Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

48 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
oned in a ward infected with smallpox, had died of this loathsome dis
ease, a victim of cruel neglect.
This 'visitor was the illustrious Oglethorpe. With the convulsive
power of an earthquake, the news of his friend's death awoke in him the
slumbering spirit of a great reform. We are told that'' in Dante's lonely
voice, ten silent centuries spake." So likewise, in Oglethorpe's resolve,
the cry of a suffering age was answered. Returning to his home, he
tossed upon his pillow but finally he slept and in his dreams he heard
a voice calling to him across the Atlantic's wild waters: "bring your
prisoners hither!" It was the child of his own fancy—there enthroned
like a queen, radiant and beautiful, on the green bluffs at Savannah.
It was a vision of Georgia.
Like a true humanitarian, Oglethorpe possessed the spirit of self-
effacement. In prosecuting his work of reform, he did not seek his own
OGLETHORPE MONUMENT
preferment; he did not force himself forward. To attest his zeal, he
was ready when the time should come to take the leadership, in braving
perils, in enduring hardships; but not for mere glory's sake. He was
ready, if need be, to conduct his colony in person to the new world,
there to share with his less fortunate countrymen a life of privation, of
toil, and of danger. On the midnight sky of the eighteenth century,
Oglethorpe's sublime unselfishness shines like a lone meteor, a solitary
planet, amid the prevailing darkness. Great as was his wealth, his social
position, his prestige as a member of Parliament, his rank as a soldier of
England, he was ready to imperil everything—to sacrifice all_in his
noble crusade' of reform. Fortunate for England that in an age of
speculative greed, her better impulses found expression in an altruism
so pure and so generous. She redeemed herself from a thousand follies
in producing one man of such a pattern and with such a soul.