THE PRIMITIVE PITCH.
The Rev. Myron W. Reed, a distinguished American clergyman of Denver, Colo. From an address delivered in 1892.
The best thing we can do for the world is to take care of America. Keep our country up to the primitive pitch. In front of my old home, in another city, is the largest elm in the county. It never talked, it never went about doing good. It stood there and made shade for an acre of children, and a shelter for all the birds that came. It stood there and preached strength in the air by wide-flung branches, and strength in the earth by as many and as long roots as limbs. It stood, one fearful night, the charge of a cyclone, and was serene in the March morning. It proclaimed what an elm could be. It set tree-planters to planting elms. So America preaches, man capable of self-government; preaches over the sea, a republic is safer than any kingdom. Men have outgrown kings. We shall remember Walt Whitman, if only for a line, "O America! we build for you because you build for the world."