The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1893-05-25

she felt that way.''
CHARLES MoREAU HARaER
UNFADING GARLANDS.
The Significant Teachings of Memorial
Day-Flowers for the Living Also.
The blossoms were as fragrant, the
sunshine was as golden, the south wind
was as caressing in 1861 as in the
spring time that enfolds us all to-day.
More than thirty years have passed,
like the shadow on the dial, since
through this great land, up and down,
to and fro, east and west, flashed the
tidings of the first encounter in what
was to be the stubborn struggle of that
tremendous national discipline, our
civil war. North and south, men and
women were terribly wrought up in
1861.
Somebody reads this who stood at
window, waving her hand, choking
back the binding tears, holding up her
baby, to somebody else, marching away
and out of sight to the sound of defiant
music. Somebody's hair. was brown
cAANns oASA AACA SHCCh was IOuuuS uCI
eyes were full of youth, her soul ran
over with enthusiasm. She is older
now-many years older. Her grand
children find her spectacles for her.
They help her gather flowers for a
grave. They will never understand
how young she was, how ardent, how
brave, when she made her sacred sacri-
fee, and laid her dearest on her coun-
try's altar. Nor do they dream, brought
up in the sweet, tranquil years of peace,
of the compensations, the grandeur,
the development, that came with the
suffering and suspense to the woman
whose beloved went to the war in 1861
''Come from the four winds, o breath,
and breathe upon these slain, that they
may live!' is the eloquent legend in
scribed on the monumental shaft that
pierces the smiling landscape in the SOL
diers' cemetery at Savannah. Ga. There
were noble hearts and true among those
who came from the southern college
and southern farm to fight for what
they thought good cause. Mere boys
or bearded men, they threw themselves
into the war with fiery energy, and
counted not their lives de:lr. Many of
us had kindred on both sides, and none
could tell, when rife aimed by
sharpshooter did it's fatal errand with
deadly precision, where the tally of the
wounded should be ended.
Love and tears for the blue!
Tears and love for the gray!
The words and the sentiment meant
much to us when they were first ex-
pressed in our hearing; they mean much
yet to us who remember. And when
we sit by the fire and think, calling
over the long roll of those who were.
and are not; when, between the dark
and the daylight, we summon back this
bright comrade, that dear friend, who
walked softly all their days because
health and vigor went in swampss and
intrenchments; when our hero, gray
and broken, walks by us with an empty
sleeve, it hurts that there are those to
whom it is so slight thing.
To-day, instead of sewing up seams
and scraping lint, we are weaving
great garlands, and carrying them,
reverently or thoughtlessly as it may
be, to lay upon the soldiers graves.
Memorial day, losing in part, and of
necessity, its earlier tenderness, as time
alleviates the desolation of bereave-
ment, is more and more d precious OPP
portunity, an annual object lesson to
this vast commercial republic, so often
in danger of forgetting by what proc
esses its glory grew. The gay girl, the
challenging boy, the astute man of
business are alike the better for the
yearly reminder that, in season when
the nation was in peril, the nation was
saved by sacrifice.
So to bring up our sons and daughters
that they may scorn everything base,
that they may shape their lives to noble
ends, that they may set high ideals be-
fore them and walk worthily is surely
one significant teaching of Memorial
day. We, with our companions and
competitors, are soon to pass from the
stage in actual bodily presence. Ere
long we shall be of no more account to
the busy multitudes of living men than
are the old Greeks and Romans, or-the
soldiers who set their battle line in ar
ray on Lookout mountain or in the
wilderness. But as the lives of all who
have gone have entered into and modi-
fed and aided in uplifting ours, 80 ours
will tell on those who are to I've our
successors. Viewed in this light, ito
be living is sublime!'
If self-denial, chivalry, self-abnega-
tion, gentleness, courage, courtesy
were beautiful and noble in the dead.
they are equally SO in the living. If we
strew flowers on the graves of these
who rest, let us bring them also, and
daily, to those among us who toll.
There are Woodworking fathers and
mothers, weary invalids, discouraged
people, old and young. who are never
long out of the conflict of life. Life for
them is always a battle, and often de-
feat. What can we do to ease their
burdens, to cheer their souls, TO decorate
some of their commonplace, dusty,
cropping days? Love should not ask in
valn.-Margaret E. Sangster, in Chris
tan Union. ~. &c.,. .~ -.
-Ten-year-old Ethel's expansive idea
OF wealth consists in possessing mon
illions of dollars and her imaginary
calculations never fall below this con-
siderable amount. ''Auntie," she said.
one day, do You know what I would
do first thing if had nonillions Of dol
1ars?" Auntie confessed her inability
TO guess, "Well." said Ethel, II would
hire somebody to listen to graaape's
old stories, 9 = -. =