The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1897-03-26

his every birthday with SOM
Eehento, and when he is brought hom'
worn ont with dissipation, nurses hin
till he gets well and starts him agail
and hopes and expects and prays ant
counsels and suffers until her strength
gives cut and she fails. She is gong
and attendants, bending over her pillow
ask her if she has any message to leave
and she makes great effort to say some
thing, but out of three or four minutes
of indistinct utterance they can catch
but three words, my poor boyP' The
simple fact is she died for him. Life tol
life. Substitution!
About SO years ago there went forth
from our northern and southern homes
hundreds OF thousands of men to do bat
tie for their country. All the poetry OF
war soon vanished and left them moth
ing but the terrible prose. They waded
knee deep in mud. They slept in snow
banks. They marched till their cut feet
tracked the earth. They were swindled
out of their honest rations and lived ON
meat not fit for dog. They had jaws
all fractured and eyes extinguished and
limbs shot away. Thousands of them
cried for water as they lay dying on the
field the night afte~ the battle and got
it not. They were homesick and received
no message from their loved ones They
died in barns in bushes, in bitches, the
buZZards of the summer heat the only
attendants on their obsequies. No one
but the infinite God, who knows every
thing, knows the ten-thousandth part of
the length and breadth and depth and
height of the anguish of the northern
and southern battlefields. Why did these
fathers leave their children and go to
the front, ard why did these young men,
postponing the 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 so far. What is
that monument in Greenwood? 1t is to
the doctors who fell in the southern ep-
idemics. Why go? We're there not enough
sick to be attended in these northern
ATTITUDES? Oh, yes But the doctor puts
a few medical books in his valise, and
some walls of medicine, and leaves his
patients here in the hands of other ply
sicians and takes the rail train. Before
he gets to the infected regions he passes
crowded rail trains, regular and extra.
taking the flying and affrighted popula-
lions. He arrives in 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 day, night after night, until fel
low physician says: Doctor, you had
better go home and rest You look mis-
cradle. But he cannot rest while so
many are suffering. On and ON until
some morning finds him in a delirium,
in which he talks of home, 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,
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 an arrow to the bosom OF
him who said, 81 was sick, and we Wis
tied me" Life for life. Blood for blood
Substitution!
In the legal profession l see the same
principle of self sacrifice. In 1916 Viii
lam Freeman, a pauperized and idiotic
negro, was at Auburn, n. Y, ON trial
'or murder. He had slain the entire
Van Nest family. The foaming wrath
If the community could be kept off him
only by armed constables. Who would
volunteer to be his counsel? No attorney
wanted to sacrifice his popularity by
such an ungrateful task All were silent
ave one-a young lawyer with feeble
voice that could hardly be heard outside
he bar, pale and thin and awkward. 1t
vas William H. Seward, who saw that
he prisoner was idiotic and irresponsi-
Die and ought to be put in an asylum
'ather than put to death, the heroic
uttering these beautiful words:
81 speak now in the hearing of peo-
de who have prejudged prisoner and
me for pleading in his be-
lalf He is convict, a pauper, negro,
without intellect sense or emotion. My
,hild with an affectionate smile disarms
ny careworn face of its frown whenever
cross my threshold. The beggar in the
treet obliges me to give because he
avs, God bless you'll as pass. My dog
aresses me with fondness if l will but /,
mile on him. My horse recognizes me
When l fill his manger. What reward, Y
What gratitude, what sympathy and af-
ection can l expect here? There the
prisoner sits. Look at him. Look at the
around you. Listen to their
II suppressed censures and their excited
ears and tell me where among my neigh
'ors or my fellow men, where even in -,
lis heart can expect to find a senti
nent, a thought, not to say of reward
r of acknowledgment, or even of recog-
ition? Gentlemen, you may think of :
his evidence what you please, bring in $
What verdict you can, but l asseverate
efore heaven and you that, to the best !
# my knowledge and belief, the prisoner
t the bar does not at this moment know !