St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1885-11-07

who knows everything, knows the ten
tbousandth part of the length and breadth
and depth and height Of anguish OF
Northern and Southern battleflelds.
Why did these fathers leave their chill
dren and 60 to tho front, and why
did these young man, postpontng the mar.
rage day, start out into 10 probabilities
of never coming back? For the country
they died. Life for life. Blood for blood.
Substitution. But we need not 60 so far.
What is that monument in Greenwood? II
il to the doctors WAC fell in the Southern
| epidemic, Why so? Were there not
| enough sick to be attended in these North
ern latitudss? Oh, yes; but the doctor puts
| few medical books In his valise, ana
some walls of medicine, and leaves MS
patients here in the hands of other physi'
clads, and taxes the rail train. Before ne
gets to the infected regions he passes
| crowded rail trains, regular aud 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
siclan says: "Doctor, you had better go
| home and rest; you look miserable" But
| he can not rest while SO many are suffer-
| ing. On aud on, until some morning hnds
him in delirium, in VIII ch 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
strangers tomb, and only the
| fifth part of newspaper line
tells us of his sacrifice, his name
1 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: 81 was sick and
We visited me-" Life for life. Blood for
blood. Substitution.
In the legal profession see the same
principle of self sacrifice. In 1916, VIM.
Freeman, pauperized and idio'ic negro,
was at Auburn, N. Y, on trial for muir.
der. He had slain the entire Van Ness
family. The foamipg wra'h of the COM
munity could be kept off him only by
armed conseables. Who would volunteer
to be his counsel No attorney wanted to
sacrifice his popularity by such an un-
grateful task. All were silent save one,
young lawyer with feeble voice, that
could hardly be heard outside the bar, pale
and thin and awkward. It was VIM. d.
Seward, who saw that the prisoner was
idiotic and irresponsible and ought to be
put in an asylum rather than put TO DEATH
H. fYI1
words: 81 speak now in the hearing OF
people who have prejudiced the prisoner
and condemned me for pleading in his be-
half He is convict, pauper, negro,
without intellect, sense or emotion. My
child, with an affsctionate SIN lie, disarms
my careworn face of its frown whenever
cross myH threshold. The begger in the
street obliges me to give, because he says,
Sod bless you,' as pass. My dog caresses
me with fondness if l. will but smile on him.
MY horse recognizes me when fill his
manger. What reward, what gratitude,
/ what sympathy and aft sction can expect
1 here? There the prisoner sits. Look at
him. Look at the assemblage around you.
Listen to their ill-suppressed censures and
their excited fears, and tell me whore,
among my neighbors or my fellow.mens
! where even in his heart / can expect to
| find sen timent, thought, not to say of
reward or acknowledgment, or even of
recognition? Gentlemen, you
may think of this evidence whas you
please; bring in what verdict you can,
but asseverate, before Heaven and you,
that 10 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
| galIows 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. 81. Seward was right, and that hard,
| stony step of oblnquy 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 de-
MED him through the treachery Of Amer
| lean politics. Nothing sublimer was ever
seen in an American courtroom than
| VIM. 81. Seward, without reward, stand.
! ing between the fury of the populace and
the loathsome imbecile. Subs tuition.
In the realm of the fine arts there was
as remarkable an instance. A brilliant
but hypercriticised painter. Joseph Will
liam Turner, was met by vo1ley of abuse
from all the art galleries of Europe. His
paintings, which have since won the APP
plause of all civilized nations. "Tke Fifth
Plague of Egypt ," Fishermen on Lee
Shore in squally Weather. 'Calais Pier"
''The Sun Rising Through Mist" and ''Dido
Building Carthage" were then targets for
critics to shoot at. In defense of this out
rageously abused man a young author of
twenty-fo 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