Indian River Ripples [excerpt]

     Why is it that no attention was paid in Cocoa to the proclamation of President Roosevelt and Governor Jennings for memorial service on the day of the funeral of President McKinley? On the contrary the schools were not even closed. Surely this is not the best method of teaching our children sentiment and patriotism. Children are very susceptible to example, and the citizens of a community, even if they have no resident minister, could have held some kind of memorial, and an impression, never to be forgotten by the children, would have been made. It is a serious calamity that has befallen this nation, and too serious an impression could not be created on the minds of the young. The impressions of youth are made manifest in the very act of the assassin Czolgosz. Reared in anarchy—from his earliest youth he heard his father and associates advocate the principles of anarchy, and all his life heard its precepts propounded. Ingrained as it was in his education who is to blame for the final act that robbed this nation of its ruler? Were not his early teachers mainly the cause of it? Of course he did the act, but it was the effect of certain causes. Had he in youth been grounded with principles of right, patriotism and Christianity the history of the United States would not have so sad a page to chronicle.