Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1881-10-13

4
Self fOr Him to cruelty,
Ever ready to give answer,
When the roll is called on high.
Chorus
Let him sleep, calmly sleep,
While the days and the years go by {;
Let him sleep, Sweetly sleep,
TIL the call of the roll on high.
REMARKS OF NOBLE L. PRENTIs
Upon the Death of President Garfield,
at the Memorial Exercises in Atchi-
son, September 26, 1881.
How many heart, crushed by the
blows of fate, has looked up at the
smiling sky and around at the green,
bright earth and exclaimed, "How lit
tie sympathy has Nature with human
sorrow" Yet there is something in
the very season in which we meet in
keeping with this our sad meeting.
1t is the season of the falling leaf, from
oldest time the symbol of mans NOR
tality. 1t is the season of faded flow
ers, emblems of joy that fly too soon.
The sun shines, but we know that Win
ter comes; the pomp of summer woods
has flown. Had we selected the day
and hour it could not be more fitting.
Every human life, with its alterna-
tions of hope and fear, its joys and
sorrows, its sighs and laughter, is a
tragedy, and the falling of the curtain
at last is solemn event. We cannot,
if we have the heart to feel, look upon
the fixed features, the folded hands of
the dead, without saying, "This is the
end" and so go back to the beginning
and retrace the pathway from the
cradle to the grave, and there make up
our verdict and answer the question,
"Was this life a failure or success, a
triumph or defeat?'
With most, fear the heart falters
as it makes its decision. The tolls and
tangles, the unsolved problems, the
crossed and blinded paths of this world
do so confuse men, that it is seldom
that life is full and rounded and COM
plete. 1 remember in my childhood
the death of man well known in his
day; he was the scion of noble house
In England; he was model of physic-
al manhood; he was writer of almost
enfleSs versatility; his pursuits, his
labors were in the direction of what
men call pleasure; yet he died by his
own hand, and left as his last request
that they should write above his dead
face, "IfyeliciSsim,ls," "Most unhappy"
'I1yettciSSin1tS," "MoSt unhappy"
how many and many time it might
be written when it is not. The wrang-
lie of the market and forum done. the
strife for fame, for wealth, for power
ended, and then the dead man is laid
In his grave and the dark tragedy is
summed up in the sad confession of
direst failure, "InfeLiciSSimus."
Not this shall be the epitaph of him
who to-day is laid to his rest amid a
nations mourning; not ours, amid our
loss, to feel that all is lost; not ours to
know that in his life earnest endeavor
was unavailing; worthy ambition but
the prelude to defeat; not ours to feel
that life was but a useless sacrifice.
birth calamity, and death a welcome
close to wasted days; not ours to feel
that even the boon of recollection is to
be denied, and memory sadly refuse to
keep the story of misfortune.
He, if ever life is victory, was a
cOnqueror. His, if it ever cones to
mortals, was the fortune to drink of
the cup of happiness; his, to escape the
calamities which befall so many; the
proud mans contumely, the pangs of
despised love, the sights which patient
merit, of the unworthy takes. His, to
die amid the tears of almost universal
humanity, to be borne in honor to his
native soil, to be buried with every
evidence that man can give of affec-
tion and honor, and his the watched
and warded grave, and a memory to be
kept forever green.
The key note of this mans life, its
inspiring and animating spirit, its in
foming soul, was Love. Love, word
often lightly spoken, and, God forgive
us, often sneered at; secuted at by
those whose hearts have withered in
the furnace heat of selishness. Love.
at times wholely disbelieved in, written
nowhere on merchants ledger or law
yers parchment, and yet love, steady,
changeless, inspiring, was the creator
of James A. Garfield, the beauteous
spirit that walked beside him all the
days of his life, and spoke with the
last utterances of his dying lips.
Born amid the shadows of poverty
seeing all about him the effects of its
cold and repressing hand, in the scanty
meal, the coarse clothing, the humble
!, roof, the anxious face of the widowed
mother; not his to sel6shly escape from
it all; to fly to some distant country
and there win fame and fortune fol
himself alone. No, the steady affec.
tion, the love that burned in his heart
!, for those most dear, forbade the selfish
} and ignoble fight. What they bore, he
bore with them; his to cling to the
hand of his mother, and his brothers
and sisters. enduring all that came to
them till the dawn Of brighter day.
As the stage of life widened it ex
tended the circle of his sympathies
Wherever he went he loved and was
beloved. His was the affectionatt
clasp of the hand-the quick coming
smile Of recognition. When he went
away to college it was to win hearts
that never after wavered in LOYALTY tc
him; it was to gather about him friends
who never lost sight of him in all the
neetlng years; who mourned with his
every grief; who rejoiced without one
pang OF envy at his every success; who
watched beside him as the death shad.
ows gathered, and whose tears to-day
fan upon his precious dust.
In this our friends heart ever lived
that sublime and overmastering senti.
ment the love OF country, a passion
that In its highest form, is akin tc
that love OF God, which, entering into
the hearts Of men, has supported them
In the darkest dungeons, and heaviest
chains, and dreariest exile, even to the
Track and the fagot the stake and the