The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-11-26

ern ATTITUDES? Oh, yes; but the doctor puts
q few medical books In his valise, and
some walls of gmedicine, and leaves his
patients here in tine hands of other physi-
clads, and takes the rail train. Before he
gets to. the infected regions he passes
crowded rail trains, regular and extra,
taking the flying and affrighted popula.
tions. He arrives in a city over which
great horror is brooding. He COOS from
couch to couch, feeling of pulse and study
ing symptoms and prescribing day after
day, night after nj ght, until fellow ply
stefan says: doctor, you had better go
home and rest; you look miserable" But
he can not rest while so many are suffer-
ing. On and on, until some morning finds
him in delirium, in VIII CD he talks OF
home, and then rises and says he must go
| and look after those patients. Hel is told
to lie down, but he fights his attendants
until he falls back, and is weaker and
weaker. and dies for people with whom
he had no kinship, and far away from
his family, and is hastily put away in a
strangers Tomb and only the
fifth part of newspaper line
tells us of his sacrifice, his name
just mentioned among five. Yet he has
touched the furthest height of sublimity
in that three weeks of humanitarian SER
vice. He goes straight as an arrow to the
bosom of him who said: AZ was sick, and
We visited me-" Life for life. Blood for
| blood. Substitution.
In the legal profession 1 see the same
principle of self sacrifice In 1916, VIM.
Freeman, pauperized and idiotic negro.
was at Auburn, N. Y, on trial for MUIR
der. He had slain the entire Van Ness
family. The foaming wrath of the COM
munity could be kept off him only by
armed constables. Who would volunteer
to be his counsel. No attorney wanted to
sacrifice his popularity ly such an I'M
grateful task. All were S lent save one, q
young lawyer with feeble voice, that
could hardly be heard outside the bar, pale
| and thin and awkward. L. was Vim. FL.
Seward. who saw that the pris ner was
idiotic and irresponsible and ought to be
| put in an asylum rather than put death.
the heroic counsel uttering these beautiful
| words: ST speak now in the hearing of q
people who have prejudiced the prisoner
and condemned me for pleading in his be-
half. He is convict, a pauper, negro,
without intellect, sense or emotion. My
child, with an affectionate SIN lie, disarms
my careworn face of its frown whenever
cross myE threshold. The begger in the
street obliges me to give, because lie says,
God bless you,' as Ipass. My dog caresses
me with fondness il will but smile on him.
My horse recognizes me when fill his
manger. What reward, what gratitude,
what sympathy and aft sction can I expect
here? There the prisoner sits. Look at
him. Look at the assemblage around you.
Listen to their Unsurpassed censures and
their excited fears, and tell me where,
among my neighborS or my fellow men,
where even in his heart / can expect to
findsn sen timent, thought, not to say OF
| reward or acknowledgment, or even OF
recognition? Gentlemen, you
may think of this evidence wha5 you
please; bring in what verdict you can,
but asseverate, before Heaven and you,
that the best of my knowledge and be
lief, the prisoner at the bar does not at
this moment know why it is that my shad
ow falls on you instead of his own" The
gallows got its victim, but the post NOR
tenn examination of the poor creature
showed to all the surgeons and to all the
world that the public were wrong and
VIM. H. Seward was right, and that hard,
stony step of obloquy in the Auburn court
room was the first step of the stairs OF
fame up which he went to the top, or to
within one step of the top, that last dc
MED him through the treachery of Amer
lean politics. Nothing sublimer was ever
seen in an American courtroom than
VIM. II. Seward, without reward, stand
ing between the fury of the populace and
the loathsome imbecile. Subs tuition.
In the realm of the fine arts theae was
as remarkable an instance. A brilliant
but hypercriticised painter, Joseph Viii.
liam Turner, was met by volley of abuse
from all the art galleries of Eu ope His
paintings, which have since won tie ap,
plause of all civilized nations. "The Fifth
Plague of Egypt" FISHERMEN on Lee
Shore in Squally Weather." ''Calais Pier,'
''The Sun Rising Through Mist'' and sDidc
Building Carthage" were then targ is for
critics to shoot at. In defense of this out
rageously abused man young author oil
0"oAty '-OuE years, just one year out OF
college, came forth with his pen and wrote
the ablest and most famous essays on art
that the world ever saw, or ever will see
John Ruskin's Modern Painters" Fol
seventeen years this author fought the
battles of the maltreated a, ti>t, and after
in poverty and broken heartedness the
painter had died and the public tried tt
undo their cruelties toward him by giving
him biz funeral and bur al at st. Paul's
Cathedral, his old-time friend took out Of
tin-box $4,000 pieces of paper con:a ming
drawings by the old painter, and through
many weary and uncompensa ed months
assorted and arranged them for uhlic
observation. People say John Rus
kin in his old days is cross, mis-
anthropic and morbid. Whatever he
may do that he ought net to do
and whatever he may say tina he ought
not to say between now and his death, he
will leave this world insolvent as far as il
has any capacity to pay this authors pen
for its chivalric and Christian defense oil
poor painters pencil. John Ruskin for
William Turner. Blood for blood. Sub.
stitution.
What an ex alting principle this wi ich
leads one to suffer for another. Nothing
so kindles enthusiasm. or awakehs elo.