Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1881-10-05

vests on the "a OF July last were WaV'
ing over the old fields of many bloody
battle. When trade with her many
white-winged messengers had assumed
its channels on the bosom of the CLASSY
deeps In the midst of all these munif
cent things, Mr.. President, the t,cen-
tieth President of the United States
James Abram Garfield, was stricken
down by the hand of cruel assassin
by an ineffable coward, by poor, grow.
elling, servile wretch. O.! tempord .
0 ! mores.
The realities in this scene are the
dead and not the living. What are we
among them? What is human life !?
What is it, when man like Garfield,
not of a necessity, but of his own free
will, gave it for a conviction What
is life gone forth from its casketY Life,
that perfect blossom of the creation,
whose presence the sweet-scented fow-
ers that deck his bosom, that encircle
his shroud and bier to-day, are lust as
impotent to typify. as the glow-worm
the banished glorIes of the meridian
sun. A strange faith comes with death
that true life cannot die. Tennyson,
in his Remembrance of Liie," with
equal force and beauty says:
ooh sweet and strange it seems to me,
That ere the day is done,
The voice that now is speaking,
May be beyond the sun,
Forever and forever, with those just souls and
true;
e, So tbot i
Why make we suoh ado?"
Consider the creative power of death,
the genius, the heroism, the pathos,
the goodness it produces. Here among
the mortal relics of those who proffered
life, to secure to the living good gov
ernment, freedom, liberty and social
order, we look down upon the grand
procession moving since time began,
and sweeping to its assured destination
like systems through the night OF
space, while gradually the conviction
steals upon Us that these are mans
real surroundings and the noise, the
hustle, the activity, the empty, price
less honors of the world, are but phan-
toms and delusions.
Yet it is the dead who are the living,
and only in the aggregate of humanity
through all time is discovered the pur-
pose of the individual creation. Earth
swallows up the poor remains. The
very forces of nature waste and con-
sumo them to produce these forms of
beauty which are the types and illus
trations of her deep mystery. But just
here, on the threshold, are these forces
arrested, and nature grasps no more
than she gave. She cannot take the
examples, in which our martyrs, Elm
coin and Garfield are now immortal.
She cannot take from it's accorded
place among the great actions of all
time, the memorable struggles of these
martyrs with that evil which we hope
profoundly, has perished shifting them.
The blue dome and the wide horizon
are limitations which yield to the au-
dacity of thought. The veil falls be-
fore the enchanter's wand. 1t is not
the Elysian fields of twilight and a
restricted existence we enter. We do
not meet wandering and complaining
shadows from whom death has shorn
the better part of life, but happy, tran
quill, yet silent, the name and the fame
of James Abram Garfield will line the
vista. In the language of England's
greatest poet:
"Like mountain ranges on whose top,
Heavens tent reposes,
And whose massive sides
Are the bulwarks of nations"
The cause in which our late martyr
President died is his enduring memo
rial. 1t is "mOnumentum acre peren-
MUS" The student of history to-day
tells US how few existing monuments
on the earth's surface have preserved
the names of their builders. No man
to-day knows who caused the famous
tombs of Thebes to be hewn from the
solid rock. And there stand many
mausolems reared 30 centuries since
our graves now nameless and whose
occupants they could not commemO-
rate. Mr.. President, either wealth or
despotism, may command labor, may
build memorial structures which defy
time. But, neither wealth, labor or
despotism can command or purchase
Immortality. When the noble and
heroic young Spartan Leonidas said
"a King must die that Sparta may be
saved" The youth transfgured hu-
manity by the remnant of life which
he surrendered, and gave him eternal
fame. The world for ages has looked
upon, and even will admire that
strange picture in the pass of Their
mopyle depicting the careless Greeks
combing their long hair, the javelin
flights obscuring the sun, the sudden
assault and the inevitable death !;
thus art comes with her pen and her
pencil seiz ing the salient moments in
human history and makes them i'm
mortal
While in this solemn hour we pay
his memory tribute, we must not over
look his rare elements and brilliant
abilities. To him his home was a
sanctuary whence his thoughts never
strayed The mother who had borne
and reared him, the wife of his bosom,
the children of his loins, were the ap-
pie of his eye. Honors never estrang-
ed him from the charmed circle, the
only enduring basis of civil liberty.
His name is to-day linked to the sad
ness of the immortal Lincoln. He was
a tried, loyal American Statesman.
He was the noblest exponent of true
Americanism His pathway was from
the log cabin, in the midst of an Ohio
clearing, to the White House, the
chair of our long loved Washington.
He unbarred the gates of the morning
dawn of resumption, to let in the sun
light prosperity, dispelling the gloom
Of adversely, and with genial rays
leading our Nation to the food-tide