Norfolk High School - Milestone Yearbook (Norfolk, NE)

Page 31 text:

HE MILESTONE. 27 fill up with a record for eternity, which eternity itself cannot alter. There are two light-houses standing not far apart on our Atlantic coast: one, called Cape Henry is at the entrance to Hampton Roads, and every flash of its light is like a hand of love beckoning the sailor into a safe harbor. The other, Cape Hatteras, is situated on a desolate, wave-beaten, wreck-strewn shore and the flash from its light is like a hand of woe, warning all unlucky mariners away from its dangers. And so while many lives are like the last light, monuments of warning with lessons of sadness written on their characters for others to avoid, the lives of our nation’s heroes are like the first, beckoning their countrymen onward and upward. These men have freely given their all. even their lives for their country’s welfare and should receive the glory and gratitude of her people. When the trembling nation called them they were ready and now in its prosperity it should honor the unreturning brave. May their example be made to tell on the boys of our nation who should live, if need be, to follow them. With each returning Memorial Day let us honor with our brightest garlands those who wore the blue, fought for the Union and marched to victory; nor yet forget those, who with mistaken zeal, wore the gray and just as bravely followed a losing cause. It matters little whether they rest in the great national cemetery on the battle-field of Chickamauga, or sleep in unknown graves north or south, or beneath old ocean’s waters: whether they rest where the hazy light gathers over the wood, under the whispering pines of the Carolinas; or whether soft and low the night wind waves the grass above their graves on some northern hill-top: or where the Father of Waters flows proudly to the sea. The last beam of twilight falls alike on their graves and the same starry sky over-arches all. No more will the drum-beat rouse them from slumber. The flag that rippled in the breeze is gone: hushed is the bugle sound: done is their duty.

Page 30 text:

 Our r |ation’ 5 h'jeroe . Alfred Gekeckk. At South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a shop where the steel plates are to be prepared for the ships of our navy. The foundation of the ha miner-room is laid on the bed of the Lehigh river, which was turned from its course that the ponderous anvil might rest on a sure and lasting rock. A firm masonry base is capped with iron and steel, fourteen hundred tons of solid metal in a frame, the foundations of which are clamped deep in the earth. Over this hangs the huge steel-faced hammer and during endless years with such foundations must remain unchanged, a resistless energy. So in the history of our nation the principles brought over in the May Flower are the firm foundation. The deeds of the Revolutionary heroes, the metal capped anvil, and the spirit of liberty and progress is the mighty hammer coming down through scores of years, forging future destinies with the same resistless energy by which we are acted upon to-day. Day by day this mighty force is shaping the characters of those who will take the prominent part in our nation’s history that great men passed away have taken in time gone by. It is slowly working out the great mind, calm, self-possessed, just and brave, that can lay hold of advantages and make the most of circumstances. It is steadily forming the thought that the morning of each day furnishes them with a blank leaf which they must

Page 32 text:

- 28 THE MILESTONE. When the years of earth are over and the cares of earth are done; When the reign of time is ended and eternity begun; When the thunders of omniscience on our wakened senses roll, And the sky above shall wither and lie gathered like a scroll; When among the lofty mountains and across the mighty sea. The sublime celestial bugles shall ring out the reveille, Then shall march with brightest laurelsand with proud, victorious tread. To their station up in Heaven, our Grand Army of the dead.”