the pressure of moral forces, into most powerful instruments for instruction and benefit of mankind. It is probable that nothing else has contributed so much to the help of mankind in the mass, either in material or moral aspects, as rapid increase of human intercourse throughout the world. Action and reaction of peoples upon peoples, of nations upon nations, of races upon races, are continually evolving the activities and producing changes in the thought and character of all. This intercourse develops the moral forces as rapidly as the intellectual and material; it has brought all parts of the world into daily contact with each other, and each part feels the influence of all the rest. Common agents in this work are commerce in merchandise and commerce in ideas. Neither could make much progress without the other. Populations once were stagnant. Now they are stirred profoundly by all the powers of social agitation, by travel, by rapid movements of commerce by daily transmission of news of the important events of the world to every part of the world. Motion is freedom and science and wealth and moral advancement. Isolated life is rapidly disappearing; speech and writing, the treasures of the world's literature, diffused throughout the world, enlarge and expand the general mind, and show how much is contained within humanity of which men once never dreamed. In language itself there is a steady advance towards simplicity, compass, exactness and uniformity. As civilization makes progress and increases, the number of dialects diminishes, provincialisms are merged, the same tongue becomes common to a mighty people. Phases of life pass away, never to return. In the first settlement of a country the conditions of nature produce our customs, guide our industries, fix our ways of life. Later, modifications take place, fashioned on changing conditions. Oregon, long isolated, has now been caught up and is borne onward in the current of the world's thought and action. Under operation of forces that press upon us from contact with the world at large, and under the law of our own internal development, we are moving rapidly away from the old conditions. Pioneer life is now but a memory; it will soon be but a legend or tradition. Modern society has no fixity. Nothing abides in present forms. See how complete has been the transformation of New England within twenty-five years. A similar process is now in rapid movement among ourselves in the Pacific Northwest. Once we had here a little world of our own. We shall have it no more. The horizon that once was bounded by our own board enlarges to the horizon of man. John Gill CANTORI MORTUO. Swift Voices of the Night, Crying abroad through all the sleeping land: Speak to the rolling waves, Breaking in thunders on his native Coast; The building orioles sing In the long branches of his old elm trees; No more the bells of Lynn, Or billows mourning on Nantucket's shore, The River Charles flows by His loved old city, on its brimming tide Reflecting Auburn's tower, and streaming wide Under the bridge; the stately street resounds With shout and song from his old college grounds, Where youth can never die. The old clock on the stair, That marked the long, long thoughts of childhood's page, Into the Silent Land His steps have entered, where his treasures were; Peace to his soul, true kindred of their own; Never Forever! In curfewbell, in voice of summer streams, His words of love and fire shall have their part, Oh, Voices of the Night! Breathe low and sweet above that sacred mound Through woods in summer green; or mournful sound Through sighing pines, dark in Acadian snow, A requiem for the soul of Longfellow, Soared to its highest flight! |