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Updated: May 18, 2025
The following lines are from the "Childe Harold" of Byron: "Now turning to the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle! vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp."
Perhaps he was aware of the truth; certainly the lovely descriptions he gave King Philip of the beauties of the new territory are so exaggerated that one may be pardoned for thinking him quite capable of dignifying an island by the name of continent. The inevitable quarrels with the natives, and diseases and mutinies among his crew, forced him to abandon the colony and return home.
I should explain, in this connection, that my thoughts have centered about the small town library, the library whose citizen supporters do not yet aggregate a population large enough to admit to dignifying their place of residence with the name of a city, a place, therefore, where the librarian may really be able to know every citizen of prominence, every school principal and teacher, the officers of the women's clubs, many of the mothers of the children she hopes to reach, and a very large number of the children themselves.
Could the proscribed and exiled poet, as he wandered, isolated and alone, over the vine-clad hills of Italy, and as he stopped here and there at some friendly monastery, wearied and hungry, have cast his prophetic eye down the vistas of the ages; could he have seen what honors would be bestowed upon his name, and how his poem, written in sorrow, would be scattered in joy among all nations, giving a new direction to human thought, shining as a fixed star in the realms of genius, and kindling into shining brightness what is only a reflection of its rays; yea, how it would be committed to memory in the rising universities, and be commented on by the most learned expositors in all the schools of Europe, lauded to the skies by his countrymen, received by the whole world as a unique, original, unapproachable production, suggesting grand thoughts to Milton, reappearing even in the creations of Michael Angelo, coloring art itself whenever art seeks the sublime and beautiful, inspiring all subsequent literature, dignifying the life of letters, and gilding philosophy as well as poetry with new glories, could he have seen all this, how his exultant soul would have rejoiced, even as did Abraham, when, amid the ashes of the funeral pyre he had prepared for Isaac, he saw the future glories of his descendants; or as Bacon, when, amid calumnies, he foresaw that his name and memory would be held in honor by posterity, and that his method would be received by all future philosophers as one of the priceless boons of genius to mankind!
Therefore when, in 1652, what had been known as the Nashaway Plantation was fairly named for its founder in accordance with the petition of its inhabitants, some one of influence, whether magistrate or higher official, perhaps bethought himself that no Governor of the Colony even had been so honored, and that it might be well, before dignifying this busy blacksmith so much as to name a town for him, to see if he could pass examination in the catechism deemed orthodox at that date in Massachusetts Bay.
So often the man most efficient and trusted in the especial environment of his work is the most disreputable outside it. The mere dignifying quality of labour raises his value to the nth power. In it he discovers the self-respect which, in one form or another, is absolutely necessary to the man who counts.
I made the mistake of dignifying the place with its geographical title when I innocently remarked, "Johannesburg is a live place." My companion looked at me with pity it was almost sorrow, and replied, The word Rand is Dutch for ridge or reef. Toward the middle of the eighties the first mine was discovered on what is the present site of Johannesburg.
Whether or not it is "simply for those moments' sake," our attempt must be to give "the highest quality," remember, to those "moments as they pass." And who can fail to remark the fastidious care with which Pater selects various typical interests which he deems most worthy of dignifying the moment?
Labour of all kinds is dignifying and honourable; it is the idler, above all others, who is undignified and dishonourable. "Let the working man," says Mr. Sterling, "try to connect his daily task, however mean, with the highest thoughts he can apprehend, and he thereby secures the rightfulness of his lot, and is raising his existence to his utmost good.
We smile at these Ohio pilgrims, for dignifying the hills which girt in the Marietta bottom, with the names of the seven on which Rome is said to be built for having a Campus Martius and a Sacra Via, and all that, out here among the sycamore stumps and the wild Indians.
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