A SONG OF THANKS,
National Congratulations for the
Achievements of Past Year.
Tlinni.NK'i v1i»b Sermon of Dr. Tnl
liinne in Which He SpenhH of
Many Marvelous C'liaugea—
Victories of Peace.
{Copyright, 1901, by Louis Kiopsch, N. Y.]
Washington, Nov. 24.
This discourse of Dr. Taimage is a
national congratulation over the
achievements of brain and hand dur
ing the past 12 months. The texts are:
I. Corinthians 9:10, “He that ploweth
should plow in hope;” Isaiah 41:7, “He
that smootheth with the hammer;”
Judges 5:14, “They that handle the
pen of the writer.”
There is a table being spread across
the top of the two great ranges of
mountains which ridge this continent,
a table which reaches from the At
lantic to the Pacific sea. It is the
Thanksgiving tabie of the nation.
They will come from the east and the
vest and the north and the south and
sit at it. On it are smoking the prod
ucts of all lands, birds of every aviary,
cattle from every pasture, fish from
every lake, feathered spoils from every
farm. The fruit baskets bend down
under the products plucked from the
peachfields of Maryland, the apple or
chards of western New York, the or
ange groves of Florida, the vineyards
of Ohio and the nuts threshed from
NewEngland woods. Thebread iswhite
from the wheat fields of Illinois and
Michigan, the banqueters are adorned
with California gold, and the table is
n-gleam with Nevada silver, and the
feast is warmed with the fire grates
heaped up with Pennsylvania coal.
The hall is spread with carpets from
Lowell mills, and at night the lights
will flash from bronzed brackets of
Philadelphia manufacture. The fin
gers of Massachusetts giris have hung
the embroidery, the music is the drum
ming of ten thousand mills, accom
panied by the shout of children let
loose for play, and the gladness of the
harvesters driving barnward the loads
of sheaves, and the thanksgivings of
the nation which crowd the celestial
pates with doxologies until the oldest
harper of Heaven cannot tell where
the terrestrial song ends and the
Celestial song begins.
» V C1UUUIC, A I III IlJtVO^ 1 V UaJ i
ever we may think of New England
theology, we all like New England
Thanksgiving day. What means the
steady rush to the depots and the long
rail trains darting their lanterns along
the tracks of the Boston & Lowell, the
Georgia Central, the Chicago Great
Western, the St. Paul & Duluth and the
Southern railway? Ask the happy
group in the New England farmhouse.
Ask the villagers whose song of praise
in the morning will come over the
Berkshire hills. Ask all the planta
tions of the south which have adopted
the New England custom of setting
apart a day of thanksgiving. Oh, it
is a great day of national festivity!
Clap your hands, ye people, and shout
aloud for joy! Through the organ
pipes let there come down the thunder
of a nation’s rejoicing! Blow the cor
net! Wave the palm branches! “Oh,
that men would praise the Lord for Ilis
Goodness and for Ilis wonderful works
to the children of men.”
Most of the implements of hus
bandry have been superseded by mod
ern inventions, but the plow has never
lost its reign. It has furrowed its way
through all the ages. Its victories have
been waved by the barley of Palestine,
| the wheat of Persia, the flax of Ger
ivi many, the rice stalks of China, the rich
| grasses of Italy. It has turned up
e the mammoth of Siberia, the mastodon
of Egypt and the pine groves of Thes
' s/. salv. Its iron foot hath marched
where Moses wrote and Homer sang
and Aristotle taught and Alexander
■ ‘ mounted his war charger. It hath
' i wrung its colter on Norwegian wilds
and ripped out the stumps of the
American forest, pushing its way
through the savannas of the Carolinas
and trembling in the grasp of the New
Hampshire yeomanry.
1 do not wonder that the Japanese
and the Chinese and the Phoenicians
so particularly extolled husbandry or
g that Cincinnatus went from the con
sulship to the plow or that Noah was a
Ms farmer before he became a shipbuilder
or that Elisha was in the field plowing
with 12 yoke of oxen when the mantle
fell on him or that the Egyptians in
.-their paganism worshiped the ox as a
tiller of their lands.
Piltheus, the king, found some rich
gold mines in his province, so he
turned all the population to digging in
the mines. Tillage was neglected, and
there came a great famine. One day
the wife of the king invited him to a
great banquet, and he came in and sat
down, and there were pieces of gold
in the shape of bread, and pieces of
gold in the shape of biscuits, and pieces
of gold in the shape of joints of meat,
and the king was disgusted, and he
said: “I cannot eat this.” “Neither
can the people,” said his wife most sug
gestWely, and then they went back to
the tillage.
