Children of a day / by Martin W. Barr.

  • Barr, Martin W., 1860-1938.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Children of a day / by Martin W. Barr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    -^•4—^♦►-♦•l BY MARTIN W. BARR, M. D. Chief Physician, Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble Minded Children, Elwyn, Pa. Ladies and Gentlemen :— Standing to-day in the place of one once your co-worker, whom I ever love to call my master in the work, I should with greater diffidence address 3'ou did I not recognize and gratefull}- appreciate the tribute you have paid to him, in thus transferring the discussion of this branch of your noble work, so fittingly, to the place he has made its most enduring monument. The inspiration of life it is often said is embodied in a mem- ory or a hope ; and we note this alike in nations as in individuals finding its expression in reverence for the past—in aspirations for the future. The;e is much talk just now of the studj- of races ; of the in- fluences of heredity ; and the air is full of the whence and the whither—of the why and the wherefore, as men seek the solution of that great problem—Man. There is a race in our midst who cares for none of these things; for whom the ever present day has no yesterday and no to-morrow; 'ace that exists without a living memory or a living hope— literally children of a day. A strange race whose comings and go- ings, whose bounds and dominions are set forth in no work of an- thropology ; a weak race, yet an exception to the law of civiliza- tion where the weaker goes down before the stronger, it insinuates it.self with a power to dominate, and no place is safe from its in- tru.sioii Quietly and without parade it enters palace and cottage