Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1914-07-25
Western Michigan.
By Lionel Heap, Grand Haven, Mich.

the West Michigan Press Association,
while enjoying their third annual out
ing at Spring Lake and Grand Ha-
ven. 1t pleased the scribes and guests
and was considered SO good we arr
printing same for the benefit of our
many readers. 1t follows:
Eve feel, gentlemen, that the honor
of entertaining you is equal with the
position of influence and responsibility
which you occupy in Western Michi-
gan. Who that pays attention to the
trend of events has not seen the
newspapers encroach on the town
crier, on the postchaise, and on the
pulpit until today it is the most au-
gust monarch in the world. So far as
il can be said of any one institution
or any one set of men, you hold the
future of Western Michigan in the
palm of your hand. In rising to tht
honor which is ours in being the re
cipients of your visit, is not the best
that we can do, to summon to our aid
that old-fashioned hospitality which
would make you feel at home.
There was a savant in the middle
ages who felt that Homer had not
done justice to the matchless beauty
Of Helen of Troy. In place of the
fleeing inuendOs of the blind poet the
savant felt that there should have
been a categorical list of her fea-
lures. He tried it and that ravishing
queen whose guilty loneliness laid
waste the house and Kingdom of
Priam became a mere grocery list. |
feel that | should occupy much the
same position did | attempt to des-
cant upon the charms and advantages
of Grand Haven and Spring Lake. If
our sand dunes and waste stretches
have not stolen upon you with wierd
disquietude like ghost from purga-
tory, if our verdure which has eaten
its realm into the surrounding desert
like a benefcence and has climbed the
sandy hills like a prayer has not
charmed you, if our water with a
purity like the beginning of things
itself, has not cleansed you of the
dross of all dust and heat Of work,
what can mere words of description
do2
l am like my friend, Mr.. Gibson, a
little bit daffy on the subject of West
ern Michigan, with a special mono
mania for Grand Haven. If you ever
happen to run across me in the Asy-
lum at Kalamazoo or Traverse City,
you will know | went there in good
cause.
Gentlemen, human endeavor is in
teresting whether it is displayed on a
huge scale or small; whether it bus
les itself in the colossal conquestS of
war and industry; or at the quiet ia
BILE Of the scientist; or yet again in
the self-sacrifcing efforts of ordinary
men and women working for the bet
terment of the common concern in the
little hamlets with which the coun-
tries of the world are dotted.
/ am not sure whether in as much
as big things are made up of smaller
components the little things are not
really more important and more
interesting than the big. After
reading novels of high life-with
what peace, with what security we
turn 20 a book like George Elliot's
"Silas Mariner" or Dickens David
CopDerfield" where commonplace
people, confronted with destiny, do
with their ordinary work-hardened
hands and their ordinary slow, limited
minds work out a solution of their
pTNnl ems and peace with God and
themselves. 1t is somewhat thus that
5,ie7F our endeavors in Western
Michigan. Not with vestige of apol-
ogy n it, but with a naughty pride, l
say TIT the genius of our work Is OF
the GSlnC. that stays near the soil; that
.tzikes one step at a time; that achieves
things noe brilliant but pregnant with
human felicity; that cannot cast one
pulsati ing human heart into the scale
En order TO raise up wealth and power
at the other end of the beam; that
abhoFs that lurid picture made up OF
the supreme heights of human sue
cess and splendor and the supreme
depths of human poverty and misery
and slnmdom; that prefers that pic
ture of fairly evenly distributed
wealth and comfort which resembles
Gods softly undulating hillocks and
meadows, sweet with the coming har-
vest.
What are our ideals in Western
Michigan? For gentlemen we must
have ideals! | was pleased recently
in reading such practical book as
Harrington Emerson's Twelve Prln-
ciples of Efficiency" to find as one OF
the twelve principles-"ldeals. A
most shrewd inclusion; If our daily
task is to amount to more than
numbing routine, if we are to mount
70 the high behests of the hidden
worth that is in US, we must make
our work such that the light of fancy
and romance may play about it, it
must be linked with great evolution,
with that purposeful progress of hui
mainly of which music and poety are
the Joyous morning song and religion
the repose of evening. When as edl-
tors, as business men, as social work
ers. as citizens, we chafe at the llmi-
tations of our work in Western Mich
igan, with its spare settlement, Its
slow growth, its dearth of those ar
fistic satisfactions which the opera
and the concert afford, its lack
of brilliant financial chances, let us
york. if we pursue it with absolute
1horoughness, not allowing ourselves
to be FASTENED or called aside by the
aIIurements of the moment, is SO tun-
damental in character as to make the
fenzied finance of the large centers
.nnear like the disjointed mutterlngs