and details of robberies, murders, and domestic scandals, while, in an obscure corner, expressed in a contemptuous manner, were a dozen lines upon the magnificent oratory and supreme themes of the evening before. Is there not room for the scholar with his ideals?
Rudyard Kipling, that Englishman in a strange oriental garb, visited one of the great and prosperous cities of our country. He was met by a committee of citizens and shown the glory of the town. They gave him the height of their blocks, the cost of their palace hotels, and the extent of their stock-*yards, expecting him to express wonder and admiration. He surprised them by exclaiming, "Gentlemen, are these things so? Then, indeed, I am sorry for you;" and he called them barbarians, savages, because they gloried in their material possessions, and said nothing of the morals of the city, nothing of her great men, nothing of her government, her charities, and her art. He called them barbarians because they valued their adornments, not for the art in them, but for their cost in dollars. A lecturer not long ago said derisively that of all the Athenians who listened with rapt attention to the orations of Demosthenes, probably not one had a pin or a button for his cloak. It would be a curious problem to weigh a few orations of Demosthenes against pins and buttons. It is said of men of olden time that they conspired to build themselves up into heaven by using materials of earth, and began to erect a lofty tower, but the Almighty, seeing the futility of their endeavor, thwarted their attempt at its inception, and thus showed that men could never ascend to the heavens
