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Page 36
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. People sometimes think
that, because our national government is called a republic, and we have
free schools and free libraries and other such free institutions, our
liberty is forever secure. Our government is indeed a wonderful
structure of political skill, and generally runs so very smoothly that
we almost think it will run of itself. Beware!
In order that the government of the nation, of the state, of the city
or the town shall be properly administered, it is necessary that every
citizen be watchful to secure the best officers for its government.
USEFUL INFORMATION
The great obelisk in Central Park, New York, is one of the most noted
monoliths in the world. It was quarried, carved and erected about the
time of Abraham, to commemorate the deeds of an ancient Pharaoh. Five
hundred years later the conquering Sesostris, the bad Pharaoh of the
Bible, carved on its surface the record of his famous reign.
Now Sesostris, or Rameses II, reigned one thousand years before the
Trojan war, so that all the symbols now seen on the obelisk were
already very old in the days of Priam, Hector and Ulysses. The Roman
poet Horace says that there were many brave men before Agamemnon, but
there was no Homer to put their valiant deeds in verse. Sesostris was
an exception. He escaped oblivion without the aid of Homer, and the
figures upon the hard granite of Cleopatra's Needle tell us even now,
after more than thirty-five centuries, of the reign of that remarkable
king.
LESSON LIII
THE SEA AND ITS USES
It is a common thing in speaking of the sea to call it "a waste of
waters." But this is a mistake. Instead of being a waste and a
desert, it keeps the earth itself from becoming a waste and a desert.
It is the world's fountain of life and health and beauty, and if it
were taken away, the grass would perish from the mountains, the forests
would crumble on the hills. Water is as indispensable to all life,
vegetable or animal, as the air itself. This element of water is
supplied entirely by the sea. The sea is the great inexhaustible
fountain which is continually pouring up into the sky precisely as many
streams, and as large, as all the rivers of the world are pouring into
the sea.
The sea is the real birthplace of the clouds and the rivers, and out of
it come all the rains and dews of heaven. Instead of being a waste and
an incumbrance, therefore, it is a vast fountain of fruitfulness, and
the nurse and mother of all the living. Out of its mighty breast come
the resources that feed and support the population of the world. We
are surrounded by the presence and bounty of the sea.
It is the sea that feeds us. It is the sea that clothes us. It cools
us with the summer cloud, and warms us with the blazing fires of
winter. We make wealth for ourselves and for our children out of its
rolling waters, though we may live a thousand leagues away from its
shore. Thus the sea, though it bears no harvest on its bosom, yet
sustains all the harvest of the world. If like a desert itself, it
makes all the other wildernesses of the earth to bud and blossom as the
rose. Though its own waters are as salt and wormwood, it makes the
clouds of heaven drop with sweetness.
The sea is a perpetual source of health to the world. Without it there
could be no drainage for the lands. It is the scavenger of the world.
The sea is also set to purify the atmosphere. Thus the sea, instead of
being a waste of waters, is the very fountain of life, health and
beauty.
LESSON LIV
WONDERLAND
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