Skip to content
MRM Library
Previous sectionThe Spirit of America: A “Mormon” Political IdealNext section“Echo Canyon,” “A Glimpse of the Valley,” and “Over the Little Mountain”

Truth

Improvement Era, vol. 14, no. 9, July 1911, pp. 768 to 769

Larsen, Louis W.

768 IMPRO VEMEN T ERA. man with the will of God; who is able to estimate his country thus; who feels the patriotism that rests securely in the foundations of truth—not the truth of a day or of an age, but of eternity! How happy should he feel to know of this prophecy and of its fulfilment in his country's history! And with you, my friends, will I exclaim, "Long may this land be bright with freedom's holy light: protect us by thy might, great God, our King!" And to you, my brother, who sees merely a pleasant fiction in these words, let me say, Could your country and mine have a stronger wall of defense than a virile belief in the truth of them? If these predictions are the imaginations of a dreamer, he will dream us ioto a paradise of glory and greatness, if we but follow! You crown Washington and Lincoln and other mighty ones with the wreath of man's worship; he anoints them with the oil of prophecy, and makes them agents of the Almighty! You pedestal their statues in halls of fame; he shrines them among the stars, and makes them captains to the King of Kings! You would make our country great by its riches and resources; he would make it mighty by its virtue! You would protect it with fleets, and fortify it with cannon; he would defend it -with the favor of the Lord of Hosts! Choose ye of these, that which history in all its records of nations has approved, and you with us will recognize the genius of the Spirit of America. Pocatello, Idaho. Humility. Humility is a rare virtue. If one is rich he is apt to be proud of his riches; if he has distinguished ancestry, he is apt to be proud of his lineage; if he is well educated, he is apt to be proud of his learning. Someone has suggested that if one becomes humble, he soon becomes proud of his humility. Christ, however, possessed of all powers, was the very personification of humility.—William Jennings Bryan, the Prince of Peace.

ECHO CANYON, The Gateway of Utah. Who of all those that in the Pioneer Days traversed Echo Canyon in an ox-team will forget the place? Who will forget the shouting, the cracking of whips, the wild halloes, or the pistol shots that resounded along the line ? Who will forget the echoes, all confused by the multitude of sounds, and passing through each other, flying from cliff to cliff and up in the shaggy ravines, and seeming at last to come back from the sky? Slowly moved the train under the conglomerate cliffs; slowly, for half the cattle were foot-sore, and all wayweary. Wild indeed was the deep defile, the canyon, illumined by the September moon.— From "The Old Journey," by Alfred Lambourne.