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RALEIGH, N. C, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25. 1903. JOSIAH WILLIAM BAILEY, Editor. f VOLUME 68, NUMBER 38. THE SCHOLAR AND THE DREAMER IN POLITICS. A scholar is not necessarily a dreamer. Too often 'the scholar has no capacity to dream. Nor is the dreamer necessarily a scholar. Only too seldom do we find a dreamer who is a scholar. But whether scholar or dreamer or scholar and dreamer.ono has right tot be yea, in a free coun try must needs in duty be in politics, and the sneers of the bread and butter fellows tending the flocks for what they are worth will never keep the dreamer from the court of Pharoah. We do much violence by our low conceptions. We poison things with our own hands and then hold off crying "Beware !" Just so we have made politics a bad business. Why, politics is one of the highest relations. Beligion is man's relation to God. Politics is man's relation in a large sphere of his activity to his fellow man. Can that be a bad business? Can we afford to let that be a bad business? Whence this whisper, "but let us keep it out of politics, and let us keep out"? If ever scholar were needed any where it is in politics. For in what sphere is there such need of the patience, the exact knowledge and the deep wisdom of the scholar? If ever human need cried out to men, this field of politics cries out for dreamers. Is not this in Holy Writ? What is the story of the Dreamer Joseph but the record of God calling a dreamer to a post in politics? But for drfams of hotter things, how should the race march onward? And yet the bread and butter fellows the spoilsmen sneer. Well may they. They never drcam'save bad "dreams" of spoils. " They have no scholarship and no need for scholarship save that mastery of the art of getting in. Well may they slicer at the dreamer of a dream of a free coun try, well-officered and conducted for the people in stead of the politicians. Well may they Bneer at the scholar setting forth the principles of gov ernment and saving the Nation while they save thomscives. The dreamer's dreams and the sin gleness of the scholar's eye and heart bodes them no good. But what if they do sneer? In the day of the dreamer's triumph they shall scramble for the highest places at his banquet. The scholar is in all politics, and the dreamer is by his side. The two are carrying the race on their bocks and carrying it forward in spite of the self-seeking sneerers. The Scholar and the Dreamer rule the world. Every great political idea has sprung first in a scholar's brain, found voice on a scholar's lips, and had form and char acter fir3t in the dreamer's heart. Long time do they wait: much do they endure; but they ever tiiumph. The scholar produces his idea: the dreamer gets a vision of it. They make these known. The peoples awake long after scholar and dreamer have gone, and raise a great clamor for this dream. It is a demand now. It is in platforms now. The sneering bread-and-butter fellows are rolling forth great sentences about "it now. But the scholar and the dreamer are silent. Other scholars and dreamers are working at greater things, while this self -same crowd reaping the fruits of long-dead dreamer's tears sneer at the living dreamers. It is the old story of building monuments to dead prophets the while you slay the living prophets. Yes, there is room for the practical politician. God is the great Economist. ; He uses even the wrath and the foolishness of man. And by the selfishness of the practical politician He gets the scholar's idea and the dreamer's vision ' made known to the people and made real in. their gov-. eminent. Boom for the practical politician; but scant room would there be for him had there been no scholars and dreamers to make way for him. He'd be smilingly bowing to some tyrant's yoke, bending the pregnant knee in some gilded court, had not scholars thought and dreamers wrought -for him. And his children's children would lose their way and turn backward but for the thinking that the scholars are now doing and the visions that dreamers are now seeking while he runs for office with a curl on his lips for all who aspire to a nobler life. In this new land new and very young in this new and last experiment in self-government ; here in America where Anglo-Saxon and Celt and Gaul and Negro are mingled in a cosmopolitan dem ocracy ,where all things are new, where every step is a step in the dark save to one who deeply knows history and life, where there are infinite diversi ties and innumerable complexities; here in this most tremendous experiment in human history, the scholar is needed more than any other man save the dreamer, whose heart of hope, whose eye of light, whose hand that knows no fear at all nor any selfishness, is needed altogether. For famines shall yet befall Jacob; and his flocks shall not always be a multitude, nor shall his enemies flee before him. In the hour of his old age, when the days shall become evil and all manner of