“But turn to the world of nature, and think of the panoramic scenes that have passed before those now impassive eyes. In our friend’s boyhood, there was no practical mode of swift communication of news. In great emergencies, to be sure, some Paul Revere might flash his beacon light from a lofty tower; but news crept slowly over our hand-breadth nation, and it was months after a Presidential election before the result was generally known. He lived to see the telegraph flashing swiftly about the globe, annihilating time and space, and bringing the scattered nations into greater unity.

“And think, my hearers, for one moment of the wonders of electricity. Here is a power which we name, but do not know, that flashes through the sky, that shatters great trees, burns buildings, strikes men dead in the fields; and we have learned to lead it, all unseen, from our house-tops to the earth; we tame this mighty, secret, unknown power down into serving us as a daily messenger; and no man sets the limits now to the servitude that we shall yet bind it down to.

Drawn by Harry Townsend. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill.

“‘NOW, WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS, WHAT ON EARTH THERE WAS IN IT ABOUT UNCLE CAPEN?’”

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“Again, my hearers, when our friend was well advanced in life, there was still no better mode of travel between distant points than the slow, rumbling stage-coach; many who are here remember well its delays and discomforts. He saw the first tentative efforts of that mighty factor steam to transport more swiftly. He saw the first railroad built in the country; he lived to see the land covered with the iron network.

“And what a transition is this! Pause for a moment to consider it. How much does this imply? With the late improvements in agricultural machinery, with the cheapening of steel rails, the boundless prairie farms of the West are now brought into competition with the fields of Great Britain in supplying the Englishman’s table, and seem not unlikely, within this generation, to break down the aristocratic holding of land, and so perhaps to undermine aristocracy itself.”

So the preacher continued, speaking of different improvements, and lastly of the invention of daguerreotypes and photographs. He called the attention of his hearers to this almost miraculous art of indelibly fixing the expression of a countenance, and drew a lesson as to the permanent effect of our daily looks and expression on those among whom we live. He considered at length the vast amount of happiness which had been caused by bringing pictures of loved ones within the reach of all, the increase of family affection and general good feeling which must have resulted from the invention, and suggested a possible lifting of the civilization of the older nations through the constant sending home, by prosperous adopted citizens, of photographs of themselves and of their homes, and referred to the effect which that must have had in new immigration.

Finally, he adverted to the fact that the sons of the deceased, who sat before him, had not yielded to the restless spirit of adventure, but had found “no place like home.”