Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1871-04-08
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Destruction of life and property, al
that men count valuable on earth, pro
ceeds from causes. A cause that JUST
fes devastation, the taking Of life ans
the sacking of towns, should be of thu
gravest character Can the reader per
ceive the cause, or its gravity, that hurl'
Frenchman against Frenehman ano
strews that beautiful land with wrecks
ruins, corpses, widows and orphans
The news from Paris smells of blood,
The very air we breathe is REDEEMED
with it. Unfalteringly tine telegraph
brings bloody messages from the world s
recognized. capital, and makes men
wonder why so great country and SO
great a people should present to the
sensibilities Of mankind so mournful a
spectacle. And it is Spring-time. While
the blood of Frenchmen is flowing, the
flowers are bursting into light and
beauty, and the birds that know no war,
but only song, are caroling over heaps
of the dead, still warm with the fire of
a life that has gone out forever.
Better listen to the mocking-bird.
At our own capital there is dismay,
malice, confusion, theft, villainy, tyranny
and corruption. The men who hold the
helm of affairs seem to be thoroughly
mad. They regard neither law nor Cos
pei One they can repeal, the other
they defy. They hold that nothing
however sanctifed by time, tradition or
love, is sacred. Neither that keen per-
ception of right, nor that stern determi-
nation to sustain justice, that rendered
our fathers immortal, has come down to
them. They move in an atmosphere
thick with the smoke of angry passions.
They delve and. dig, buster and fret,
swear and steal, murder and rob, as if
life were a stage, every man an actor,
and the play, Depravity.
Better listen to the mocking-bird
And the people appear to have none
of the good sense of the good old time.
Children are growing up that know no
discipline, and treat with contempt the
maxims of wisdom, and laugh at the
counsels of the aged. The transit from
the cradle, where mother love guards
humanity as it buds into existence, to
the theater where the play Of passion
begins, is fearfully sudden. Preeocity
shoots along the sky Of life ike
meteor, and ike a meteor is fearfully
brief, no matter how brilliant. We used
to be taught that it was beautiful TO look
out upon nature and commune with the
genius that presides over it. We are
now taught to Io0k in upon the inven-
tons of men and the devices they have
contrived to crush out the natural feel
ing and turn the sweets of heaven into
the bitterness of hell.
Better listen to the mocking-bird
But we can be saved. There is a me-
diator at hand II is woman-not the
noisy thing that ascends the rostrum,
and declaims to a gaping, jeering crowd
of ruiians who flock to hear her that they
NAV find amusement-but woman in the
sphere in which the Creator placed her
woman, with all her beautiful endow-
ments-woman, the best lover at the
cradle and the most sincere weeper at
the graye-woman can save US. Does
she comprehend her mission2 Man rules
by violence, but that very violence is
subject to the control Of woman. That
corrugated brow can be smiled into
smoothness; that angry eye, that
flashes with the fires Of hell, she
can compel TO beam with the light
of heaven. That wayward youth,
Just entering upon the noisy, thronged
stage of manhood, and just taking his
first degree in vice, she can reclaim, res
cue and save. She can, with her soft
speech and gentle manner, speak effec-
lively to him Of the triumphs and the
glories of a stainless life, and the de-
formities, the horrors, the agonies of one
spotted all over with crime. She can
convince him that ruin lies in the path
of passion, and that death guards every
inch Of the highway of indulgence. She
can teach him that there is no real
pleasure in the designations Of cities,
and that it is better to go into the unde-
PRAYED forests, and there, amid its soil
tudes, to
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