See if anything in these
degenerate days compares in vital strength and beauty with the
story of the boy that climbed the Natural Bridge, carving his steps
in the soft limestone with his pocket knife. You cannot read it
without a thrill. The same inspired hand wrote "The Blind Preacher,"
and who that ever can read it can forget the climax reached in that
sublime line: "Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ
like a god!"
Not long ago I walked among the graves in that spot opposite where
Wall Street slants away from Broadway, and my feet trod on ground
worth, in the market, more than the twenty-dollar gold pieces that
would cover it. My eye lighted upon a flaking brownstone slab,
that told me Captain Michael Cresap rested there. Captain Michael
Cresap! The intervening years all fled away before me, and once
again my boyish heart thrilled with that incomparable oration in
McGuffey's Reader, "Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."
Captain Cresap was the man that led the massacre of Logan's family.
And there was more than good literature in those Readers. There
was one piece that told about a little boy alone upon a country
road at night. The black trees groaned and waved their skinny
arms at him. The wind-torn clouds fitfully let a pale and watery
moonlight stream a little through.
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