Charles James Sprague

“ How many eyes grow dim over the faint chances of small digits, while others sparkle in the reflected light of those regal robes! Ah, my dear Madam, not only in dank forecastles, in foul taverns, in luxurious club-houses, or elegant saloons, does Fortune deal out her winning or losing cards. She spreads them before us on the green cloth of life's table, in that game which counts up its gains or losses in another world. ”

“ Shakespeare, Cæsar, Brahma, Noah, Adam, lived but yesterday compared with these creatures, whose stone-bound bones were buried in the sands that drifted on the shores of this world centuries before the first man drew into his nostrils the breath of life. Does the thought ever occur to you, that, ages hence, some enthusiastic student of nature may puzzle his brains over the bones of some such humble individuals as you and I, and wonder to what manner of creature they belonged? ”

“ When travellers over far-reaching deserts are lost in the great waste that shows no friendly, guiding sign, they sometimes find, half buried in the shifting sands, the bleaching bones of some poor creature which has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose sad remains our errant footsteps cross. ”

“ The infinite number of varied, aggregated facts stored up by man's patient study of this universe are irrelevant here, in a sketch of the progressive advance of his knowledge of creation. Those who desire to examine the evidence which has led to this verdict must go over the records themselves, or accept, out of their own convictions, the result of the examination. To entirely comprehend the Darwinian idea, one should be, to a certain extent, familiar with the principles of science. In other words, he should know more or less of what Darwin knows. ”

“ What, then, becomes of special creation of every species of animal, if man in a few years can produce a dozen forms out of one, any one of which dozen is so distinct as to be deemed a new species, were it Nature's work and not man's? The fact is thus demonstrated that animals become varied in accordance with variations in their surroundings. This simple fact, once substantiated, is the key to the whole subject. Man's influence ceases when he leaves the animal to itself. But Nature never leaves the animal to itself. ”

“ My dear Madam, down in the green fields, the flowery meadows, the deep woods, the damp swamps of the balmy South, are there not spread, to-day, in grievous numbers, the bones of the noble, true-hearted heroes who went forth in their strength and manhood to meet a patriot's fate? Will not the future tread of those they ransomed be light and buoyant in the long days of freedom yet to come? What will they know of the hallowed remains over which they bound with glowing, happy hearts? ”

“ Madam, you and I would be content to have the children of the future gambol above us, if we could know their blithesome hearts were emancipated from thraldom by such deposit of our poor bones under the verdant sod. The stateliest mausoleum of crowned kings, the Pyramids that mark the resting-place of Egypt's ancient rulers, are not so proud a monument as the rich, green herbage that springs from the remains of a fallen hero, and hides the little feet that trip over him, freed by his fall. ”

“ They had unlimited space wherein to project, backward, the structure of the universe. But this long-stretching past was to be peopled only by the lower orders of animal life. The rocks were found to be filled with stony remains of animals who perished when the sandstone, which built old crumbling castles, was sea-shore mud; the chalk hills which bore them were found to be made up of myriads of little creatures. These humble representatives of life might be, must be, credited with a remote antiquity. But man was not an animal. ”

“ And then, Madam, do not the poor bones which have been strewn, for ages, over the rolling earth, play sometimes a nobler part in their decay than in their prime? The incrusted fragments, carefully treasured up in halls of science, reveal to the broadening intelligence of man the story of earth in its young days of mighty struggle, and tell of the sandy shores, the rolling waters, the waving woods of a primeval time. ”

“ Now, opened to the eye of human thought, their crumbling forms bring tidings of a distant, wondrous past, when they were all in all of sentient life on earth. The thought they could not know, their dead remains have wakened in the minds of a far nobler race, which was not born when they lay down and died. ”

“ The five thousand years which have elapsed since the cultivated civilization of Egypt are but a day to the previous ages upon ages of man's existence before that civilization was dreamed of. The bones of untold myriads of human kind crumbled into dust before Egypt saw the rudest mud-hut that foreshadowed the temples of her prime. ”

“ Ah, Madam, let us hope that we may all play the cards which Fortune shall deal to us, so as never to lose the prize we covet! And when they are at last thrown by, and the game of life is over, may we have won those riches which neither moth nor rust will corrupt! ”

“ Castor and Pollux pitched their quoits, Damon and Pythias ran their races, Strephon and Chloë ogled and blushed, and Darby and Joan tottered hand in hand along, in olden times; and all over the world, to-day, the never-ending game of human passion is played and shared by eager, restless, trembling hearts. ”

“ Darwin's idea. A lecturer, alluding to it lately, says that it will be worthy of consideration when we see an ape turn into a man; and this is about the extent, we imagine, to which the great mass of people understand a theory which has been received as revelation by many of the first scientific men of the age,—men who have given their lives to patient, profound, untiring, unimpassioned study of nature, and who rank among the foremost thinkers of the world. ”

“ All creation, man included, was but the result of one undeviating, unceasing, eternal, all-pervading law, and the state of the universe at any given moment was the state of evolution which that universe exhibited. ”

