Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-06-01
THE PAINTINGS.

But before | put these garlands on
the graves | mean to put them this
morning a little while on the brOws of
the living men and women of the north
and south who lost husbands and sons
and brothers during the civil strife.
There IS nothing more soothing to a
wound than cool bandage, and these
two garlands are cool from the night
dew What Il morning that was on the
banks of the Hudson and the Savan-
nah when the sen was to start for the
war What fatherly and motherly
COUNSEL What tears! What heart
brea.lsi What charges to write home
often! What little lzeepsakes put away
in the knapsack, or the bundle that was
to be exchanged for the knapsackl
The crowd around the depot or the
steamboat landing shouted, but father
and mother and sister cried And how
lonely the house seemed after they
went home, and what an awfully va
cant chair there was at the Christmas
| and Thanksgiving table! And after
the battle, what waiting for newsl
What suspense till the long lists of the
killed and wounded were made out!
All along the Penobscot, and the Con
necticut, and the st. Lawrence and the
Ohio, and the Oregon, and the James,
and the Albemarle, and the Alabama,
and the Mississippi, and the Sacramento
there were lamentation and mourning
and great woe, Rachel weeping for her
children, and refusing to be comforted
because they were not. The world has
forgotten it, but father and mother
have not forgotten it. They may be
now in the eighties or the nineties, but
it is a fresh wound, and will always re-
main fresh wound.
Coming down the steep of years the
hands that would have steadied those
tottering steps have been twenty-eight
years folded into the last sleep The
childlessness, the widowhood, the or
phanage has a measuring line
long enough to tell the height of it, the
depth of it, the infinity of it? What a
mountain, what an Alps, what Hima-
laya of piled up agony of bereavement
in the simple statement that three hun
dred thousand men of the north were
slain and five hundred thousand men
of the south were slain, and hundreds of
thousands long afterward, through the
exhaustions there suffered, going down
to deathl
detain from the top of the tomb
these two garlands that I am twisting
for little while that may with them
soothe the brow of the living. Over
the fallen the people said: Poor fell
low What a pity that he should have
been struck DOWN. We did not, how
ever, often enough say: Poor fatherl
Poor motherl Poor wife! Poor child"
and so | say it now Have you realized
that by that wholesale massacre hun
dreds of thousands of young people at
the north and the south have never had
any chance? We who are fathers
stand between our children and the
world. We fight their battles, we plan
for their welfare, we achieve their live
hhood, we give them the advice of our
superior years. Among the richest
blessings of my life l thank God that
my father lived to fight my battles I'M
til was old enough to fight for my
self.
Have you realized the fact that our
civil war pitched out upon the farm
fields of the north and the plantations
Of the south a multitude that no man
San number, children without fatherly
help and protection? Under all the adj
vantages which we had of fatherly
guidance, what struggle life has been
70 the most of usl But what of the
children, two and five and ten years of
age, who stood at their mothers lap
with great, round, wondering eyes, hear
ing her read of those who persisted in the
Battle of the Wilderness. their father