Within our time the presidential
cabinet has added a secretaryship of
agriculture. Societies are constantly
beir.g established for the education
of the plow Journals devoted to this
department are circulated through
all the co'.ctry. Farmers, through
such culture, have learned the at
tributes of soils and found out that
almost every field has its peculiar
preferences. Lands have their
choice as to which product they will
bear. Marshy lowlands touched by
the plow rise and wring- out their wet
locks in the trenches. Islands born
down on the coast of Peru and Bo
livia are transported to our fields and
make our vegetables leap. Highways,
by this plow, are changed from boggy
sloughs into roads like the Iloman
Appian way. Fields go through
bloodless revolutions until there the
farmhouse stands. In summer honey
suckles clamber over the trellises. On
one side there stands a garden, which
is only a farm condensed. On the
other side there is a stretch of mead
ow land with thick grass, and, as
the wind breathes over it, it looks
like the deep green ocean waves.
There goes a brook, tarrying long in
its windings, as if loath to leave the
spot where the reeds sing and the
cattle stand at noonday under the
shadow of the weeping willows. In
winter the sled comes through the
crackling snow, with huge logs from
the woods, and the barn floor quakes
under the thumpings of the flail or
the deafening buzz of the thrashing
machine. Horses stand beneath mow
poles bending under loads of hay and
whinny to the well-filled oat bins.
Comfort laughs at the wind rattling
the sashes and clicking the icicles
from the eaves.
Praise God for the great harvests
that have been reaped this last year!
Some of them, injured by drought
or insects or freshets, were not as
bountiful as usual, others far in ex
cess of what have ever before been
gathered, while higher prices will
help make up for any decreased sup
ply. Sure signs of agricultural pros
perity we have in the fact that cat
tle and horses and sheep and swine
and all farm animals have during the
last two years increased in value.
Twenty million swine slaughtered
this last year, and yet so many hogs
left. Enormous paying off of farm
mortgages have spoiled the old
speeches of the calamity howlers. If
the ancients in their festivals pre
sented their rejoicings before Ceres,
the goddess of corn and tillage, shall
we neglect to rejoice in the pres
ence of the great God now? From
Atlantic to Pacific let the American
nation celebrate the victories of the
plow.
I come next to speak of the con
quests of the American hammer. It^
iron arm has fought its way down
from the beginning to the present.
Under its swing the city of Enoch
rose and the foundry of Tubal Cain
resounded and the ark floated on the
deluge. At its clang ancient tem
ples spread their magnificence and
chariots rushed out fit for the bat
tle. Its iron fist smote the marble
of Paros, and it rose in sculptured
Minervas and struck the Pentelican
mines until from them a Parthenon
was reared whiter than a palace of
ice and pure as an angel’s dream.
Damascus and Jerusalem and Rome
and Venice and Paris and London
and Philadelphia and New York and
Washington are but the long pro
tracted echoes of the hammer. Un
der the hammer everywhere dwell
ings have gone up. ornate and lux
urious. Schoolhouses, lyceums, hos
pitals and asylums have added addi
tional glory to the enterprise as well
as the beneficence of the American
people. Vast public works have been
constructed, bridges have been built
over rivers and tunnels dug under
our mountains, and churches of
matchless beauty have gone up for
Him who had not where to lay His
head, and the old theory is exploded
that because Christ was born in a
manger we must always worship
Ilim in a barn.
Railroads of fabulous length have
been completed, over which western
trains rush past the swift-footed deer,
making the frightened birds to dart
into the heavens at the cough of the
smoke pipes and the savage yell of
the steam whistle In hot haste our
national industry advances, her
breath the air of 10,000 furnaces, her
song the voice of uncounted fac
tories, her footstep the flash of
wheel buckets and the tread of the
shaft and the stamp of foundries.
Talk about antideluvian longevity. I
think the average of human life is
more now than it ever was. Through
mechanical facilities men work so
much faster and accomplish so much
more in a lifetime that a man can
afford to die at 40 as well as one of
old at 900. 1 think the average of hu
man life in point of accomplishment
is now equivalent to about 800 years,
as near as 1 can calculate it. In all
our occupations and professions we
feel the effect of a crippled or en
larged mechanical enterprise. We all
have stock in every house that is
builded and in every public convey
ance that is constructed and in every
ship that is sailed. When wre see
the hardworking men of the land liv
ing in comfortable abodes, with lux
uries upon their tables that once
even kings could not afford, having
the advantage of thorough education,
of accomplishment and art, we are
all ready at this season to unite with
them in praise to God for His gr od*
ness.
