Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs
In blood and sorrow dyed?
What have thy servants for their pains?"
"This only—to have tried."
These Shining Ones are on earth to serve as co-workers with the divine power; to serve through good fortune or ill fortune; through evil report or good report,—still to serve; still to follow The Gleam. These are the men who
"... make the world within their reach
Somewhat the better for their being
And gladder for their human speech."
The names of many of these heroic pioneers of Colorado may be unwritten save in the pages of the Recording Angel; but they live and are immortal in the influence they have left as a heritage to succeeding generations, in the trains of thought and purposes they initiated, and in all that potent power of generous aims and noble ideals,—for all advancing civilization rests on lofty ideals. "While the basis of civilization must be material," says the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames of Boston, "its life must be spiritual. Its end and object must be the soul, and not the body; and it will provide all best things for the body, that the soul may be worthily housed and served. The higher and chief interests of society will always be intellectual, affectional, aspirational—human and humane. The true, the beautiful, and the good—almost unknown to the barbarian, and often mocked at by the Philistines of modern society—will be sought for as men seek for gold and pearls of great price. Wealth will bring its offering to the altars of education and art and worship. Science, as it searches the worlds of matter and of mind, will find new and sacred parables and gospels of grace. Learning will be a priestess of truth. The imagination of man will wander and wander in the wide creation, free, fearless, and glad, knowing that the Father's house is everywhere, and that his child may be everywhere at home."
In many of the pioneer households of Colorado, whether those of plenty or of privation, the children had the inestimable advantage of the refined and beautiful atmosphere of a home in which high ideals and lofty devotion to intellectual progress and spiritual culture prevailed. If schools were insufficient, there were the trained educational methods of both the father and the mother under which they were reared and taught; and poverty of purse cannot greatly matter where there is no poverty of the spirit.