OLD SETTLERS DAY 1894 PART 4

BENNETT

Posted By: Stacey McDowell Dietiker (email)
Date: 2/15/2004 at 13:17:16

Garden Grove Express
August 30, 1894
Garden Grove, Iowa

Address of Rev. G. H. BENNETT continued..

But days and months and years have rolled away and marvelous changes have
taken place. The once unbroken wilderness of the north is vanishing before the
onward march of progress, and the rolling prairies of the west are in
subjection. And now, where nature ruled in all her wild simplicity, nestle quiet homes
and villages, and the soil, obedient to the husbandman, brings forth abundant
crops of ruddy fruit and golden grain.

Arouse the fathers from their mossgrown graves; bid them come forth and
behold the conquests of the hour! Time has conquered by the hand of man! Not long
ago, I was whirled in a single night from Cleveland to central Michigan in an
elegant vestibuled train, over the same route my grandfather traveled in 1834
with an ox team, jolting six long weeks over the stumps and stones to his
journey's end.

Behold the conquests of the hour! Distance is annihilated! The message that
was carried step by step over mountain and plain, now flashes over land and
across the sea on electric wiring.

Behold the conquests of the hour! In medical science there have been leaps
of progress. The investigations of Dr. Pastuer into the silkworm malady which
threatened the extinction of the silk industries of France at one time, and
his discoveries, which Prof. HUXLEY declares were worth a thousand million of
dollars to France, led to the discovery of minute germs as inciting causes of
many of the dreaded diseases that scourge humanity, and pointed to new and
potent remedies for combating human ailments. Astounding results have been reached
in astronomy. The moon, 240,000 miles away has been brought into a field of
vision but 200 miles away so that if a building as large as our national
capitol exists there it could be distinguished. Powerful telescopes have revealed
to recent observers bright specks on the shaded side of Mars, thought by some
speculative minds to be the light of the great cities on the far-off planet.
The astronomer has cast his sounding line into the heavens and measured their
awful depths. He tells the distance of the stars. Light flashes from sun to
earth - 91,000,000 miles - in about eight minutes; from sun to Neptune, our
farthest outlying planet, in four hours, but from sun to nearest fixed star
light must onward speed for ten long years. He has spanned the visible universe
and declares its breadth 7,000,000 years as light flies. Incomprehensible
facts, but trophies of science!

But in the realms of liberal arts and manufactures, behold what conquests!
The spinning wheel, the sickle, the flint and steel, the tallow dip, the
flail, the stage coach and the sailing vessels have given place to intricate
machines, the electric light, the fast mail, and the great steamship. The man of
fifty years today is older in experience than the most venerable of the
patriarchs. This is the grandest day in the grandest decade in the grandest century
of all time. We live at the focal point of 6,000 years of labor, study,
experience and faith. Like rays from a sun glass, the knowledge of the centuries
converge upon us. It is crystallized in the literature of the age. This is the
age of printing press and books. The child of today may walk in the counsel
and experience of the best thinkers of the centuries. If you cannot go to
college, you may have a college in your own humble home. In your library you may
have the profoundest thought and may sit at the feet of the ablest
instructors of the human race.

To be Continued....

Copied by Stacey McDowell Dietiker
January 19, 2004