--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Moore collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 1 number: 2 published: 1897-12 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Moore, "Two Fountains," *Improvement Era* 1, no. 2 (December 1897): 122–123.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera12unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera12unse start_page: 122 end_page: 123 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1897-12) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera12unse publication_year: 1897 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1897, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Two Fountains 122 IMPR O VEMENT ERA . "In 1626 the Dutch purchased Manhattan Island for $24. The surrounding country was not then considered worth buying. Today the value of the land and buildings of the enlarged city is not less than $4,500,000,000. This is an average of $125,000 an acre and 50 cents a square foot for the entire 360 square miles. But there are sections down on lower Broadway and on Wall Street that could not be bought for less than a thousand times that price. A workingman would need to spend the wages of twenty years for a plot large enough to give him a decent burial. The property value of this one city would buy one-third of all the farms in the United States." — Geo. B. Waldron, in McClure's Magazine. THE TWO FOUNTAINS. I saw from yonder silent cave, Two fountains running side by side; The one was Memory's limpid wave, The other cold Oblivion's tide. 'O, love!" said I, in thoughtless dream, As o'er my lips the Lethe pass'd, 'Here in this dark and chilly stream, Be all my pains forgot at last." But who could bear that gloomy blank, When joy was lost as well as pain? Quickly of Memory's fount I drank, And brought the past all back again; And said, "O, love! whate'er my lot, Still let this soul to thee be true — Rather than have one bliss forgot, Be all my pains remembered too!" Thomas Moore. GLEANINGS. ]98 GLEANINGS. Japan: The Empire of Japan is composed of four large and 3,000 small islands, forming an arc of a large circle extending from the northeast within a few miles of Kamchatka, southwest about 2,000 miles, and with Formosa, nearly 3,000 miles from the Arctic climate, to one of perpetual spring and everlasting summer. Co-operation in France: Co-operation in France has spread more in agriculture than in manufacturing and trade. Some 600,000 farmers are members of supply associations, through which they buy their fertilizers and implements from first hands, and they sell their produce in the same way. The Silent Example of Parents. — The silent example of honorable parents is immeasurably greater than that of any school, while their opportunities for individual instruction, aided by their natural affection and desire for the child's welfare, are incomparably more numerous and favorable. The parent is, or ought to be, in close personal relations with the child, such as no teacher can possibly maintain; his authority and stimulus are constant, while those of the teacher are limited, and the final appeal will always be made to him. The Moral Principle in Man. — The division of life into physical, mental, and moral is convenient for many purposes, but we sometimes strain it too far. We forget that it is a purely artificial distinction — that naturally they all merge into one another, in the existence of each individual and of every community. There is indeed one way in which this separation may be actually injurious, and that is by inducing the habit of detaching the moral nature of a man from all the rest, and regarding it as something to be developed by itself, without relation to his physical or intellectual life. If there is any truth that especially needs emphasizing it is that the moral in man is not one part of him, as a leg or an arm is one part of his body, but that it is a principle permeating every portion of his being and every moment of his life. In no way has human progress manifested itself more clearly than in its gradual recognition of this truth.