The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1885-11-18

poetry OF war SOOn VdnlSueo duu ioAo oNS
nothing but the terrible prose. They waded
knee deep in mud. They slept in snow-banks.
They marched till their cut feet tracked the
earth. They were swindled out of their hon
.st ratiors and lived on meat not fit for q
log. They had jaws fractured and eyes ex-
| ;inguished and limbs shot away. Thousands
| If them cried for water as they lay dying on
the field the night after the battle, and got 1t
lot. They were homesick, and received no
message from their loved ones. They died in
barns, in bushes, in bitches, the buzzards OF
;he summer heat the only attendants On their
,bseouies. No Ole but the infinite God who
1nows everything knows tie ten-thousancth
BART of the length and breadth and depth
ind height of anguish of Northern and South
Urn battlefields. Why did these fathers leave
heir children and go to the front, and why
lid these young men, p%ostponing the marriage
lay. start out into the probabilities OF never
coming back! For the country they died.
Life for life. Blood for blood. Substitution.
But we need not 20 so far. What is that
monument in Greenwood! 1t is to the doc
ors who fell in the Southern epidemics. Why
20? We're there not enough sick to be at
iendedi in these Northern ATTITUDES! Oh, yes;
yut the doctor puts a few medical books IN hls
7aliss and some walls Of medicine and leaveH
lis patients here in the hands Of other ply.
icians and takes the rail train. Before ne
,ets to the infected region he pisses crowdeo
all trains, regular and extra, taking the n.y.
ng and a~ffrighted populations. He arrives IN
/ city over which a great horror is brood.
ng. He goes from couch to couch feeling or
pulse and studying symptoms and prescrlo-
ing day after day, night after night, until q
fellow-physician says: doctor, you naa
better 20 home and rest; you look miserable
But he cannot rest while so many are su1er-
ing. On and on until some morning tinds
him in a delirium in which he talks OF home
and then rises and says he must go and lock
after those patients. He is told to lie down,
but he fights his attendants until ne falls
back, and is weaker and weaker, and dies TOR
people with whom he had no kinShip anu far
away from his family, and is hastily put
away in q strangers tomb: and only the httn
| part OF a newspaper line tells us OF his sacrI-
ice. his name just mentioned among five:
| Yet he has touched the furtherest height OF
sublimity in that three weeks OF humanitarian
service. He goes straight as an arrow TO tho
bosom Of him who said, 81 was sick and ye
visited me-" Life for life. Blood for blood.
| Substitution.
In the legal profession I see the same prin-
ciple of self-sacrifice. In 1876 William Free
man, a pauperized and idiotic negro, was at
Auburn, N. Y, on trial for murder. He had
! slain the entire Van Nest family: The foam-
ing wrath of the community could % kept on
of him only by armed c%onstables: Who would
! volunteer to be his counsela No attorney
! wanted to sacrifice bis popularity by SUCH an
upprateful task. All were silent save one, q
lawyer with feeble voice that could hardly be
heard outside the bar, pale and thin anc
awkward. IT was William d. seward VINO