The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1881-09-24

The people of this country are grieving
because the president is dead; that grief is
national and it it every one takes part.
But that grief is apt to have one result; it
makes us forget that outside of the people
who mourn because their President is dead,
citizens that are sad because their chief ex-
ecutive has been assassinated; there are
others who are cast down in sorrow for d
different reason. The people are in mourn
ing because their president is dead, dead
from an an assassins bullet; these others
are suffering an agony of woe, because the
husband, the father, the son is no more.
What care they that he was President ?
That is nothing to them. 1t is the husband
the widow mourns what is the Office to her?
She had rather that he was
a common citizen because then there would
be no prying into her grief, no mingling OF
strangers in her sorrow. He who was her
earthly support, is gone: he on whom for
so many years she has relied, and on whose
strong arm she has chung is dead. Dead!
And he was SO strong and brave and wise;
and as she sits now in her lonely widow
hood and thinks how noble he was when
her young girls heart first went out to him,
in that early love; and the companion and
husband he has always been since through
all their long years of marriage life, it does
not seem possible that the terrible word
dead can be true. There
must be some mistake; he is not
dead, he is not; / cannot be
believe it. Oh, you cruel government, you
heartless Office, you have taken away my
husband, have had to give him up to the
country" Hers is a sorrow that none 9th
er can equal it is greater than any other;
it can never be wiped away.
There is the grief of his children; children
who have never yet known any other sup
port, who have always looked up to him
as their shield, their protector. 1t viii be
sad void that viii be left in their young
lives, a void which time will fill partly, but
never completely. There is his mother.
Who can picture her sorrowi When
he was a babe she nourished him, as
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him as none but a mother can; for his
benefit she worked and for his interest she
denied herself that he might be clothed
and educated. When he grew up what
pride she took in him how she gloried in
his success and rejoiced in his advance
mentl He was her boy; and right dutiful-
1y he fulfilled his filial duties. His success
was all the reward she wanted for her pre-
vious self-denial, her toll and privation.
When he had attained the summit of an
Americans ambition, she was satisfied.
In that she saw the full fruition of all her
hopes. Her son had conquered all
difficulties, and she had nothing more to
1--we for. Now she was willing to die,
die knowing that her boy was proper cause
of pride. She could pass away contented
now that her life's work was done, but
that son of whom she was SO proud is |
struck down, and she must live.
Is not the grief of these sacred? does it
not surpass in its depth and intensity any
that the nation can offer? 1t is the sor-
row of wife weeping for her husband, a
child for its father, mot her for her son.
1t surpasses all other, it is deeper than all
other; it is holy.