest and the jungle crowded
back upon it jealousy at last, and
wiped out the smallest trace OF it.
Think of the different kinds of
men there are and the wide variation
in the mode of living! There is no
useful, gainful occupation that will
not be followed, whatever the incl
dental hardship. One man gets
through fire, another walks on ice,
another breasts the food to win the
daily bread-for others. Patient and
resolute they wait when the need is,
or they do not complain. They SUI
fer and are silent-they are abased
and they do not answer back-they
are exalted without that intoxicatlon
of the spirit which is sometimes
worse than the drunkenness OF the
body. They learn to work by teams
and companies that their strong, ad-
hesive combination may prevail; or
thew are valiant in the solitary
places. and faithful in their loneli-
ness as being forever under the
great Taskmater's eye" They do
not seek to know why they were put
on earth. They lift the heavy fardel
without inquest into the weight or the
contents. They have their work to do,
and they do it, and if it is too much
for them they would rather die be-
side it than confess. In such as these
is the stuff of heroes-and these are
a great unrecognized and even un-
numbered army. None ever came to
them distributing rewards or "a rib
bon to stick on his coat" They were
content to have done their owrk. so
we'll that it outlasted their frall
mortality
"Glad did live and gladly die,
And l laid me down with will.
The world could not do without
these necessary however humble Ia
forgotten millions"
But it is always to be remembered
that if men are indispensable man
is not. The fact of death is the first
and the obvious rebuke of that pre-
sumption. 1t seems for time as
though a business or country or
world could not do without its part
ner, it's ruler, its philanthropist-
but 10! by a perpetual miracle like
the recreation of the world in spring,
a man is raised up to take the place