The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1894-11-16

part, TO close the eyes that never can
look merry at our coming, to kiss the
hand that viii never again do us a
kindness. i know religion gives great
consolation in such an hour, and we
ought to be comforted; but anyhow
and anyway you make it, Ii Is awful.
I On steamboat wharf and at rail-car
window we may smile when we say
| farewell; but these good byes at the
death-bed, they take hold of the heart
with iron pincers, aud tear out by the
/ roots until all the fibers culver and
| curl in the torture and drop thick
/ blood. These separations are wine-
/ presses in which our hearts, like red
clusters, are thrown, and then trouble
turns the windlass round and round
until we are utterly crushed and no
more capacity TO suffer, and we stop
crying because we have wcpt all our
\ tears.
On every street, at every doorstep,
| by every couch, there have been part
ings- But once past the heavenly por-
( tails, and you are through with such
| scenes forever. In that land there are
many hand-claspings and embracings,
but only in recognition. That great
hOme-circle never breaks. Once find
your comrades there, and you have
them forever. No Grape floats from
the door of that blissful residence.
No cleft hillside where the dead
sleep. ALL awake, wide awake, and
forever. No pushing out of emigrant
ship for foreign shore. No tolling of
bell as the funeral passes. Whole
generations of glory. Hand to hand,
heart to heart, joy to joy. No creep
ing up the limbs of the death chill, the
feet cold until hot fiannels can not
warm them. No rattle of sepulchral
gates. No parting, no pain.
Further, the heavenly city will have
no pain of body. The race is pierced
with sharp distresses. The surgeons
knife must cut. The dentists pincers
must pull. Pain is fought with pain.
The world is a hospital. Scores of
diseases like vultures contending for
carcass, struggle as to which shall
have it. Our natures are infinitely
susceptible to suffering. The eye, the
foot, the hand, with immense capacity
of anguish.
The little child meets at the entrance
of life manifold diseases You hear
the shrill cry of infancy as the lancet
strikes into the swollen gum. You
see its head toss in consuming fevers
that take more than half of them into
the dust. Old age passes, dizzy and
weak and5 short-breathed and dim
sighted. On every northeast wind
come down pleurisies and pneumonias.
War lifts its sword and hacks away the
life of whole generations. The hoSpi-
tails of the earth groan into the ear of
God their complaint. Asiatic choleras
and ship fevers and typhoids and Lon
don plaques make the worlds knees
knock together.
Pain has gone through every street
and up every ladder and down every
shaft. 1t is on the wave, on the mast,
on the beach. Wounds from clip of
eleghant's tus1 and adder's sting, and
crocodile's tooth, and horses hoof,
and wheels revolution. We gather
up the infrmities of our parents and
transmit to our children the inheritance
augmented by our own sickness, and
they add them to their own disorders,
to pass the inheritance to other gen.
erations. In A. d. 262 the plague in
Rome smote into the dust five thou
sand citizens daily. In ga, in Con-
stantinople, a thousand grave-diggers |
were not enough to bury the dead. In |
1918 ophthalmia seized the whole Prus-
sian army. At times the earth has
sweltered with suffering.
Count mp the pains of Austerlitz. |
where thirty thousand fell; of Fonte- |
noy, where one hundred thousand fell; !
of Chalons, where three hundred thou |
sand fell; of Marius' fight, in which |
two hundred and ninety thousand fell; |
of the tragedy at Herat, where Genghis |
Khan massacred one million six hun
bred thousand men, and Nishar, where |
he slew one million seven hundred and |
forty-seven thousand people; of the |
eighteen million people this monster |
sacrificed in fourteen years, as he |
went forth to do as he declared, !
to eXterminate the entire Chinese |
nation and to make the en- |
pire pasture for cattle. |
Think of the death throes of the five !
million men sacrificed in one campaign |
of Xerxes. Think of the one hundred |
aud twenty thousand that persisted in /
the seige of Ostend, of three hundred |
thousand dead at Acre, of one million |
OIC IAOuodnAt NCdNl III bAlC /
siege OF Jerusalem, of the one million /
eight hundred and sixteen thousand of |
the dead at Troy, and then complete |
the review by considering the stupen-
dOus estimate of Edmund Burke-that |
the loss by war had been thirty-five |
times the entire then present popula-
ton Of the globe.
Go through and examine the lacera-
tions, the gunshot fractures, the saber |
wounds, the gashes of the battle-ax.
the slain of bombshell and exploded |
mine and falling wall, and those de-
stroyed under the gun carriage and |
the hoof of the cavalry horse, the burn
ing thirsts, the camp fevers, the frosts /
that shivered, the tropical suns that
smote. Add it up, gather it into one
like, compress it into one word, spell it I
in one syllable, clank it in one chain,
pour it out into one groan, distil it into !
one tear.
Ay, the world has writhed in six /
thousand years of suffering. Why |
doubt the possibility of future world !
of suffering when we see the fortunes
that have been inflicted in this? A |
deserter from Sebastopol coming over
to the army of the allies pointed I
back to the fortress and /
said: THAT place is a perfect hell .