National Republican., 1876-06-21
A HAYEs-Y PICTURE-- :

| . Said Landor: "In contentious for power, the
philosophy and the poetry of life are dropped
| and trodden down. Domestic affections can
| no more bloom and flourish in the hardened
race-course of politics than flowers can find
nourishment in the pavement of the street"
stNot always" said, as my eye fell upon
this paragraph. "I wot of domestic garden
in the midst of the plain of politics whose af-
fections are green as any in Arcadia, bearing
perennial blossoms" -r.
The picture before my mind is that of q man
in the early yigor of life, above the medium
height, blue eyed and blonde bearded, gentle,
courteous and clear thoughted, without-ver-
biage of speech, handsome in his colonels
uniform; a 1.-THE, slight, but not petite, lady,
half q decade his junior, dark haired, her
splendid brown eyes alight with maternal love,
three boys, fair, bright, ominous of q proud
manhood, the eldest of whom was on the
hlther side of his teens.
1t was in the early years Of the war. After
q rugged campaign in the West Virginia
mountains, IN which we had aired our sabres
at Rich Mountain and Carnifex Ferry, leaving
q score of our comrades behind us to mark
the passage with q soldiers grave, we had
come down into the Valley of the Kanawha
for rest and re-equipment for the stern work
awaiting us. Into our midst then, sharing
with her husband the austere lot of a soldier,
sitting at our camp fires, putting new heart
into many a homesick boy with her CHEEKY
words, banishing the fever's brain from many
bronzed cheek with her gentle touch, came
this fair lady and her boys. With many of us
tine memory of home, of mother, sister, wife,
sweetheart was green In our hearts; for we
had not yet learned to scorn the soft employ
ments of peace, so that her coming seemed
like visit from our own best loved, for she
was mother, sister, sweetheart to US all. Man,
without the refining influence of womaL, soon
lapses into that state from which there is but
single step to barbarism. Her presence held
us to higher plane; awoke in us the quies-
cling, better elements of our natures, rebuked
the unworthy thought or speech, effaced the
attritions of coarseness. She grew into our
hearts. Not a man in all those thousands
but had risked his life for her, but had laid in
the dust whose dare utter breath In her dis
praise. We adopted her each for his "ladye
fayre," and named our camp in her honor
Camp Lucy Hayes. The handsome colonel Of
'62 is the man whom twenty-five million
Americans have named for President in '76,
and this gentle friend of the soldier In those
trying scenes, this companion of her husbands
fortunes, whose pleasure it was to quit her
luxurious home for the tent, the campfire
and the austerities Of the field, was his wife
q true woman in the highest sense of that su-
preme title of nobility, an afsctionate mother
devoted spouse, one formed by nature to adorn
the highest station, as she has ever graced
the circle of her home. Ten thousand hearts
went out to her anew when the tidings were
flashed forth that her husband had been
called to the Chief Magistracy as they re-
called with gratitude the remembrance of
those buried dsys-the hearts of men grown
gray, of boys now sturdy men, OF stalwart
forms since bent and maimed, and of mothers,
wives and daughters to whom they had told
the story of her praise. w. IS.