Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1891-06-01

often enough say: poor father. Poor
mother. Poor wife, Poor child" and
so say it now. Have you realized that
by the wholesale massacre hundreds OF
thousands of young people at the North
add the South have never had any
chance? We who are fathers stand be-
tween our children and the world. we
fight their battles, we plan for their
welfare. 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 until
| was old enough TO fight for myself.
Have you realized the fact that our civil
war pitched out upon the farmteldS OF
the North and the plantations OF the
South a multitude that no man can num-
Der, children without fatherly help and
protection? Under all advantages
which we had of fatherly guidance,
what a struggle life has been 10 the
most of us. But what of the children,
two and five and ten years Of age, who
stood at their mothers lap with great,
round, wondering eyes, hearing her
read of those whose who persisted in the
battle of the Wilderness, their father
gone down amid the dead host? Come,
young men and women who by such
disaster have had 10 make their own
way in life, and l will put the garland
on your young and unwrinkled
brow. Yes; you have had your own
Malvern Hill and your own South Noun
tain and your own Gettysburg all along
these twenty years. Come. And if |
cannot spare 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.
OBTAINS THE GARLANDS.
Before put the two garlands | am
twisting upon the Northern and South
ern tombS, detain the garlandS 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, 10 march shoulder to Shout
der against any foreign foe. The
twenty-SiX winters that have passed
since the war, | think, have sufficiently
cooled the hatredS that once burned
Northward and Southwark TO allow 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 to-
ward the Gulf of Mexico or marched
toward the North star, were honest
faces. 1t is too much to ask
either side to believe that those
who came out from their homes, forSak-
ing father aud 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 cotton and sugar cane. Men
did not sacrifice their all for fun. Men
do not eat mOudy bread or 60 without
bread at all for fun. Men do not sleep
unSheltered in equinOctal storms for
fun. There were some. no doubt, on
both 81 les who enlisted for soldiers pay
or expecting opportunity for violence
and pillace or burning with revenge,
and thirst for human blood, but such
cases were so rare many OF you who
were in the war four years never con-
fronted such an instance Of depravity.
As chaplain of Pennsylvania regi-
ment and as a representative OF the mi
ted States Christian Commission, | was
for while at the front and in those
hospitals at HagerStown and Williams
burg and up and down the Potomac.
where all the churches and farm-houSeS
were filled with wounded and dying
FederalS and ConfederateS, | forgot
amid the horrors 10 ask on which side
they fought, when with what little aid
| could take them for their suffering
bodies and the mightier aid | could pray
for their soHls, passed the days and
months amid scenes that in my memory
seem like a CHASTITY dream than possible
reality. When New Orleans boy, UNI
able 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 New Tesla
ment marked with his own life-blood
and | saw the leaf turned down at the
passage, My peace | give unto you,
not as the world giveth give | unto
you" i. read just as though it had been
a Northern New Testament. And when
sat down and took from a South Caro-
linian dying in barn at Bonneville
his last message to his wife and mother
and child, it sounded just like message
that Northern man dying far from
home would send TO his wife and MOTH