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Show The Louisiana Purchase. ,H When the papers coding Louisiana to tho H United States were signed, Mr. Livingstone, one H of the ' AnjOTloanQommiasipnors, and one who had H been urging the purchase for ten years, said; H "We have lived long, but this is the noblest H work of our whole lives. Tho treaty which we ;H have just signed has not been obtained by art JH nor dictated by force. It will change vast sol- flj itudes into flourishing districts and from this day B the United States take their pi. :e among the H powers of the first rank. The instrument which ;H we have just signed will cause no tears to be shed. H They prepare ages of happiness for innumerable :fl generations of human creatures." The old man's imagination was first class. He iH -. ' - - B was thinking that the area bought was equal to B all Europe outsfde of Russia; he probably thought B it all practically such a land as that which skirted B - each bank of the Mississippi and he spoke as B Caesar might have spoken of Gaul and Briton B when he returned from them to Rome. H He was not dreaming of a hundred but of a H thousand years. No vision of the Pike county B man ever crowned his vision; the Pike county H man with his oxen, his rod wagon filled with his H household goods and gods, the ox team, that great H pathfinder and that endurance which no lonoll- H ness ofvthe prairie, no rough path in tho hills H could daunt. He did not think of the miracles H which the steam engine was going to perform; the H steam engine, the telegraph and the perfecting H . press. HI And though he lived in an age of brave men, Hj he really knew nothing of tho dauntless spirit H that goes out against tho desert and redeems it. H : 1 It wns only a hundred and three years ago that H he was talking. We read recently of tho death H of a woman who was nine years of ago when H he wrote those words. If his spirit ever re- H turns, his and Jays and Franklin's and Jefferson's, Hj how their ghoBts must marvel at tho trarisforma- Hj tlon that has been wrought. Nothing like it has Hi ever been recorded before in all the records of H time. H Still we must not forget that the purchase H was but an incident, the principles which the H . fathers wove into our government were what has H ' made the history since possible. They took the H chains away which always before had held In- H dividual exertion in leash. The changes which H have been wrought in this great west have been H chiefly due to individual exertion; the units each . H working for self but still all united for the whole, H are what have done tho work. Of course the (lis- H covery of gold in California and of silver In tho MB' desert made possible what has so swiftly fol- H . lowed. They made it possible for individuals to H work Independently; they supplied the incentive H and the security for capital to span the continent H with steel and to make a path over which civil- H ization might advance on unrivaled sandals. But H It was the Government which placed no restric- H tions upon honest endeavor. That Is what gave H . to men the courage to try the endurance to per- H : ' severe. Hj The purchase opened the field, but It was the H: spirit of free institutions that caused the wonder- H- lul unfohlment. And is it not splendid? Where Hj all was a wilderness now the morning song of H;: children singing In free schools and making as H' the hours roll on a never ending chorus from the Hp great river to the great western ocean. And such Hj work as is being wrought! In field and mine; H in rushing trains, in factory and on farm; In Hr the workshops, the respiration of steam hoisting 1 engines on the hills, the tunnel driving away to Hj, where the gnomes keep watch over their treasures Hj in the deep hills; rivers being turned to give life B, to the soil; the waters being put In harness to Hj supply power and light Livingstone in his wild- Hh est moment never dreamed of such results. And Hi it is due to the wisdom which formed a new B government of the people, by the people and for B the people and it marked the dawn of an era more H beneficent to mankind than any that has come to earth since the coming of the Messiah. |