The Kinsley graphic. [volume] (Kinsley, Kan.) 1890-1940, 1891-06-05

what OF the children, two and uye ana
ten years of age, who stood at their
mothers lap with great, round, won
dering eyes, hearing her read of those
who persisted in the battle of the vii
derness, their father gone down amid
the dead host? Come, young men and
young women who by such disaster
have had to make your own way in life,
and I will put the garland on your
young and unvyrinl<led brow. Yes;
you have had your own Malvern HHl
and your own South Mountain, and
your own Gettysburg all along these
twenty years Come! And If cannot
spare a whole garland for your brow,
will twist IN your locks at least two
flowers. one crimson and one white
the crimson for the struggle of your
life which has almost amounted to
carnage, and the white for the victory
you have gained
Before put the two gariandE 1 am
twisting upon the northern and south
ern tombs, detain the garlands a little
while that may put them upon the
brow OF the living soldiers and sailors
of the north and south, who, though in
variance for long while, are now at
peace and in hearty loyalty to the
United States government and ready,
If need be, to march shoulder to shout
der against any foreign foe
The twenty-six winters that have
passed since the war, think, have sur
6ciently cooled the hatreds that once
burned northward and southwark to al
low the remark that they who fought
in that conflict were honest on both
sides. The chaplains of both armies
were honest in their prayers The
faces that went into battle, whether
they marched toward the Gulf of Mex
leo or marched toward the north star,
were honest faces. It is too much TO ask
a4L d - ,, 1,A
came out from their homes, forsaking
father and mother and wife and child,
many of them never to return, were not
in earnest when they put their life into
awful exigency. Witness the last scene
at family prayers up among the Green
| mountains or down by the fields of cot
| ton and sugar cane. Men do not sacri-
| fee them all for fun. Men do not eat
mOldy bread or go without bread at all
for fun. Men do not sleep unshe1tered
| in equinOctial storms for fun.
AS chaplain of a Pennsylvania regi-
ment and as a representative of the
United States Christian commission, I
was for a while at the front and in
those hospitals at Hagerstown and
williamsburg and up and down the
Potomac, where all the churches and
farm houses We're filed with wounded
and dying Federals and COnfederates.
I forgot amid the horrors to ask on
| which side they fought, when with
what little aid I could take them for
the suffering bodies and the mightier
aid I could for their souls. passed the
days and months amid scenes that in
my memory seem like a CHASTITY dream
rather than possible reality. When a
New Orleans boy, unable to answer my
question as to where he was hurt, took
out from the folds of the only garment
that had not been torn off him in the
battle a New Testament marked
with his own life blood, and
saw the leaf turned down at the
passage: ''My peace give untC
you, not as the world giveth give
unto yOu,'' it read Just as though it had
been a northern New Testament. AND
when sat down and took from a SCutI
Carolinian dying in barn at BOones
vile his last message to his wife an(
mother and child, it sounded just like
message that a northern man dying fal
from home would send to his wife and
mother and child And when picked
/ up from the battlefield OF Antietam the
, fragment of letter which have some
where yet, for the name and the sd
dress were torn of, saw il was tn,
words of a wife to her husband telling
him how the little child prayed fol
. their father every night that he nigh
, | not get hurt in the battle and NIGH
come home we'll, but that if anything
happened to them they might all meef
again in the world where there are nt
paintings, it read just as a northern wifi
would write to a husband away from
home and in peril conveying the mes
sages OF little children. O. yes. the!
We're honest on both sides
Yes, there was courage on both sides
l They who We're at the front know that
2 When the war opened the south Gale,
the northern men ''mudsills," and tn
: north called the southern men ''braR
{ | CARTS and ''pOmpous nothings," bu
t after few battles nothing more wa
f! said about northern 'tmudsills'' an
: southern ''braggarts- It was an arm.
? of lions against an army of lions l
: was & flock OF eagles mid-sl1y with irol
beak against another flock OF eagle
: iron bealzed- 1t was thunderbol
E against thunderbOlt- It was archa1ge
j of wrath against archangel of wrath
/ It was Hancock against Longstreet
0 1t was Fitzpatrick against Wade Hang
<Ov II frrs4