157 Years Ago

THE HASTINGS CONSERVER Volume 3, Number 18 August 11, 1863

School Houses.

The school houses of Minnesota are largely a minerous quantity, or a miserable substitute for a positive one. Log huts, dingy frames, cellar kitchens, old machine shops, forsaken garrets, are more frequently in use as school houses than anything else. The traveler will indeed now and then meet a neat, tasty, and strong-built frame, brick or stone building, consecrated to schools, but the sight is a rare one. We cannot afford to give much yet for educational purposes. True one eighteenth of our state has been consecrated (set aside) by our policy to common schools, and the school fund accruing from the sale of the school lands is rapidly being realized to the various school boards; yet we are not able, in thousands of instances, to furnish anything better than hovels in which to teach the children of the state. Our dwelling houses may look well, and even our barns be reasonably comfortable ones, but our school houses are too frequently the little end of an in- _nite series. Towns of two and three thousand inhabitants— wealthy towns, doing a large and increasing business—aye, towns which look for rail-roads in one year from this date, think nothing of being without a school-house. Fill the pocket, though the head go empty, seems the motto of Minnesota. We look, however, for a better day soon. The world moves. So do we.

RIVER MATTERS. —The river is rising slowly, being six

to eight inches above low water mark. The recent heavy rains will no doubt increase the stage of water materially. The light draught Cutter has been placed on the La Crosse line, and will run with the Ariel to connect with the larger boats below, leaving St. Paul at 9 o’clock, A.M.

The Ada Hine connects with the Prairie du Chien boats at Prescott leaving St. Paul every evening at half past six

o’clock. Address of Jeff Davis.

Jeff Davis has addressed another appeal to his sorrowing people, urging them to make the _nal struggle and redeem

themselves from their “malignant enemy.” He endeavors to

work upon their baser passions, in_aming them with rage

and despair, and showing the utter hopelessness of their fate should they be overpowered. It appeals to absentees to return immediately to the post of duty, and declares general pardon and amnesty to all who shall do so. He implores the women to permit none to remain at home.

Territorial poetry 163 Years Ago THE EMIGRANT AID AND JOURNAL City of Nininger, Dakota County, Minnesota Territory August 1, 1857 PERSEVERE.

L. D. Countryman.

We copy from a St. Paul paper the following lines. They are from the pen of Mr. Countryman, the gentleman whom we have announced to have secured lots in Nininger on which to erect a public Academy. We are glad to recognize as a fellow citizen a gentleman of much talent.

Persevere! Persevere! Do not falter, do not fear.

First resolve to do the right:—

Then pursue it with your might.

Sternly, calmly, hold your place— Look derision in the face—

Give the world to understand,

You have _rmness to command At least yourself; then laugh at fear—

Persevere! Persevere!

Are you tempted to begin In the path of vice and sin?

Do companions, vile and (cheery) Seek to lead you far astray?

Shun, oh! Shun them evermore, Keep your course as heretofore.

Though the path of vice allure, Recollect disgrace is sure.

Ruined hopes, and ruined health, Loss of friends, and loss of wealth, All the course of vice attend, And deep misery in the end.

Have you left the haunts of vice, Making thus, a better choice?

You are fortunate indeed— Few in vice to good give heed— Once reclaimed, oh! Persevere Let your former comrades sneer. You are better off than they; Light will shine along your way; They in gloomy darkness grope, You’ll enjoy a glorious sphere; Persevere! Persevere!

Reader do you love the right?

Falter not, for it to _ght.

In this world’s present age, Evils vast do throng the stage.

Then we need the iron will, Strength, and purpose to ful_ll.

Idly we should never stand, When there’s so much work on hand. At it then, and persevere, Do not falter, do not fear.

A Challenging Coexistence.

East and West.

Between the East and West—the Seaboard (seabord) and the Great Central Valley of our Continent—there should be

maintained the most perfect understanding, the most cordial sympathy. The letters of many Western journals, indicate a growing dissatisfaction with the East in the quarter when they proceed. Let us try to comprehend each other.

The East is not and cannot be jealous of the growth and greatness of the West, for it recognized therein the basis of its own growth and prosperity. A new State out West implies new ships on the ocean, new factories in Lowell and Lawrence, new blocks of stores in New York. Our brethren and children who leave their Atlantic homes to found new homes on the prairies and by the waters of the Mississippi are not lost to us, even in a pecuniary view; they are still our customers as well as our kinsmen and countrymen. The corn of Illinois nourishes and the timber of Michigan shelters us as thoroughly as if it had been produced on the Genesee or the Penobscot. It is the urgent, palpable, undeniable interest of the whole Seaboard that the fertile and facile West should be rapidly and generally peopled by intelligent, energetic, civilized, thrifty freemen… But, while we feel and say this, we feel also that we ought to tell them the whole truth, so that we shall not be accused by those in_uenced by our counsel, of having misled and deceived then. We feel bound, therefore, to say to those who heed us, Go West! but do not expect to _nd on the prairies or

in the river bottoms of the Great Valley a Garden of Eden. On

the contrary, expect to encounter serious privation and sufferings through the years of your pioneer life.