The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-05-30
Tho Lesson or the Flowers Upon tine
Soldiers Graves To-Day.

To strew the graves of the battle-dead with
| flowers is a beautiful custom. Decoration
Day, observed North and South in the time
when Nature puts forth bud and leaf and
flower flushed with the first glory of the Sum-
mer's dawn, is rapidly losing all the smaller or
sectional attributes which prevent it from be-
| ing one wide feast of love and reverence. The
| graceful, delicate act becomes more and more
| honored ir1ts performance. The tears of the
! nation, North and South, are almost dried by
Time, and the bitterness that wells up with
tears is ceasing to flow from the nation heart.
Kindly and gently Time does his work Of
soothing the screwed. Man, with his evil
eyes, his biting words and passionate
hates, struggles against limo in vain. II
God is love, love is eternal and SO the worse
must fall away in time before the better On
this lovely morning, then, as tender, loving
hands lay dewy wreaths and garlands of
earth's sweetest flowers upon the soldiers
graves, may the spirit of love be diffused with
the fragrant incense that is waited on the
morning breeze.
It is becoming an old story now
how discord rose, in Gods own time,
among the prospecting people of these
over by millions how the mad act of one
| section plunged the nation into civil war,
| and how the fact came like q fearful dream
upon people used only to the glitter Of uni
forms and the CLINT of sabres as features in
their days of national JOY. To-day we do not
demand whence came the first wrong that
caused the sabres to be sharpened and made
bare. The war ghost, no matter how or by
| whom called forth, overshadowed the land
the rattle of the drum and the trumpet blast
struck dumb the quivering lips of fear; for
| good or evil, for life or death, the ranks on
| either side were filed; and, with q gathering
| cry, in gloomy hour, the contest was begun.
How it deepened until the most sanguine in
the cause of love despaired that the wounds
| of North and South could ever be healed is
within the recollection of all. But the war,
for all its fury passed away North and
South were joined once more. The strong
hand grasp of the North would not admit
looked each other in the face the sign of
friendship in the clasped hands soon began
| to have its subtle influence in their hearts.
Passion is passing away the green grass
waves over the trampled shaken battle field,
and the old love for our grand united heritage
grows fresh and green where poison weeds
of hate had once usurped its place. If the
bright dew of tears hangs, diamond-like,
among the leaves, the reawakened love win
| CLEAN but the brighter to the eyes of all
humanity.
For the dead alone were the flowers first
laid upon the soldiers grave. For the man
he was, the cause he served, and the life he
yielded for that cause, the garlands first were
gathered and strewn above the soldiers
moldering clay. The poignant grief of
mothers, sisters widows and orphans lent the
sweet scattering of flowers reality Of sorrow
at first that kept out of sight the great bene6-
cent end which it would serve. North and
over Egypt when the first born, from
Pharaoh's down, were slain in the night, was
like the wall heard over our land when the
great war was DONE The cry for blood, the
battle cheer, the victor's exultant shout, have
| all their dismal echoes in that wall of sorrow
which will not be stilled until the
| lorn hearts are weary Of their grief
and Times misty breath has dimmed
the haunting picture of the SCARED and
| CORY dead. Meanwhile the world must have
its heroes. Apride chow often false-rooted?)
supplants regret. Song and story tell the
fame of those that fell. Glory, with its
blatant bugle-blast claims the dead for her
own. Ephemeral may be the glorifcation,
although dazzling to the eye. Names are
inscribed on pillars shot-torn flags are
blazoned with the battles where they waved
vanity is nursed like dollhouse plant and
thrives. century or so passes and the
pillars crumble, the flags fall into dust and
the vanity becomes mere word in history.
The shame Of defeat passes away, too. Those
who have fought with honest heart in beaten
cause pluck glories of their own from the ruin,
and, setting them against their bitternesses
for balance, can let the past die gently in
their breasts Between race and race, nation
and nation, the evil often will not die because
the same hayward causes in one generation
| may reappear 10 prouuce similar results IN
the next. But in cases Of civil war the ex-
citing causes disappear and generally become
almost inexplicable to the body of the nation
in a century or two. Guelph and Ghibelline,
York and Lancaster-whte rose or red rose
who in Italy or England, save the student,
now cares or asks which won or persisted?
Pregnant with the shaping of the present in
France and England as were the war of the
League and the onslaught of the Puritans,
what citizen of either land asks his neighbor
in passion now if he comes of those who
fought beside Henry of Navarro or Oliver