William Brown Meloney and the Washington Monument

I’ve spent most of this week cataloguing my collection of nearly 250 posters. Some are worth a lot. Some aren’t – I bought them just because I liked them. Pictured above is one of the latter that I had forgotten about, a poster showing an illustration of the Washington Monument that was issued by the National Association of Manufacturers.

Though I can’t say for sure when it was printed, the copy in the small box to the left of the main copy refers to “World War I” which, until WWII, wasn’t referred to as World War I; it was called the “Great War.” I’d have to guess it’s from the forties, perhaps the early fifties.

This poster relates the following story: "During World War I, the boys in the freshman class at Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Academy were told to write a composition on the Washington Monument. The twelve-year-old boy who wrote the lines we reprint on this poster was chided for not giving the height of the shaft, number of steps to the top, how long it took to build and how many people visit it every year. His defense was this: I tried to tell WHY it is there and what it means. We think he succeeded.” 

The composition young William Brown Meloney V wrote is reprinted under the photo: “The Washington Monument is built of stone contributed by all the nations of the earth to honor the founder of this republic. From Arlington, across the river, where sleep the men who died for freedom, it looks like a giant spike which God might have driven into this earth, saying, Here I stake a claim for the home of Liberty.”

Can you imagine a kid today, given the same assignment, being able to write one-tenth as eloquently as Master Meloney?

Me neither.