News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-06-04
Flowers For Both Sides.
A UNIQUE MEMORIAL DAY SERVICE
IN BROOKLYN TABERNACLE.


for the South.
! BROOKLYN, May 31.-Yesterday hav-
ing been observed as Decoration Day,
DR.. TaImage this morning preached an
appropriate sermon. 1t was a novel
and unprecedented service, as in differ
ent parts of the audience were many of
those who had belonged to both Fed
eral and Confederate armies, the sub
ject having been previously announced,
namely, 1.-TWO Garlands for Northern
and Southern Graves" Over the pull
pit were two wreaths of beautiful flow
ers, and they were linked together so
that they were an object lesson of the
subject presented. Text: Isaiah xiii,
6-"I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Keep not back"
AN APPROPRIATE TEXT.
Just what my text meant by the
north and south cannot say, but in
the United States the two words are so
point blank in their meaning that no
one can doubt They mean more than
east and west, for although between
those last two there have been rivalries
and disturbing ambitions and infelicities
and silver bills and Worlds fair contro-
versies, there have been between them
no batteries numbered, no intrench-
ments dug, no long lines of sepulchral
mounds thrown up. 1t has never been
Massachusetts, Fourteenth regiment
against Wisconsin zouaves; it has new
er been Virginia artillery against Mis-
sissippi rifles.
East and west are distinct words,
and sometimes may mean diversity of
interest, but there is no blood on them.
They can be pronounced without any
information of wailing and death groan.
But the north and the south are words
that have been surcharged with TRACE
dies. They are words which suggest
that for forty years the clouds had been
gathering for a four years tempest
which thirty years ago burst in fury
that shook this planet as it has never
been shaken since it swung out at the
first world building.
1 thank God that the words have
lost some of the intensity which they
possessed three decades ago; that a
vast multitude of northern people have
moved south, and vast multitude of
southern people have moved north,
and there have been intermarriages by
the ten thousand, and northern colo
nels have married the daughters of
southern captains, and Texas rangers
have united for life with the daughters
of New York SDolitionists, and their
children aEs ilaf northern and half
southern and altogether patriotic. But
north and south are words that need to
be brought into still closer harmoniza-
ton.
l thought that now, when we are half
way between presidential elections, and
sectional animosities are at lowest ebb,
and now just after presidential jour
ney, when our chief magistrate, who
was chiefly elected by the north, has
been cordially received at the south;
and now, just after two Memorial Days,
one of them month ago, strewing
flowers on southern graves, and the
other yesterday, strewing flowers on
northern graves, it might be appropri-
ate and useful for me to preach SER
mon which would twist two garlands,
one FOR Tho northern dead md tho
other for the southern dead. and have
the two interlocked in a chain of flow
ers that shall bind forever the two sec
tons into one; and who knows but |
that this may be the day when the |
prophecy of the text made in regard to |
the ancients may be fulfilled in regard |
to this country, and the north give upits |
prejudices and the south keep not back |
its confidence. Il will say to the
north, Give up, and to the south, Keep |
not back"
THE PAINTINGS.
But before | put these garlands on
the graves l 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
wound than a cool bandage, and these
two garlands are cool from the night
dew. What morning that was on the
nah when the son was to start for the
warl What fatherly and motherly
COUNSEL What tearsl What heart
breaksl What charges to write home
oftenl What little keepsakes 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 awfuIly va
cant chair there was at the Christmas
and Thanksgiving tablet 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
the widowhood, the Or
phanage-who has a measuring line
long enough to tell the height of it, the
depth of it, the infnity of it9 What
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
long afterward, through the
there suffered, going down
to DEATH
SYMPATHY FOR THE BEREAvED.
/ detain from the top of the tomb
these two garlands that am twisting
for a little while that NAV with them
soothe the brow of the living. Over
the fallen the people Said: Poor fell
lowl What a pity that he should have
been struck down." We die not, how
ever, often enough say: ''Poor father!
Poor mother! Poor wife Poor child"
and so say it now. Have you realized
that by that wholesale massacre hun
dreds of thousands ofyoung people at
the north and the south have never had