Connecticut western news., 1896-10-01

scof and brutal attack 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 statehouse overlooking the Commonsg
 Read the biography of Robert Hall, the Baptist preacher, who, though he had been pronounced dunce at school, lived to thrill the world with his Chris tian eloquence. and of George Peabody, who never owned a carriage and denied himself all luxuries that he might while living and after death, through last will and testament, devote his un counted millions to the education of the poor people in England and America, and of Bishop James, who in boyhood worked his passage from Ireland to
 America and became the joy of Metho- dism and blessing to the race Go to the biographical alcove in city, state or national library and find at least every | other book an illustration of overcome obstacle and of carmine gate that had to
 be forced open.
 Living Gates
 What is true of individuals is true of nations. Was 1t mild spring morning when the pilgrim fathers landed on Plymouth rock and did they come in a , gilded yacht, gay streamers flying? No It 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 warwhoop. Red men on the
 beach. Red men in the forest Red men on the mountains. Red men in the val leys. Living gates of red men. Gates of carbuncle.
 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 fer tile, the rivers so populous with finny life, the acreage so immense, there will
 be nothing to do but eat, drink and be
 merry. No, The most powerful nation, by army and navy, sounded its protest across 3, 900 miles of water. Then came Lexington, and Bunker Hill. and Mon- mouth, and Long Island battles, and Valley Forge, and Yorktown, and star yation, and widowhood, and orphanage, and the 13 colonies went through suffer ings which the historian has attempted to put upon paper and the artist to put upon canvas, but all in vain. Engrayer's knife, and reporters skill, and tele- graphic wire, and daily press, which have made us acquainted with the hor
 TOTS of modern battlefield, had not yet begun their vigilance, and the story of st~ kac He,xar | told and never will be told. 1t did not {, take much ink to sign the Declaration | of Independence, but it took terrific l amount of blood to maintain it. It was an awful gate of opposition that the men and women-and the women as much as the men-pushed back. It was gate of self sacrifice. It was gate of blood. It was gate of carpuncle, Red Letter Days
 We are not indebted to history for our knowledge of the greatest of nation | al crises. Many of us remember it, and | fathers and mothers now living had bet | ter keep telling that story to their chill | dren, so that instead of their being de- | pendent upon cold type and obliged to say. "On such a page of such book ] you can read that. will they rather be | able to say: My father told me so, [" My mother told me SO" Men and women who vividly remember 1861, and 1862, and 1868, 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 the calla | lilies on the grave tops soon become
 breathless of perfume, and 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 l roadside and in churches and in ceme | teries by that annual recital will be
 kept fresh in the memory of generations
 as long as our American institutions
 are worthy of preservation. Long after
 you are dead your children will be able | to say, with the psalmist, "We have heard with cur ears, O God, cur ia | thers have told us, what work thou i, didst in their days in the times of old. " | But what time it was. Four years of
 homesickness. Four years of brotherly
 and sisterly arrangement. Four years
 of martyrdom. Four years of massacre. | Put them in long line, the confagra-
 tion of cities. and see them light up
 whole continent. Put them in long rows, the hospitals, making a vast me
 tropolis of pain and paroxysm. Gather
 them in one vast assemblage, the mil
 lions of bereft from the St. Lawrence
 to the gulf. and from the Atlantic to
 the Pacific beaches. Put the tears into
 lakes, and the blood into rivers, and
 the shrieks into whirlwinds. During
 those four years many good and wise
 men at the north and south saw nothing
 ahead but annihilation. With such
 national debt we could never meet our
 obligations. With such mortal antipa-
 thies northern and southern men could
 never come into amity. Representatives
 of Louisiana and Georgia and the Caro-
 linas could never again sit side by side
 with the representatives of Maine, Mas
 sachusetts and New York at the nation
 al capital.
 l Lord John Russell had declared that
 we were "a bubble bursting national
 ity," and it had come true. The na-
 tions 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 dug,
 and beside Babylon, and Thebes, and
 Tyre, and other dead nations of the past
 our dead republic was to be buried The
 epitaph was all ready: Here lies the
 American republic. Born at Philadel-
 phia, July 4, 1776. Killed at Bull Run
 July 21. 1861. Aged 80 years and IT
 days Peace to its ashes" But before
 the nhsennies had mite closed thera was