Now, I come to speak of the con
quests of the pen. This is the sym
bol of all intellectuality. The paint
er's pencil and the sculptor’s chisel
and the philosopher’s laboratory are
all brothers to the pen. and there
fore this may be used as a symbol
of intellectual adva cement. There
are those disposed to decry every
thing- American. Having seen Mel
rose and Glastonbury by moonlight,
they never behold among us an im
pressive structure; or, having strolled
through the picture galleries of the
Louvre and the Luxembourg, they
are disgusted with our academies of
art. It makes me sick to hear these
people who have been to Europe come
home talking with a foreign accent
and aping foreign customs and talk
ing of moonlight on castles by the
sea. I think the biggest fool in the
country is the traveled fool.
Hut. considering the youth of our
nation and the fact that compara
tively few persons devote themselves
entirely to literature, I think we
have great reason to thank God for
the progress of our American litera
ture. As historians have we not had
in the past such men as Bancroft
and Prescott, as essayists Irving and
Emerson, as jurists Story and Mar
shall and Kent, as theologians Ed
wards and Hodge, as poets Pierre
pont and Sprague and Longfellow
and Bryant, as sculptors Powers and
such men as West, and Pole and In
Bui-ii men as u est ana i oie ana in
man and Kensett? And among the
living Americans what galaxies of in
tellectual splendor and power! Ed
ward Eggleston and Will Carleton
and Mark Twain and John Kendrick
Bangs and Marion Harland and Mar
garet Sangster and Stockton and
Churchill and Hopkinson Smith and
Irving Bacheller and Julia Ward
Howe and Amelia Barr and Bramler
Matthews and Thomas Kelson Page
and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Wil
liam Dean Howells and a score of
others, some of them fixed stars and
some meteors.
How things have marvelously
changed! We used to cry because we
had to go to school. Now children cry
if they cannot go. Many of them can
intelligently discuss political topics
long before they have seen a ballot box
or, teased by some poetic muse, can
compose articles for the newspapers.
Philosophy and astronomy and chem
istry have been so improved that he
must be a genius at dullness who
knows nothing abotit them. On one
shelf of a poor man’s library is more
practical knowledge than in the 400,
000 volumes of ancient Alexandria, and
education is possible for the most in
digent, and no legislature or congress
for the last 50 years has assembled
which has not had in it rail splitters
and farmers and drovers or men who
have been accustomed to toiling with
the hand and the foot.
The grainfields have passed their
harvests above the veto of drought and
deluge. The freight cars are not large
enough to bring down the grain to the
seaboard. The canalboats are crowd
ed with breadstuff's. Hark to the rush
ing of the wheat through the great
Chicago corn elevators! Hark to the
rolling of the hogsheads of the Cincin
nati pork packers! Enough to eat and
at low prices. Enough to wear and of
home manufacture. If some have and
some have not, then may God help
those who have to hand over to those
who have not! Clear the track for the
rail trains that rush on, bringing the
wheat and the cotton and the rice and
the barley and the oats and the hops
and the lumber and the leather and
everything for man and everything
for beast.
T i f + nn TtniM« ovnc (1 tv n 11 An F nrl’a
Jjilt up vuiii rt\ cb, uauuii ui uuu •?
right hand, at the glorious prospects!
Build larger your barns for the har
vests. Dig deeper the vats for the
spoil of the vineyards. Enlarge the
warehouses for the merchandise. Mul
tiply galleries of art for the pictures
and statues. Advance, O nation of
God’s right hand, but remember that
national wealth, if unsanctified is
sumptuous waste, is moral ruin, is
magnificent woe, is splendid rotten
ness, is gilded death. Woe to us for the
wine vats if drunkenness wallows in
them! Woe to us for the harvest if
greed sickles them! Woe to us for the
merchandise if avarice swallows it!
Woe to us for the cities if misrule
walks them! Woe to the land if God
defying crime debauches it! Our only
safety isin more Bibles, more churches,
more free schools, more good men and
more good women, more consecrated
printing presses, more of the glaribus
Gospelof the Son of God, which will yet
extirpate all wrongs and introduce ail
blessedness.
