Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1914-05-26
AN INSPIRING union
MEMORIAL SERVICE

oOA WIZ was oil AuLSlcot1AS oAO III
spring one, fully in keeping will
the day and occasion. Rev. Arthu
Metcalf delivered an appropriate
and strong sermon and the pastor
of the several churches which unitet
in the meeting took part in the ser
vice. The Congregational choru!
choir, with Miss Rosalind Cook a
the organ, furnished high-class mu
sic. Rev. Metcalf in his sermon sale
in part:
This is Memory's day. Memory is
the "recall" bugle which brings
back the long line of the forgotten
past. 1t is the attribute of deepest
significance in the personality OF
man.
f Nations as we'll as individuals are
endowed with the miracle of mem
ory. The Jew never forgot the day
he came out of bondage. Year by
year he celebrated the anniversary
of his nations birth, and every time
the Christian sits down to the COM
munion service he helps the Jew cell
ebrate the memory of his brilliant
past. The Greek never forgot the
red glory of Thermopylae. William
Tell lives in the memory of the
Swiss, eternal as the Alps whose
crags echoed his heroic deeds. AS
long as there are little brown men
in the east they will remember the
glorious day when their fleet Great
ed out of the Russian navy the most
numerous submarine fleet in the
world! This sacred memorial day is
we'll set for us on May Sabbath, for
it adds conservation and holiness
and reverence to day handed down
to us holy from the immemorial.
Greater than national memory is
the personal memory of the individ-
ual. You remember, o, you do re-
member the days of stress and storm
out of which came a new nation and
a new spirit in this New World of
the west. You remember the going
Of the boys in blue, when out of
tears and cheers came a new and an
patriotism. You remember
we'll the lists of killed and wound
ed, and how you could not read the
papers for tears, and did not care
for any other news as long as there
was to be read a line of news from
the front. How you do remember
certain particular days! The day
when you knew that he would never
come back, but would lie perhaps in
an unknown grave in the south. There
was to be a vacant chair by your
hearth. How strange and how Won
derful it is that that chair has not
remained vacant, for in it has sat
through the years a holy memory of
the dead which abides with you ev-
en- today, and which you will carry
with you out into the other world.
History will never forget the men
Of the Irrepressible Conflict. Art
ful Dodgers some of them were. We
think of Daniel Webster, the intel
[ectual prince of oratory, who with
the men of his generation dare not
face the impending issue. Genera
tions of men sought safety in COM
promise. The refusal of these men
to face the issue is a good measure
of the greatness of the problem
Then came men of another stripe.
There was John Brown, afraid neith-
ar of blood nor of death, whose soul
truly is still marching on. There
was Wendell Phillips, and William
Lloyd Garrison, and Henry Ward
Beecher who made Plymouth pulpit
the greatest speaking spot in the
world. Those days were big with
great men. There were giants in
the earth in the heroic times of the
civil war. There was Lincoln and
Grant, the army of officers and gen.
erals, and the armies of the boys in
blue who left the plow and the loom,
10 weave with the sword a new des-
:iny for the land they loved. These
all followed the fag-the standard
Washington designed for Betsy Ross
20 make, the flag the father of his|
country carried in his own hand as
he crossed the icy Delaware on the
eve of Trenton, the flash of color
lean Paul Jones nailed to the mast
lead of "Poor Richard and bore
adown the coasts of Europe as de-
lance to the foes of his people; the
symbol Farragut lifted against the
ky at New Orleans and that in a
ater day explored Manila bay with
Dewey, the flag which the United