The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses
History
The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses
Libraries and society; Library science -- Social aspects
And a voice came to him, saying, "Get thee out from
thy kindred and thy father's house unto a land that I will tell thee
of"; and he followed the voice, as I did also, to the promised land;
carved out his fortune honest and fair, I say, but then could not be
content to enrich his own family alone, or, as so many do, to remember
his town in his will. He must build this noble structure, please God, in
his own lifetime, and convey it by free gift to you and yours forever;
and so the work is done, and so well done, to all seeming, that if you
care for the gift as your friend has cared for its creation, we may say,
as old Andrew Fairservice said of the cathedral in Glasgow, "Keep airn
and gunpooder aff it, and it will stand to the crack o'doom."
My friend and yours is also an Englishman and a Yorkshireman, as you
know, by birth and breeding, as I am also, and I am the more glad and
proud of what he has done for that reason; because I still love old
England with a very tender love after these forty years of absence, as I
know he does also. But I have had to notice how very many of us who came
here from England to find a home in the American republic, and it may be
make their fortune, can find nothing so good in this new world as that
they left behind them, and no matter how much wealth they may win, they
do nothing as a rule for the town they live in, like this your friend
has done in Spencer. He could not be content to be a mere exile from
England, he must be a citizen of the United States and blend his life
with the life in this new world which has made him so much more of a man
than he ever could have been had he stayed on that hill-side in old
Yorkshire. This is the true home of his heart and life, here he won his
wealth and found ample room to grow to be the man you honor, and here is
one proof among many he has given in all these years, that while he was
born in England and is proud of it, though he may not say so, he was
born again in America, and does not love the old land less but the new
land more, as every man must who comes here to share your life, if he is
worth his salt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account