Governor of the State, or President of the Union. The idea of
being educated to fill a humble office in life is hardly thought
of, and every bumpkin who has a memory sufficient for the words
repeats the stanza:--

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."

There is a fine ring to this familiar quatrain of Mr. Longfellow,
but it is nothing more than a musical cheat. It sounds like truth,
but it is a lie. The lives of great men all remind us that they
have made their own memory sublime, but they do not assure us at
all that we can leave footprints like theirs behind us. If you do
not believe it, go to the cemetery yonder. There they lie--ten
thousand upturned faces--ten thousand breathless bosoms. There was
a time when fire flashed in those vacant orbits, and warm
ambitions pulsed in those bosoms. Dreams of fame and power once
haunted those hollows skulls. Those little piles of bones that
once were feet ran swiftly and determinedly through forty, fifty,
sixty, seventy years of life; but where are the prints they left?
"He lived--he died--he was buried"--is all that the headstone
tells us. We move among the monuments, we see the sculpture, but
no voice comes to us to say that the sleepers are remembered for
any thing they ever did. Natural affection pays its tribute to its
departed object, a generation passes by, the stone grows gray, and
the man has ceased to be, and is to the world as if he had never
lived. Why is it that no more have left a name behind them? Simply
because they were not endowed by their Maker with the power to do