Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1897-03-26

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 a 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 after the battle and got
it not. They were homesick and received
no message from their loved ones. They
died in barns, i'll 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 battlefelds. Why did these
fathers leave their children and go to
the front, and 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 90! We're there not enough
sick to be attended in these northern
latitudes? Oh, yes! But the doctor puts
a few medical books in his valise, and
some yials 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-
tions. He arrives in city over which
great horror is brooding. He goes from
couch to couch, feeling Of the pulse and
studying symptoms and prescribing day
after day, night after night, until fell
low physician says: Doctor, you had
better go home and rest. You look mis-
erable." 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 90 and look after
these 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
strangers tomb, and only the fifth part
Of a newspaper line tells us Of his sacri-
fice-his name just mentioned among
five. Yet he has touched the farthest
height Of sublimity in that three weeks
of humanitarian service. He goes
straight as an arrow to the bosom Of
him who said, Il was sick, and ye Wis
tied me. =" Life for life. Blood for blood.
Substitution!
In the legal profession see the same
principle Of self sacrifice. In ls46 vii.
liam Freeman, a pauperized 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 by armed constables. Who would
volunteer TO be his counsell No attorney
wanted to sacrifice his popularity by
such an ungrateful task. All were 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 anu irresFVnsi-
BILE and ought to be put in an asylum
rather than put to death, the heroic
counsel uttering these beautiful words:
II speak now in the hearing Of a peo-
pie who have prejudged prisoner and
condemned me for pleading in his be-
half. He is a convict, pauper, anegro
without intellect, sense or emotion. My
child with an affectionate smile dlsarms
nv careworn face of its frown whenever
l cross my threshold. The beggar III the
street obliges me to give because he
saws. God bless your as IpasS Ny dog
caresses me with fondnesS If | will but
smile on him. Ny horse recognizes me
when fill his manger. What reward,
what gratitude, what sympathy and al
fection can | expect here: 1hcre tho
prisoner sits. