Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
History
Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
African American orators; African Americans -- History -- Sources; Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- African American authors
His was a pure and tender-hearted nature, full of humanity and sympathy,
modest as a maiden, unconscious of his own greatness, with the
simplicity we have noted before, the simplicity of the truly great. His
soul could be touched to its depths by the atrocities of the Arab
slave-traders, yet he forgot his own sufferings in the desire to make
others immune from suffering. He had but one rule of life, that which he
gave to the Scotch school children, whom he once addressed:
"Fear God and work hard!"
* * * * *
It is one hundred years since this quiet, high-souled man was given the
world, in the little Scotch village, and yet another hundred may pass
away and still his life will be as a clarion call to the youth of the
world to emulate his manhood. For the world needs men now, as it never
needed them before,
"Men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest brake or den, as beasts excel cold rocks and rambles rude."
Such a man was Livingstone, not afraid to be meek in order to be great;
not afraid to "fear God and work hard;" not ashamed to stoop in order
that he might raise others to his high estate. He gave the world a
continent and a conscience; with the lavishness almost of Nature herself
he bestowed cataracts and rivers, lakes and mountains, forests and
valleys, upon his native land. He stirred the soul of the civilized
world to the atrocities of the slave trade, and he made it realize that
humanity may be found even in the breast of a savage. When he laid down
his life in the forest he loved, he laid upon the altar of humanity and
science the costliest and sweetest sacrifice that it had known for many
a weary age.
What message has this life for us to-day, we the commonplace, the
mediocre, the unknown to fame and fortune? Shall we fold our hands when
we read of such heroes and say, "Ah, yes, he could be great, but I? I am
weak and humble, I have not the opportunity?" Who was more humble than
the poor boy spinning in the cotton-mill; who was less constrained by
Fortune's frowns than the humble missionary? His life brings to us the
message of doing well with that little we have.
We cannot all be with Peary at the North Pole, nor die the death of the
hero, Scott, on the frozen Antarctic continent. It is not given to us to
be explorers; it is not given us to be pioneers; we may not discover
vast continents, name great lakes, nor gaze with wonder-stricken eyes
upon the rolling of a mighty unknown river. But to each and all of us
comes the divine opportunity to carve for himself a niche, be it ever so
tiny, in the memories of men. We can heed the admonition of Carlyle, "Be
no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even a Worldkin. Produce! Produce!
Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce
it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee, out with it then!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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