“ Fortune rarely pursues any of us with unremitting ill-will. She sends us all court-cards, and we have only to trust on and wait for the change that is to bring, at last, success. Let us never throw up our hands in despair. Somebody—he must have been a tailor, or with sartorial proclivities—has said that there is a silver lining to every cloud. And so we all of us hold hands, which, among deuces and treys, have some court-cards. ”

“ And when the Heaven-sent moment came for the tongue to tell what the heart had so long cherished in silence, was there not a partner before you who dealt out words which filled your soul with rapture, and helped you to win the dearest prize that earth affords,—a mutual love? ”

“ Walk erect in this world with the stature and aspect of a man. Tread forth alone with fearlessness and conscious power. Bear up your God-given intelligence with unbending pride, that it may look afar over the broad expanse of nature, and gaze with even eye upon the mountain-heights of eternal truth. ”

“ It rejects utterly the idea of special creation, and maintains that the globe, as it exists to-day with all its myriad inhabitants, is only one phase of that primeval vapor which by the force of that law has reached its present state. As a little microscopic egg becomes in time a full-grown, living, breathing, loving animal by the operation of natural laws which we term growth, so has the universe, with its denizens, become what it is by the workings of Natural Law. ”

“ Not always clad in soft, warm, beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. Beauty may lure to ruin, but, the witching charm removed, decay may waken sober thought and high resolve. Poor Yorick might have set King Hamlet's table in a roar and been forgot, if, from his unknown grave, the sexton had not brought him forth, to teach an unborn age philosophy. ”

“ When all is seen to be the result of law, the idea of an Almighty author becomes irresistible, for the creation of a law for an endless series of phenomena—an act of intelligence above all else we can conceive—could have no other imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as powerfully for a sustaining as for an originating power. ”

“ In the struggle for life, the strongest live; or, in other words, those best fitted to live in the environment endure. Animals and plants produce in vast excess of the possibility of life. A destruction of life is going on to an almost incredible amount. Were this not the case, the slowest breeders in existence would soon cover the earth so as to occupy every inch of space. Darwin reckons that the elephant, the slowest breeder, if allowed to go on unchecked, and to live his allotted term of years, would in five centuries produce fifteen millions of elephants from one pair. ”

“ In the great game of life, Frank offered you his hand, and you took it. I hope it held court-cards. We are all players. The lean and sanctified bigot, who looks in holy horror on this printed pasteboard, as though it were the legitimate offspring of the Devil and Dr. Faustus, plays his own pious game at winning souls, and risks—charity. The griping money-catcher, who shudders at the thought of losing gold in spendthrift play, takes his own close and cunning game at winning wealth, and risks—esteem. ”

“ When we consider the incalculable, inconceivable lapse of time through which organic life has been swayed by the never-ceasing action of the forces around it, we can imagine what a vast variety of animal forms may have been evolved from some one primal ancestor. ”

“ Let us not then inveigh against the goddess who blindly distributes them. Be it our aim to play those well which fall to our share, and not recklessly cast them away, because we find fewer of those broad-shouldered, goggle-eyed, party-colored gentry than we hoped for. No! let us tuck them carefully away under our thumbs, and make the most of them.
Perhaps Asmodeus may have pined in grief, playing his little deuces and never winning the great stake of fame;—but who shall tell? May not his hopeful heart break forth some day with regnant power which shall bear away the prize? ”

“ The others wear a very familiar form, which belongs to our day, yet they are the exponents of a dead life which animated the buried bones of barbarism. The innocent Megatheria and Ichthyosauri crawled and paddled and died in their day; but these living fossils have the vital forms of the life above ground, while they bear within the psychical peculiarities of extinct beings. They creep about on the shores of time with the outward shapes of their fellows, and, when buried in its rising waves, will leave undistinguishable remains in their common tomb ”

“ For one which is accidentally buried so as to resist the destructive forces of air and water, millions are resolved into their primitive elements, and are annihilated as structural forms. And yet, because in portions of the vast deposits of rock the remains of certain ancient forms are discovered, it is asked that the Darwinians should furnish a perfect progressive sequence of fossils to elucidate the theory, and prove it beyond dispute. Recent discoveries have brought to light human remains in caves, where they are associated with bones of extinct animals. ”

“ As in the past they have evolved order out of disorder, heterogeneous beauty out of homogeneous crudity, progressive individuality of being and thought out of chaotic vapor, so will they continue their evolving force through all time, till the boasted perfectness of this day of ours, perfect because it is our day, will be as primitive to the later denizens of this globe as the barbarity of the cave savages is to modern civilization. ”

“ Referring to the Deity as the great motive-power of all the universe, the author says:—
"To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not diminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, but infinitely exalted. It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. ”

“ But I must have my moral, if I draw it from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and lead him to the bright oasis of eternal life and rest. ”

“ And here is perhaps the place to allude to the derisive objection to Darwinism, that it makes man an improved monkey. Darwin's theory certainly gives to both some vastly remote common ancestor; but it does not maintain the metamorphosis of one into the other. It does not suppose that man was once a gorilla. ”