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Show Address by Judge C. C. Goodwin at Carson, July 4th , I (Published by request.) IT is a custom with some of our societies to hold an annual memorial service in honor of the memories of their members who have died. One feature of the services is the calling of the names of their dead and the solemnity is deepened as one name after another is slowly spoken and no reply returned. My soul has been holding that part of a memorial me-morial service over since I reached Carson. Looking Look-ing over the old scenes here "all the burial places of memory have been giving up their dead." My soul has been calling the names of the men and women whom I knew and loved here in the long ago. I wait and listen after each call, but no answer an-swer comes back through the folding doors that separate this world from the beyond. Not even the wiresless of Eternity returns an answer to my signals. I feel that I am standing between two generations: genera-tions: The one that, confident, strong and filled with hopo, has come to take .up the work and fill the places made vacant for their coming; and the other, their work finished, who have passed into the silence and the calm. These last vouchsafe me no reply, though I am sure they left the gates ajar for the coming of the few of us who remain, for I know that some of them will never be. satisfied until the old company com-pany shall have all been, gathered in. I was brooding over this last evening when 1 had the honor to be presented to your governor. gov-ernor. I hardly heard his words of generous welcome for my thoughts went instantly back to his revered re-vered father as I saw him last; so sterling a citizen; so line a gentleman; so high a soul; so devoted to duty; so generous in thought, word and deed, so brave against the buffetings of the frontier; so superb a type of the royal band that, coming here, changed the frown of the desert into smiles, drove back the desolation that nature had stationed here to guard her treasures treas-ures and from the sullen mountains brought forth enough wealth to equip an empire. Indeed, they were a royal company. They seized upon every field of endeavor, and filled it. They made the learned professions radiant with their names. I read the other day that in the bloody trenches of contending armies beyond tho sea, in the pauses of the battle's storm the books that the soldiers most read were Mark Twain's. They stormed the desert mountains and wrought more miracles in the working of mines and the reduction of ores than all the scientists of the old and new world had accomplished in five hundred previous years. Emerson said of onetype of man: "Ho conquers con-quers because his arrival alters the state of affairs." That might be said of those first comers to Nevada. They found some obstacles in their way which it seemed impossible to surmount, but they surmounted sur-mounted them. They found some problems that it seemed impossible im-possible to solve, but they solved them. And the result was that in the first few years after their coming thoy had produced something which was a leaven to tho business of tho whole republic; which gave to the men of the east, who had always al-ways been poor, the credit to make available all their latent resources, and at the same time electrify elec-trify the business of the world. They made clear too, that a post graduate course devoted to the study of the problems that the desert presented was, so far as bringing out all that is in the human mind, a higher course i than any taught in the schools. All the time , they performed deeds of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation that wore sub- . lime; they by stealth bestowed charities that made the angel of mercy shed tears of joy. If they had sorrows, they hid them in their own breasts and laughed a hard fortune to scorn. Their graves hallow and sanctify all the land between the Sierras and the Rockies. Not that they were all perfect. There were of course a few who were common and unclean the debris that the human tide washes up and tosses upon the shore. There are some discords in fine music, as if put there to make the succeeding suc-ceeding bars sweeter. But the great majority were superb though some were wild and extravagant extra-vagant and reckless in word and deed as men are prone to be when left to their own devices. But 1 am sure that the recording angel who watches them weighed their good deeds against their bad and in his sacred record wrote that while some of them did wrpng things, their motives were so high that God would forgive and bless them. But this is not a day that should be given to personal reminiscences, or sorrowful reflections. Rather it is a day that should be hailed with gladness, with music, with dancing flags and "All Hails" of a grateful people; for it is the anniversary anni-versary of that sacred day on which our republic repub-lic was born: tho most far-reaching event that had transpired since the anxious mariner, standing stand-ing on the deck of his little snip, in the dawn, through his tears, caught the first vision of the new world, which, under God, had been given him to discover. Indeed, in a higher sense, it was the most momentous mo-mentous event that had been inscribed on the record of the ages since that night when all the joy-bells of heaven rang out in glad acclaim, over the birth on earth of the Savior of tho children H of men. j For it meant tho dawn of full emancipation to M the souls of men, and, at last, full appreciation M and recognition of women. M It meant that the fiction that divine rights ' M hedge kings about, was to bo changed to tho M truth that tho only divinity in poor humanity must como from great hearts and inspired brains. M It meant that thenceforth all men were to M have equal opportunities under the law, that all M men, rich and poor alike, in a clear field would M be free to forge out for themselves fortunes, lion- H ored names and exalted stations. M It meant that the chains were to melt from H the wrists of every slave; that the oppressions H that wealth and power had been prono to weld H upon the necks of the poor, were all to bo broken. H It meant that free men were to frame their H own laws and choose their own servants to exe- HH cute their laws. H It meant free thought, free speech and a free H press. H It meant a right-about face and forward march H for mankind. H The fathers knew that when paganism was H banished from Europe a government of mingled H church and state was instituted which for cen- H turies because of the friction ' which that union H engendered had saturated tho soil of Europe with H blood, and so they decreed that while perfect lib- H erty should be guaranteed 'to all religions, there H should be absolute separation of church and state. H They knew that what they were doing would involve them in war with tho mightiest military H and financial power of the earth, but they ac- H cepted the ordeal with calmness and unafraid, H they had consecrated their lives, their fortunes H H |
