The American Union SpeakerPhilbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
General
The American Union Speaker
Philbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
Recitations
Sir, it is a solemn, a tender, and sacred duty that of education. What,
sir, feed a child's body, and let his soul hunger! pamper his limbs and
starve his faculties! Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your
droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding-places in the sea, and
spread out your wheatfields across the plain, in order to supply the wants
of that body which will soon be as cold and as senseless as the poorest
clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious
capacities for improvement, languish and pine! What! build factories, turn
in rivers upon the water-wheels, enchain the imprisoned spirits of steam,
to weave a garment for the body, and let the soul remain unadorned and
naked! What! send out your vessels to the farthest ocean, and make battle
with the monsters of the deep, in order to obtain the means of lighting up
your dwellings and workshops, and prolonging the hours of labor for the
meat that perisheth, and permit that vital spark which God has kindled,
which He has intrusted to our care, to be fanned into a bright and heavenly
flame,--permit it, I say, to languish and go out!
What considerate man can enter a school and not reflect with awe, that it
is a seminary where immortal minds are training for eternity? What parent
but is, at times, weighed down with the thought, that there must be laid
the foundations of a building which will stand, when not merely temple and
palace, but the perpetual hills and adamantine rocks on which they rest,
have melted away!--that a light may there be kindled, which will shine, not
merely when every artificial beam is extinguished, but when the affrighted
sun has fled away from the heavens! I can add nothing, sir, to this
consideration. I will only say, in conclusion, Education,--when we feed
that lamp, we perform the highest social duty! If we quench it, I know not
where (humanly speaking), for time or for eternity,--"
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can its light resume! "
E Everett.
XC.
WEBSTER'S GREATEST PARLIAMENTARY EFFORT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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