The Courier-Review.
31
words from the Nineveh library; a treatise upon diseases of the eye; a list of observations upon the planet Venus; an Assyrian-Elam dictionary; a list of furniture in the royal household; a report upon the building of a palace; a list of kings who had paid tribute to the empire; a tablet containing a list of the standard works in the royal library of Nineveh; a record of the eclipses of the moon; a fixing of the exact date of the vernal equinox; an address to "primitive man;"--think of that! A then ancient civilization was addressing "primitive man," just as Hood did the Mummy.
There was a letter from Sennacherib to his father; a contract between two persons agreeing upon terms of partnership, the names of the persons being Sinina and Iribamsin. This partnership was 2400 years B.C.
There was a report of progress made in copying out works for the royal library of Nineveh. Perhaps by use they needed re-copying, and this was a report.
There were vast numbers of legal documents, mortgages, promissory notes, powers of attorney, court proceedings, law proceedings, deeds that conveyed property that would be as good deeds today as then and which would convey property as well as then; loans of vast sums of money at one and two-thirds per cent.
But I cannot recapitulate them all. When we consider these old records from the libraries of Nineveh and Babylon and find that lawyers of today have nothing fundamentally new and can do no more than what was done four and six thousand years ago, we may conclude that the doctors of today can do nothing more now than then and that they have nothing very new; and that the doctor whom the king sent was as capable then as one who would be sent now. And we may imagine, then, other callings, professions and trades were equally skillful. Perhaps society had then achieved as great success as now and has taught us, their descendants, to do what we are doing now. Perhaps that great achievement and dream of statesmanship, the happiness of the people, was as well attained then as now. A Moorish lady once asked a member of the British Par
liament, who was exploring Morocco, "Are the women in your country happy?" The statesman said, "I do not know. Are they happy in Morocco?" The lady replied, "Yes, we are happy, in Morocco."
In the old days of the Nineveh Library they did not have the Winchester and the Telephone but they had courts, and government, and private rights, and protection of property. The Winchester and the Telephone have not added to our happiness. Those great libraries tell us different things than so-called "history" tells us. History is never written. Battles, cruelties, and wars are the residium, the Nile deposit, which the great waves of civilization leaves as it sweeps over empires and ages. If convulsions should today bury this great Spooner Library, this grand building, and its priceless treasures, and if, four thousand years hereafter, an archaeologist could find it and dig into it, I doubt very much if from the ruins he could reconstruct our alphabet, so much would time efface everything. We are too civilized and too ephemeral. He would find nothing but dust.
I hope, therefore, that such a convulsion will never come; and I hope, Mr. Chancellor, that your library will be destroyed by use and not covered up by devastation or war.
President A. R. Taylor of the State Normal having to catch his train, leaves the following message of congratulations: "I regret exceedingly that my train takes me away in the midst of these delightful festivities, but leave my hearty congratulations on the completion of this beautiful temple and its dedication to books, the repositories of the best thoughts and best impulses of the noblest minds of the human race! All roads lead to Rome, so all books lead to pedagogy. I hope you will bear in mind the fact that our modern civilization has been made by the pedagogue and that without him was not anything made. The bibliography of pedagogy shows that it is not one whit behind any other department of learning. There is no field in it which has not been more or less fairly covered. Out of the fifty thousand books and pamphlets of varying value on education, I hope at least a thousand may find an immediate alcove in Spooner Library. Believing that this is but the beginning of great things for K. U., and for Kansas, the State Normal leaves this greeting and blessing for its Elder-brother and its inspiring leader, Your friend,
A. R. TAYLOR.