Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 291, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1919 — True Friend of Country Loves Her Friends—the Definition by Webster [ARTICLE]

True Friend of Country Loves Her Friends —the Definition by Webster

A true lover of virtuous patriotism delights to contemplate its purest models ;and that love of country may well be suspected which affects to soar SO high into the regions of sentiment as to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too elevated or too refined to glow with fer vor in the commendation or the lo\e of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if one should be so enthusiastic a lover of po©try as to care nothing for Homer or Milton; so'passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to Tully and Chatham; or such a devotee to the arts, in such an ecstasy with the elements 'of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard the masterpieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo with coldness or contempt. We may be assured that he who really loves the thing Itself loves Its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and commemorate them. —Daniel W ebster.