That man who moves only within the circumference of self, reflecting no social rays upon the community in which he moves, contributing in no way to the advancement of human happiness, winding himself up in the hermitical cocoon of a miser’s cell or of total seclusion from the world, makes his life a vacuum and his death a burletta. The acutest metaphysician can never demonstrate the problem of his creation, the lemma of his existence has no corollary in philosophy. The following apothegm from ELBRIDGE GERRY should be deeply impressed upon the mind of every reader: “It is the duty of every citizen, though he may have but one day to live, to devote that day to the service of his country.” This precept he enforced by the examples of his brilliant career.
ELBRIDGE GERRY was a native of Marblehead, Massachusetts, born on the 17th of July, 1744. He was the son of an enterprising and respectable merchant, who bestowed upon him a classical education. He graduated at Harvard University in 1762, with a scholastic and mental reputation creditable to himself and pleasing to his friends. Judging the tree by its fruit, the seed from which it sprang must have been of the purest kind, and its vegetation not retarded by the absorbing and poisonous weeds of vice. Its incipient pruning and growth must have been directed by a master hand, to produce a form of so much symmetry and beauty.