The Gavelyte, February 1909

THE (;AVELYTE, ----- - --- - ---------- only for I he s:1tisfaction of her sensuou. desires. Five centuries later Alaric with his barbarian hordes found the once imperial city an easy prey to their slaughters and victim of their plundering. Babylon, Assyria, Carthage, Rome each in turn held the at– tention of the ancient world, so America to-day now attracts the attention of the modern world. '"Westward" wrote Bishop Berkeley in the four memorable lines now engraved over the portals of the University of San Francisco . ''Westward the course of the empire takes it way. The first four acts already past The fifth shall close the drama with the day. Times noblest offspring is the la t." Those lines seemed to have been written in a flash of prophetic vision and years later Emerson wrote: - Lo! I uncovered the land, Which I hid of old tim -'S in the Wei,t As the sculptor uncovers hi."j st,1tue When he has wrought his best" But ir is for Americ.1 not to repeat these prophecies with com– placency but rather to register in heaven the vow that th ....y will be fulfilled. When the sword of Cornwallis was surrendered to Wash– ing, on some of the Americans with want of consideration began to cheer But, turning to them the noble Virginian said with fine re– buke ·'Let posterity cheer for you." ' Gentlemen", said Dean Farrar, referring to this incident ''you as the youngest of the nations_ may put your sickle into the ripened harvest of the world's experience and if you learn the Je~sons which that I evelation has to teach, posterity will raise such a cheer as shall sing through all the ages." Thus the questions arise: Shall we obey the in. truction of History? Shall we immortalize our com"Tionwealth? Shall we learn the lesson that there is divine . intervention in all thingR? Would to God we might .be seized with the same patriotic zeal as that signer of the Declar..1.tion of Independence who cried when freedom was at stake: "Tu hesitate is to consent to our own slavery." "Though these gray hairs mu t soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they descend thither at the