The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1896-10-09

again almost destroyed them. For
some good reason God has arranged it
for all the centuries that the only way
for most people to get livelihood for
themselves and their families is with
both hands and all the allied forces of
the body. mind and soul to push back
and push open the red gate, the gate
of carbuncle. For the benefit of all
young men, if had the time, would
call the roll of those who overcame OBJ
stacle. How many of the mighty men
who went one way on Pennsylvania
avenue and reached the United States
senate. or walked the other way on
Pennsylvania avenue and reached the
White House, did not have to climb
over political obloquy? Not one. How
much scorn and scoff, and brutal at
tack did Horace Mann endure between
the time when he first began to fight
for better common school system in
Massachusetts,, and the day when a
statue in honor of him was placed on
the steps of the state house overlook
ing "The Commons?"
What is true of individuals il true of
nations. Was it mild spring morn
ing when the pilgrim fathers landed
on Plymouth Rock, and did they come
in a gilded yacht, gay streamers fly
ing? No. 1t was in cold December,
and from a ship in which one would
not want to cross the Hudson or the
Potomac river. Scalping knives all
ready to receive them, they landed,
their only welcome, the Indian war
whoop. Red men on the beach. Red
men in the forest Red men on the
mountains. Red men in the valleys.
Living gates of red men. Gates of
carbunclel
Aboriginal hostility pushed back,
surely now our forefathers will have
nothing to do but to take easy posses
sion of the fairest continent under the
sun. The skies so genial, the soil so
fertile, the rivers SO populous with
finney life, the acreage so immense,
there will be merry. No. The most
powerful nation, by army and
navy, sounded its protest across
5000 miles of water. Then came
Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and Mon
mouth, and Long Island battles, and
and Valley Forge, and Yorktown, and
starvation, and widowhood, and or
phanage, and the thlr teen colonies
went through sufferings which the his
torian has attempted to put upon can
vas, but all in vain. Engraver's knife,
and reporters skill, and telegraphic
wire, and daily press, which have
made us acquainted with the hor-
rors of modern battlefield, had not
yet begun their vigilance, and the
story of the American revolution has
never been told, and never will be
told. 1t did not take much ink to sign
the Declaration of Independence, but
it took terrific amount of blood 20
maintain it. 1t was an awful gate of
opposition that the men and women
and the women as much as the men
pushed back. 1t was a gate of self
sacrifice. 1t was a gate of blood. 1t
was gate of carbuncle.
We are not indebted to history for
our knowledge of the rSatest of ma
tional crises Many of us rsnember
it, and fathers and mothers now living
had better keep telling that story to
their children, so that instead of their
being dependent upon cold type and
obliged to say: ION such page of such
a book you can read that" will they
rather be able to say: my father told
me so!'' MY mother told me SOP Men
and women who wildly remember 1861,
and 1862, and 1863, and 1864, be your
selves the historians, telling it, not
with pen. but with living tongue and
voice and gesture. That is the great
use of Memorial Decoration day, for
Al. =.
become breathless of perfume, aud
in week turn to dust like
unto that which lies beneath
them. But the story of courage and
self-sacrifIce and patriotism told on
platforms and in households and by
the roadside and in churches and in
cemeteries, by that annual recital will
be kept fresh in the memory of gener-
atoms as long as our American insti-
buttons are worthy of preservation. /
beg after you are dead your children
will be able to say, with the Psalmist:
1--WE have heard with our ears, 0 God,
our fathers have told us, what
work Thou didst in their days,
in the times of old" But what
time it wasl Four years of
homesickness! Four years of brotherly
and sisterly enlargement Four years
of martyrdom! Four years of massa-
ere! Put them in long line, the con-
hagration of cities, and see them light
up a whole continent Put them in
long rows, the hospitals, making
vast metropolis of pain and paroxysm!
Gather them in one vast assem- blage,
the millions of bereft from the St
Lawrence to the gulf, and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific beachesI
Put the tears into lakes, and
the blood into rivers, and the shrieks
into whirlwindsl During those four
years many good and wise men at the
north and the south saw nothing
ahead but annihiliation. With such
national debt we could never meet our
obligationsl With such mortal antip-
athies northern and southern men
could never come into amity! Repre-
sentatives of Louisiana and Georgia,
and the Carolinas could never
again sit side with the repre-
sentatives OF Maine, Massachu-
sets, and New York at the national
capital. Lord John Russell had de-
clared that we were "a bubble burst
ing nationality" and it had come true.
The nations of Europe had gathered
with very resigned spirit at the funeral
of our American republic. They had
tolled the bells on parliaments and
reichstags and lowered their flags at
half-mast, and even the lion on the
other side of the sea had whined for the
dead eagle on this side. The deep grave
had been duC and beside BABYLON and