The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1896-06-13

Arlington Heights, Washington, I
was not 90 much Impressed with
the minute guns that shook
the earth or with the attendance
of president and cabinet and for
eign ministers and generals OF the
army and commodores of the navy, a.
with the pathetic and overwhelming
suggestiveness of that epitaph on SO
many graves at my feet Unknowni
Unknowni II seems to me that the
time must come when the government
of the United States shall take of that
epitaph. They are no more unknown!
We have found them out ut last. They
are the beloved sons of the republic
Would Il not DO well to take the
statue of the heather goddess of the
top of the capitol (for ! have no faith
In the morals of heather goddess)
and put one great statue in al our ma
tional cemeteries-a great statue OF lb-
erty in the form Of . Christian woman
with her hand on an open Bible and her
foot on the Rock Of Ages, with the other
hand pointing down to the graves OF
the unknown, saying, There are my
sons who died that might live. !"
Take of the misnomer. Every body
knows them. 1t Ia Of comparatively
little Importance what was the name
given them in baptism of water. In
the holier and mighter baptism OF
blood we know them, and yesterday
the nation put both arms around them
and Rugged them to her heart crying,
''Mine forever!"
Again, by this national ceremony
we mean the future defense Of this
nation. BY every wreath of flowers
on the soldiers graves we say: "Those
who die for the country shall not be
forgotten" and that will give enthu-
siasm to our young men in case our
nation should in the future need de-
fend itself in battle. We shall never
have another war between the north
and south. The old decayed bone OF
contention, American slavery, has been
cast out, although here and there de-.
PRAYED politician takes it up to see II
he can't gnaw something off it We
are farther and farther from the pos
sibility of sectional strife.
No possibility of civil war. But
about foreign invasion l am not so
certain. When spoke against war
said nothing against self-defense. An
inventor told me that he had invented
a style of weapon which could be used
in self-defense, but not in aggressive
warfare. l said; when you get the
nations to adopt that weapon you have
introduced the millennium" / have
no right to go off my neighbours
premises and assault him, but if Some
ruffian break into my house for the as
sassination Of my family, and I can
borrow a gun and load 1t in time and
aim it straight enough, ! will shoot
him.
II foreign foe should come, we want
men like those of 1862 to meet them.
We want them all up and down tho
coast Pulaski and Fort Sumter In the
same chorus Of thunder as Fort La
fayette and Fort Hamilton. Men who
will not only know how to fight, but
how to die When such time
comes, IL 1t ever does come, tho
generation on the stage of action
will say: my country will care for.my
family as they did In the soldiers asy-
lum for the orphans of the civil war,
and my country will honor my dust as
1t honored those who preceded me in
patriotic sacrifice, and once year at
any rate, on Decoration day, shall be
resurrected into the remembrance of
those for whom died. Here go for
God and my country! Huzzah!"
II foreign foe should come, the old
sectional animosities would have no
power. Here go our regiments into the
battlefield: Fifteenth New York vol
unteers, Tenth Alabama cavalry, Four
teenth Pennsylvania rifemen, Tenth
Massachusetts, artillery, Seventh South
Carolina sharpshooters. do not
know but it may require the
attack of some foreign foe to
make us forget our absurd sectional
wrangling. l have no faith in the cry,
mo North, no South, no East. no
West" Let all four sections keep
their peculiarities and their preferen.
ces, with each doing its own work and
not interfering with each other, each
of the four carrying its part into the
great harmony-the bass, the alto, the
tenor, the soprano the grand march
of the Union. -
In olden times the Hebrews, return
ing from their burial place, used to
pluck the grass from the field three or
four times, then throw it over their
heads, suggestive of the resurrection.
We pick not the grass, but the flowers,
and instead of throwing them over our
heads we place them before cur eyes,
right down over the silent heart that
once beat with warmest love toward
us, or over the still feet that ran to
service, or over the lips from which we
took the kiss at the anguish of the last
parting.
But stop! We are not infidsls. Our
bodies will soon join the bodies of our
departed in the tomb, and our spirits
shall join their spirits in the land of
the rising sun. We can not long be
separated Instead of crying with
Jacob for Joseph, ~ will 60 down in
to the grave unto my son, mourning"
let us cry with David: II shall go to
him."
On ono ~ tho yatas ~ Graan,vnol q.