OCR Text |
Show HEART BEATS FOR AGED "How I wish my poor' mother were here to enjoy the prosperity and the good things I now could give her," said a writer, as he recalled, through tear-blanched eyes, the vision of the long days of poverty she had borne in her life time. And many of us may have good reason to say the same thing. When we think of what the men and women of the early Utah days endured on their journey here and the struggle for existence in these valleys, it touches the very depths of our soul. It seems almost incredible that one may still touch hands and hearts with men and women who walked a thousand thous-and miles and pushed handcarts most of the way: but it is all too true. Some of them fell by the wayside; some left their loved ones in the forgotten dust; for some life's dreams fell away and many a hope was lost in the desert air. All of them went hungry, and all of them were denied most of the better things of life. They endured everything in order that there might be built here in the wilderness a civilized community com-munity whose foundations were freedom and liberty. Today, many of these men and women, now in the twilight twi-light and evening of their lives, are still with us, passing as best they can their declining days. They are asking for just a little from us not charity but something they have earned a hundred times over, with which to make the road a bit easier, the burden a little lighter. And, sad to say, there are those among us who would refuse and deny them, and who oppose the system that would take them away from drudging and slaving toil for a meagre animal existence at tasks that are not to their liking. Shame to such who, because be-cause of living in wealth and luxury, cannot sympathize with i their less fortunate fellows. |