The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1893-10-04

/ In more elaborate and adorned place
than we could have afforded them they
were put away for the last slumber.
Hear II, mothers and t<hers of sailor
boys whose ship went dossn In our last
August hurricanei There ere no Green
woods or Laurel Hills or Mt. Auburns
so beautiful on the land as there are
banked and terraced and scooped and
hung in the depths of the sea. The
bodies of our foundered and sunken
friends are girdled and canopied and
housed with such glories as attend no
other Metropolis.
They were swamped I'm lifeboats, or
they struck on Goodwin sands or Deal
beach or the Skerries, and were never
heard of. or disappeared with the City
of Boston, or the Vile de Havre, or the
Cymbria, or were run down in a fishing
smack that put out from Newfound-
land. But dismiss your previous gloom
about the horrors of ocean entomb-
ment.
When SevastopOl was besieged in the
Anglo-French war, Prince Mentchikof.
commanding the Russian navy, saw
that the only way to keep the English
out of the harbor was TO sink all of
the Russian ships OF war i'm the road
stead. and so 100 vessels sank. When,
after the war was over. our American
engineer, Gowan, descended to the
depths in a diving bell, it was an I'M
pressive spectacle.
Sublime Burial.
One hundred buried ships! But Il is
that way nearly all across the Atlantic
ocean. Ships sunk not by command Of
admirals. but by the command of
cyclones. But they all had sublime
burial. and the surroundings amid
which they sleep the last sleep are
more imposing than the Tai Mahal, the
u
precious stones and built by the great
mogul Of India over his empress. Your
departed ones We're buried i'm the gar
dens of the sea, fenced off by hedges of
coralline.
The greatest obsequies ever known on
the land were those of Moses, where
no one but God was present. The sub
lime report of that entombment is in
the book OF Deuteronomy. which says
that the Lord buried him, and Of those
who have gone down TO slumber I'm the
deep the same may be said-''The Lord
buried them" AS Christ was buried in
garden, so your shipwrecked friends
and those who could not survive till
they reached port We're put down amid
iridescence-''In the midst Of the gar
den there was a sepulcher"
1t has always been a mystery what
was the particular mode by which
George G.. Goodman, the pulpit orator
Of the methodist church and the chap
lain Of the American congress, left this
life after embarking for England on
the steamship President, March II. 1s41.
That ship never arrived I'm port. No
one ever signaled her, and on both
sides Of the ocean IT has for fifty years
been questioned what became OF her.
But this l know about Cookman-that
whether 1T was iceberg or confiagration
midsea or collision he had more gar
lands on his ocean tomb than if, eX-
piring on land. each of his million
friends had put a bouquet on his casket.
In the midst of the garden was his
sepulcher
Jonah's Mistakes.
But that brings me to notice the mis-
homer in this Jonahitic expression Of
the text The prophet not only made a
mistake by trying to go to Tarshish
when God told him to go to Nineveh
but he made a mistake when he styled
as weeds these growths that enwrapped
him on the day he sank. A weed is
something that is useless. 1t is some
thing you throw out from the garden.
1t is something that chokes the wheat
1t is something to be grubbed out from
among the cotton. 1t is something un-
slightly to the eye. 1t is an invader of
the vegetable or floral world. But this
growth which spTang up from the depth
of the Mediterranean or fioated on it's
surface was among the most beautiful
things that God ever makes.
1t was a water plant known as the
red colored alga, and no weed at all.
1t comes from the loom Of infinite beauty.
1t is planted by heavenly love 1t is the
star Of a sunken armament. 1t is a
lamp which the Lord kindled. 1t is a
cord by which to bind whole sheaves
Of practical suggestion. 1t is a poem
all whose cantos are rung by divine
goodness. Yet we all make the mistake
that Jonah made in regard TO 1t and call
il q weed. THE weeds We're wrapped
about my head" All that is the trouble
on the land as on the sea We call
those weeds that are flowers
Picked up on the beach Of society are
children without home, without Oppor-
tunity for anything but sim seemingly
without God. They are washed nm
helpless. They are called ragamufins.
They are spoken Of as the rakings of
the world. They are waits; They are
street arabs. They are notsam and
jetsam of the social sea. They are some
thing TO be left alone. or something to
be trod on, or something to give up to
decay. Nothing but weeds They are
up the rickety stairs of that garnet.
1Hey are DOWN IN the cellar OF that
tenement house. They swelter I'm sum-
mers, when they see not one blade of
green grass, and shiver in winters that
allow them not one warm coat or shawl
or shoe
Such the city missionary found in one
Of our city rookeries, and when the Door
woman was asked is she sent her chill
dren to school she replied: mo. sir I
never did send 'em to school. I know it,
they ought to learn, but / couldn't I
try TO shame him SOMETIMES ut is nv
husband, sir) but he drinks and then
beats me-look at that bruise on my
face-and 1 tell him to see what is
comm to his children. There's Peggy
goes sellin fruit every night in those Gel
lars in Water-st.. and they're bells. sir.
She's learnin all sorts Of bad words there
and don't get back till IL O'Clock at
night. IF il wasn't for her earnin a
shillin or two in them places, 1 should
starve. Oh, l wish they was out of the
city. Yes. II Is the truth. would rather
have all my children dead than on the
street, but I can't help it,
Saved by Death,
Another one of those poor women,
found by a reformatory association, re-
cited her story OF want and woe and
looked up and said. 81 felt so hard to
lose the children when they died, but
now I'm glad they're gone" Ask any
one Of a thousand such children on the
streets, Where do you live?" and they
will answer. 81 don't live nowhere. ."
They will sleep tonight in ash barrels,
or under outdoor stairs, or on the wharf,
kicked and bruised and hungry. Who
o..