Documentary History of the State of Maine - Containing the Trelawny Papers #233226

The history of those who have lived in the past never fails to fascinate the reflecting mind, and especially is this true with respect to the history of those whom we regard as ancestors. The minutest incidents of their daily life, from birth to death, - their friendships and rivalries, joys and sorrows, successes and failures, and even the scenes amid which they lived, - engage our attention and awaken our sympathies. Though by some, who take a superficial view of the subject, such studies may be regarded as unimportant, I am sure that those who take a deeper view of it will agree with me that they exert a potent influence upon society, and that to rescue the names and deeds of our ancestors from oblivion is a pious and useful work, tending to foster that respect for the family which is an important factor in forming national character. It is doubtless true that the remarkable veneration which that unique people, the Chinese have ever entertained for their ancestors, has been a conservative force which has given solidity to a nationality which contains within its bosom elements of a nature sufficiently destructive to have disrupted it but for this beneficent and overruling force.