Jason Elmer Hammond

“ Greater soldiers, more intellectual statesmen, and profounder sages have doubtless existed in the history of the English race, perhaps in our own country, but not one who, to great excellence in the threefold composition of man—the physical, intellectual and moral—has added such exalted integrity, such unaffected piety, such unsullied purity of soul, and such wondrous control of his own spirit. He illustrated and adorned the civilization of Christianity, and furnished an example of the wisdom and perfection of its teachings which the subtlest arguments of its enemies cannot impeach. ”

“ In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies or aristocracies or democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity.—Lowell. ”

“ One of the strongest cements of society is the conviction of mankind that the state of things into which they are born is a part of the order of the universe, as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go round the earth. It is a conviction that they will not surrender except on compulsion, and a wise society should look to it that this compulsion be not put upon them. For the individual man there is no radical cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils to which human nature is heir. The rule will always hold good that you must ”

“ As society is now constituted, these are in the air it breathes, in the water it drinks, in things that seem and which it has always believed to be the most innocent and healthful. The evil elements it neglects corrupt these in their springs and pollute them in their courses. ”

“ Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come. The world has outlived much and will outlive a great deal more, and men have contrived to be happy in it. ”

“ There has been no period of time in which wealth has been more sensible of its duties than now; it builds hospitals, it establishes missions among the poor, it endows schools. It is one of the advantages of accumulated wealth and of the leisure it renders possible, that people have time to think of the grants and sorrows of their fellows ”

“ Great in death;
His highest ambition,—the happiness of mankind,
His noblest victory,—the conquest of himself.
Bequeathing to posterity the inheritance of his fame.
And building his monument in the hearts of his countrymen,
He lived— the ornament of the Eighteenth Century;
He died, regretted by a mourning world.
Note—The above beautiful epitaph was discovered on the back of a portrait of Washington, sent to the family from England. It was copied from a transcript in the handwriting of Judge Washington.
MOUNT VERNON BELLS.
[Air:—Massa ’s in de Cold, Cold Ground.] ”