The history of Babylon is fraught with sadness. It illustrates, only
too painfully, that the people of a town make or mar its success rather
than the natural resources and advantages it may possess on the start.
Thus Babylon, with 3,000 years the start of Minneapolis, is to-day a
hole in the ground, while Minneapolis socks her XXXX flour into every
corner of the globe, and the price of real estate would make a common
dynasty totter on its throne.
Babylon is a good illustration of the decay of a town that does not
keep up with the procession. Compare her to-day with Kansas City. While
Babylon was the capital of Chaldea, 1,270 years before the birth of
Christ, and Kansas City was organized so many years after that event
that many of the people there have forgotten all about it, Kansas City
has doubled her population in ten years, while Babylon is simply a
gothic hole in the ground.
Why did trade and emigration turn their backs upon Babylon and seek out
Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City and Omaha? Was it because they were
blest with a bluer sky or a more genial sun? Not by any means. While
Babylon lived upon what she had been and neglected to advertise, other
towns with no history extending back into the mouldy past, whooped with
an exceeding great whoop and tore up the ground and shed printers' ink
and showed marked signs of vitality. That is the reason that Babylon is
no more.
This life of ours is one of intense activity. We cannot rest long in
idleness without inviting forgetfulness, death and oblivion. "Babylon
was probably the largest and most magnificent city of the ancient
world." Isaiah, who lived about 300 years before Herodotus, and whose
remarks are unusually free from local or political prejudice, refers
to Babylon as "the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldic's
excellency," and, yet, while Cheyenne has the electric light and two
daily papers, Babylon hasn't got so much as a skating rink. .
A city fourteen miles square with a brick wall around it 355 feet
high, she has quietly forgotten to advertise, and in turn she, also, is
forgotten.
Babylon was remarkable for the two beautiful palaces, one on each side
of the river, and the great temple of Relus. Connected with one of these
palaces was the hanging garden, regarded by the Greeks as one of the
seven wonders of the world, but that was prior to the erection of the
Washington monument and civil service reform.
This was a square of 400 Greek feet on each side. The Greek foot was
not so long as the modern foot introduced by Miss Mills, of Ohio. This
garden was supported on several tiers of open arches, built one over
the other, like the walls of a classic theatre, and sustaining at each
stage, or story, a solid platform from which the arches of the next
story sprung. This structure was also supported by the common council of
Babylon, who came forward with the city funds, and helped to sustain the
immense weight.
It is presumed that Nebuchadnezzar erected this garden before his mind
became affected. The tower of Belus, supposed by historians with a good
memory to have been 600 feet high, as there is still a red chalk mark
in the sky where the top came, was a great thing in its way. I am glad I
was not contiguous to it when it fell, and also that I had omitted being
born prior to that time.
"When we turn from this picture of the past," says the historian,
Rawlinson, referring to the beauties of Babylon, "to contemplate the
present condition of these localities, we are at first struck with
astonishment at the small traces which remain of so vast and wonderful a
metropolis. The broad walls of Babylon are utterly broken down. God has
swept it with the besom of destruction."
One cannot help wondering why the use of the besom should have been
abandoned. As we gaze upon the former site of Babylon we are forced
to admit that the new besom sweeps clean. On its old site no crumbling
arches or broken columns are found to indicate her former beauty. Here
and there huge heaps of debris alone indicate that here Godless wealth
and wicked, selfish, indolent, enervating, ephemeral pomp, rose and
defied the supreme laws to which the bloated, selfish millionaire
and the hard-handed, hungry laborer alike must bow, and they are dust
to-day.
Babylon has fallen. I do not say this in a sensational way or to
depreciate the value of real estate there, but from actual observation,
and after a full investigation, I assert without fear of successful
contradiction, that Babylon has seen her best days. Her boomlet is
busted, and, to use a political phrase, her oriental hide is on the
Chaldean fence.
Such is life. We enter upon it reluctantly; we wade through it
doubtfully, and die at last timidly. How we Americans do blow about what
we can do before breakfast, and, yet, even in our own brief history, how
we have demonstrated what a little thing the common two-legged man is.
He rises up rapidly to acquire much wealth, and if he delays about going
to Canada he goes to Sing Sing, and we forget about him. There are
lots of modern Babylonians in New York City to-day, and if it were my
business I would call their attention to it. The assertion that gold
will procure all things has been so common and so popular that too many
consider first the bank account, and after that honor, home, religion,
humanity and common decency. Even some of the churches have fallen into
the notion that first comes the tall church, then the debt and mortgage,
the ice cream sociable and the kingdom of Heaven. Cash and Christianity
go hand in hand sometimes, but Christianity ought not to confer
respectability on anybody who comes into the church to purchase it.
I often think of the closing appeal of the old preacher, who was more
earnest than refined, perhaps, and in winding up his brief sermon on the
Christian life, said: "A man may lose all his wealth and get poor and
hungry and still recover, he may lose his health and come down dost
to the dark stream and still git well again, but, when he loses his
immortal soul it is good-bye, John."