Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1897-03-27
simple fact is she died Tor him: Life for

, from our northern ana southern MONIES
hundreds Of thousands Of men to do bat
Ito for their country. All the poetry of
war soon vanished and left them moth
ing but the terrible prose. They waded
knee docp il mud They slept i'll snow
banks. They marched till their cut feet
tracked tho earth. They were swindled
out of thoir honest rations and lived OH
meat not fit for dog. They had jaws
all fractured and eyes oxtinguished and
limbs shot away Thousands of them
cried for water as thoy lay dying on tho
field the night after the battle and got
it not. They wero homesick and received
no message from their loved ones. They
died III barns, i'll bushes, i'll bitches, tho
buzzards of the summer heat tho only
attendants Oh their obsequies. No one
but the infinite God, who knows every
thing, knows tho ten-thousandth part Of
the length and breadth and depth and
height of the anguish Of the northern
and southern battlcflelds. Why did these
fathers leave their children and go to
the front, and why did these young men,
postponing tho marriage day, start out
! into the probabilities of never coming
back? For the country they died. Life
for life. Blood for blood. Substitution
Life For Life.
But We need not go 30 far. What is
that monument i'll Greenwood? 1t is to
the doctors who fell in the southern cp-
idemics. Why so? We're there not enough
sick to be attended in those northern
latitudos? Oh, yesl But the doctor puts
few medical books in his valiso, and
some Walls of medicine and leaves his
patients horo in the hands Of other ply
sicians aud takes tho rail train. Before
he gets to the infected regions he passes
crowded rail trains, regular and extra.
taking the flying and affrighted popula-
tions. He arrives i'll IL city over which a
great horror is breeding. He goes from
couch to couch, feeling Of the pulse and
studying symptoms and prescribing day
after dny, night after night, until fell
low physician says: Doctor, you had
better 20 home and rest. You look mis-
erablo. - But he cannot rest while so
many are suffering. On and on until
some morning finds him i'll dclirium,
in which he talks Of homo, and then
rises and says he must go and look after
those patients. He is told to lie down,
but he fights his attendants until he
falls back and is weaker and weaker,
and dies for people with whom he had
no kinship, and far away from his own
family, and is hastily put away in a
strangers tomb, and only the fifth part
of newspaper line tells us Of his sacri-
fice-his name just mentioned among
five. Yet he has touched the farthest
height of sublimity i'll that three weeks
of humanitarian service. He goes
straight as ;m arrow to the bosom Of
him who said, II was sick, and yc Wis
tied me-. Life for life Blood for blood.
Substitution
In the legal profession SEQ the same
principle of self sacrifice. In 1916 Viii.
liam Freeman, paupcrized and idiotic
negro, was at Auburn, N. Y, on trial
for murder. He had slain the entire
Van Nest family. The foaming wrath
OF. the community could be kept off him
only bv armed constables. Who would
volunteer to be his counsel? No attorney
wanted to sacrifice his popularity by
such an urgrateful task. Allwere silent
save one-a young lawyer with feeble
voice that could hardly be heard outside
the bar, pale and thin and awkward. 1t
was William II. Seward, who saw that
the prisoner was idiotic and irrcsponsl-
BILE and ought to be put i'll an asylum
rather than put to death, the heroic
counsel tutoring these beautiful words:
~ speak now in the heaIing of peo-
pie who have prejudged prisoner and
condemned me for pleading in his be-
half. He is convict, q pauper, anegro,
without intellect, sense or emotion. My
child with al affectionate smile dlsarms
nv careworn face of its frown whenever
cross my threshold. The boggar III the
street obiigos me to give because he
says, God bless you!' as pass. My dog
carcsses me with fondncss if will but
smile on him. My horse recognizes me
when fill his maEgcr. What reward,
what gratitude, what sympathy and al
lection can l expect here? There the
prisoner sits. Look at him. Look at the
assemblage around You. Listen to their
i'll suppressed censures and their excited
fears and tell me where among my neigh
bors or my fellow men, where even Ill
his heart 1 can expect to find sentl-
ment, thought, not to say Of reward
or of acknowledgment, or even of rccog-
milton? Gentlemen, you may think OF
this evidence what you please, bring in
what verdict you can, but l asseverate
before heaven and you that, to the best
of my knowledge and belief, the prisoner
at the bar does not ut this moment know
why it is that my shadow falls Oh you
instead Of his own
The gallows got its victim, but the
post mortem examination Of the poor
creature showed to all the surgeons and
to all the world that the public was
wrong, that William H. Seward was
right and that hard, stony step Of OBJ
loquy in the Auburn courtroom was the
first step of the stairs Of fame up which
he went to the top, or to within one step
of the top, that last denied him through
the treachery of American politics.
Nothing sublimer was ever seen in an
American courtroom than William H.
Seward. without reward, standing be-
tween the fury Of the populace and the
loathsome imbecilo. Substitution
A Painters Pencil.
In the realm Of the fine arts there
was as remarkable All instance. A bril-
liant but hylarcriticised painter, Joseph
William Turner, was met by q yolley OF
abuse from all the art galleries of Eu-
rope. His paintings, which have since
won tho applause Of all civilized ma.
tions-''The Fifth Plague of Egypt,
FISHERMEN OH Lee Shore In Squally