perplexities shall beset him, Heaven grant that close by the source of authority in our land Joseph the Dreamer who once was put away with a sneer may be found to relieve and bless. SOMEWHERE ! SOMEWHEN ! BT RKV. BATLUS CASE. There be acts that have never come out into fact, There be loftiest deeds that have never been done; The capacious of soul, who were broken and racked On the frowning adverse, ere the race was be gunf Shall the acts and the actors meet not any more? Shall the deeds and the doers be alway es tranged? Is there not a wide place? an inviting, fair shore ? Where the man and the moment shall meet, nor deplore, The evanished old order of things gone before That the faded and worthless old vesture is changed; 0, there must bel there must be, fruition for Hope I Hid away in the bosom of swift-coming years, When the able may climb up ambition's wild slope, Nor occasion the downpour of innocent tears! .0, hands unused! O, waiting men! Somewhere ! Somewhen ! There be men that are weary, so weary, with strife, There be moiling and toiling with never re ward; There be shoals of dumb toilers whose problem of life, Is the doing of tasks that are thankless and hard; Shall there be never more a surceasing from care ? Nor the blessing of respite from profitless pain? Is there no place at all in the universe, where, The a-down-bending Heaven shall hush the long prayer, That for Aeons on Aeons has voiced the despair Of those delvers, and fill them with hoping again? 0, there must be a time! O, there must be a placet Lying out in the sunlight, and throbbing with song, Where the dimn'd eye shall brighten and gladness - efface ' ; All the tokens of stressing and struggle with wrong! O, Wear Ones 1 0, moiling men I- . - Somewhere I Somewhen! I ) There be sculptors that never have modeled, a form, There be limners that never have painted a dream;1" : :!r The potential in art craft, whose souls are astorm With ideals of beauty most nobly supreme; Shall the limners and sculptors ne'er come to their own? Nor attain the applause and resounding ac claim ' ' ?v ' Of the eager, expectant, and yearning unknown; Who abide and await, without murmur or moan, Tho up-springing of seeds that were lavishly sown, 1 : In the fallow-land world, for the Harvest of Fame? O, there must be a time ! and it cometh amain When the soul of dumb, beauty shall flash into form, And the world catch at last the entrancing re frain, That announces arrival of Art's final Norm! O, Artist Souls! Unuttered menl Somewhere! Somewhen 1 , There be Arias pulsing on ears that are dumb There be grandest of poems hath never been . heard; ' , ' 5 Tho magicians of music, whose lips shall be dumb, Till unfolding Intention shall say the glad .. WOrd; ' Shall the gamuts long silent 'ne'er give up the tones Of their limitless potence of possible song? Shall those Princes of verse never come to the thrones Of their title supreme, nor fill up the wide rones Of the gladdening earth while it gleefully owns The approaching of harmonies waited for long? O, it must be a part of the dominant scheme! That, enfranchised and free as the light on the waves, Shall the song, never heard but in Prophet's wild " dream, 'sf Make the answer at last, that enlarges arid saves! O, Poets, mute! 0, rythmic men! Somewhere ! WSomjewhen I There be acts and the actors awaiting their day, There be weary and moiling Ones looking for rest, There be sculptors and limners expectant alway, There be poets and singers awaiting God's hest; Must those long-waiting souls be forever denied Tho fulfillment of hope and the meed of re nown? Shall the less be enthroned at the last in its pride, And the limitless mind cower down at its side, 1 While the impish of spirit shall jeer and deride" The undiademed great, when it fails .: of its crown? " 0, it must not be so, in the fast-coming years, Sweeping on with the guerdon for manhood un- known! It hath alway been else in the dreaming of Seers And fulfillment of Prophecy setteth her throne! O, manhood great! Ye longing men! Somewhere! Somewhen! 10,000 WHITE YOUTHS IN DANOER OP DISFRANCHISEMENTS Many of the Southern States have disqualified the negro as a voter because his illiteracy unfits" him for the exercise of the suffrage. The North Carolina school census reports of 1901-2 show there are 10,678 male white children between the ages of 12 and 21 who can not read and write. The same reports show that there are 10,246 male negro children between 12 and 21 who can not read and write. After 1908 no North Carolina man who becomes 21 years old can vote, unless he can read and write. Other1 Southern .States, .are confronted with- the dis- franchisement of a large number of prospective ' white voters on the ground of illiteracy ' Southern Education. , -, . ; Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare, . -Dryden. ' . ' ,
The Biblical Recorder (Raleigh, N.C.)
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March 25, 1903, edition 1
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