The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-02-05
CHAPTER ~.
A SECRET HALF TOLD IN ROME.

All the streams of this land are unlike.
Yet they all flow toward the sea- In or
der to know why this one is dark or dis
turbed as it flows, why this or that one is
light and shining and shallow, why this
or that n is deep, silent, sombre we
must trace back so far as we can to the.
fountain head. Man is merely a river in
another form, flowing swift or slow, deep
or shallow, silent or otherwise; but on,
on, on to the great sea of Eternity.
Let us find out if. we. can where this
plain, placid man, John Gray, came from,
and what was his purpose in leaving Rome
and hiding away among the redwoods
overhanging the stormy Straits of Car
quinas by the great Bay of San Francisco.
In the published battle records of our
Civil War, issued by the authority of the
government under the title of "Records
of the Rebellion" you perhaps have al
ready read of the chaplain who, when
the last officer of his regiment fell, seized
a sword and threw himself at the head Of
the few remaining men. !"
"But you are our chaplain" cried the
soldiers at his side, rushing to the charge,
striving to pass him to push him back,
to reach death before him. You are our
chaplain: TO back j.
Il am your colonel, | = here is your
chaplain-too small, please God, for death
to fin,l him. And the man sank down
and died; shot to death in the middle of
his speech; the boy, the little ten-year-old
chaplain, bending over his dead father.
1t does not matter on which side of the
battle line this man fell or that boy stood
at his side. ,Valor, Ake~Eirtue, knows
neither sex. or section This was the be-
ginning. of The life of John Gray. He, his
soulJ was born there, that day on the
bloody grass, by the side of agrave. This
man had never been a boy from that day
forth. He struggled forward, trying all
the time, like his dead father, to get TO
the front in the battle of life, if only for
the privilege of dying there.
We fend him at Rome, not doing very
much, while the roar of cannon was still
in his ears. Anyhow, he would pause
sometimes with lifted brush before his
work, and stand there, and stand there's
mOtlOnleSS and immovable for hours. He
was fine, rather than great; a true artist; out
at. the elbows, unknown, alone. There was
something rather pretty in the idea of his
choosing ne Via Angelo Custoda; some
thing Of his father, the chaplain, possibly.
For this is not a street given over to art
or artists at all. 1t is a street with a pal
ace~on the north side, and then the great
ever flowing fountain stands at the west
end, down, by the Carso.
One day as he passed the court entrance
of the Torlonia palace, built by the prince
ly miser and misery prince, Torlonia, not
many years ago, a man called to him from
a carriage that stood in a little circular
court within. Gray left the narrow strip
of sunshine, and entering the dark court,
found an invalid mufled to the throat, and
about to set out for a short drive on the
/ Pincean Hill.
Get in. | want to talk to you. You
| are an American; so am /, an Italian
American, but I am dying and - " here
the mufled invalid began to cough, and
cough, and cough.
The carriage rolled and travelled out
over the cobble stones. and even began to