But the preachers on Thanksgiving
morning will not detain with long ser
mons their hearers from the home
group. The housekeepers will be
angry if the guests do not arrive until
the viands are cold. Set the chair* to
the table—the easy chairs for grand
father and grandmother if they are
still alive, the high chair for the
youngest, but not the least. Then put
your hand to take the full cup of
thanksgiving. Lift it and bring it to
ward your lips, your hands trembling
with emotion, and if the chalice shall
overflow and trickle a few drops on
the white cloth that covers the table
do not be disturbed, but let it suggest
to you the words of the psalmist and
lead you thankfully to say: “My cup
runneth overl”
PUZZLE PICTURE.
r
‘•WHO LEFT THOSE APPLES LYING AltOlMt SO P*
WHERE IS THE CULl'lUTf
AN AMERICAN FAIR IN LONDON
To Display Our Commercial Develop
ment to John Hull in Coro
nation Tear.
An American exhibition, covering
our products, arts, industries and in
ventions, and designed to demonstrate
the ' commercial development here in
the last few years, is to be held in the
Crystal palace, London, from May to
September next year. Edward VII. is
to be crowned king and emperor in
June, and a great gathering of Amer
icans to witness the splendid corona
tion ceremonies is expected, says the
New York Sun.
Then, American enterprise is at once
a fad and a bugbear in England just
now, and John Hull, while catering to
the pride and patriotism of his trans
atlantic guests, probably thinks that
the exhibition may be a good thiugfor
himself, since it may enable him to
pick up a few of those Yankee notions
which are playing the deuce with his
trade in the world’s markets.
Something more permanent and
more valuable than a mere exhibition
may grow out of this one. It is pro
posed to establish, in connection with
it, a commercial bureau tinder the di
rection of a committee of representa
tive American and British firms, to sup
ply “information with regard to chan
nels of trade and the placing of goods
upon the British and continental mar
kets.”
The possibilities of such a bu
reau once established are almost limit
less, and its projectors expect it to out
live the exhibition and hope great
things from it.
An advisory committee, consisting
of the officers and general committee
of the American society in London
on the one hand, and a Rritish com
mittee comprising the lord mayor of
London. Earl Grey, the earl of Crewe,
Viscount Duncannon, Sir Dudlay
Baines Fremond, Sir Douglas Fox,
past president of the Institute of
Civil Engineers; Sir Henry Irving
and Winston Churchill, M. P., on the
other, are assisting the managers of
the exhibition.
There will be departments of ma
chinery and mechanical industry, nat
ural and agricultural products, food
products, surgery and drugs, hygiene,
vehicles, lighting, heating, ventilat
ing and sanitary appliances, textiles,
fabrics and clothing; music and pho
tography; education and science;
arts, painting, sculpture, engraving,
architecture, lithography and decora
tion; a naval, military, small arms
and ammunition department and a
woman’s section. American enter
tainments will be supplied in the
theater and a leading American band
will play. The exhibition will open
on or about May 17.
The main floor of the exhibition has
been planned in a series of courts,
Egyptian. Greek, Roman, Medieval,
Renaissance and Italian. There will
also be a Byzantine court, and a
court on the model of part of the Al
hambra, and a Chinese court.
Cheer Up and Hope
to Live a Century
* By DR. CARLETON SIMON,
J; Director of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, Hundred Year Club,
;£ New York.
Here are some words of good cheer for those who want to live
as long as they can. That includes practically everyone in the world.
For every normal person wants to live as
long as possible and to preserve in old age
a sound mind in a sound body.
To begin with it is cold statistical fact
that the race is growing stronger and that
men are living longer.
The census shows that there are 40,000
people in this country who have attained
the age of 90. There are many who have
achieved a hundred. One million and a half
have attained the allotted three score and
ten—a fair proportion out of the nearly
80,000,000. Every census raises this stand
Dr. Carleton Simon.
arc! ot longevity, ine census oi xyuu is
above that of 1890, and doubtless that of
1910 will be even more gratifying.
Men are seeking for the secret of longevity as they have never
done before. The mission of the Hundred Year Club is to lead men
to the study of how to live longer, or stated otherwise, how to live
properly. Every year the struggle for existence is greater, yet we
know more of ourselves and live daily more correct lives than our
forefathers. The correct rule of daily living is getting to be a com
ponent part of every person's ordinary education.
Cities, toe, are becoming cleaner, and the country people are
learning the necessity of sanitation. Women are learning cookery,
the science of health is being taught in the schools, our clothing is
better than ever before. These things all contribute to long life.
The secret of long life?
William Cullen Bryant expressed the general truth. “It is all
summed up in a word/' said he, “and that fvord is moderation.”
Moderation in all things. That is the keystone. Moderation and
those principles which applied personally make for the preservation of
the best within us, mentally, physically, spiritually.