Hallowed be the spot forever,
and
Hallowed be the day--September 8, 1771!
Amen.
There have been many expositions of the fruits of the Mississippi Valley's
agriculture and manufacture and mining and thinking and teaching and
preaching and ministering, but there has been no general commemoration
with "music rich and solemn" of those who endured the "afflictions of the
wilderness," though the last of the pioneers will soon have departed to
his rest, for fourteen years ago it was officially declared that there was
no longer a frontier. But mighty columns not of man's rearing stand upon
the farther edge of that western valley, columns of rock rich with gold
and silver and every other precious metal, surmounted, some of them the
year through, with capitals of snow and lacking only the legend:
Here upon the Brink of the Plains
Which stretched away pathless, treeless, boundless,
Ended their century-long exodus
The New Children of the Wilderness,
Driven by the Hand of God
Westward and ever Westward
Till they have at last entered
Into the full Heritage of those
Who, first of Pioneers,
Traced the rivers and lakes of this Valley
Between the eternal mountains.
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