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Show I GREAT SOULS. The last generation of great men are passing rapidly. When men like McKinley, Hanna, Vest, Hoar, Piatt, Hay and the others come to die there are great voids, and it does not seem as though their places were being filled. Perhaps it is because no great emergency has arisen of late, perhaps it is because the great corporations have lured the brightest minds away in their service, for it is expensive to live nowadays and then wealth has the call, and the estimate of men is being more and more an estimate of their wealth. But, now and then, the value of a real man is brought vividly to the consciousness of the people. This thought has intruded itself vividly I upon men's minds, since the unexpected death of Secretary Hay. Suppose the Boxer outrages had come four years sooner, what would have happened? Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia would have proceeded to partition China and to absorb it. As it was there rang out clear and incisive from Washington the demand that there should be no partition, that the indemnity China must pay ought to be but incidental, that the open door must be made sure. There was behind be-hind it the memory of what happened in Manilla Bay and off Santiago and the covetous nations unable to dispute the justice of the proposition and unwilling to risk refusal, consented. That was a new diplomacy. A real square proposition made that justice might be done. But it showed the sovereignty of a masterful intellect, moving on the lines of right. Secretary Hay was suddenly revealed re-vealed as one of the world's great diplomats and behind the diplomacy was a statemanship that arrested the attention of the world. How many more Hays could be called out in our country should the emergency present itself? After all i wealth does not count for much when great minds 1 are summoned to the fore, One sovereign hand I at the helm was enough to sway empires and the i men who uphold them. EI The youth of America should keep the lesson ffl m mind. Angels are quite as apt to seek the cabins m of the lowly as the palaces of the rich, and when they touch baby's brows and lips, that touch will be sure to materialize wherever the cradle was Young men should strive to advance, but there come times in ev;ry generation when great brains backed by honest hearts assert themselves and their achievements make mere wealth seem mean and poor. |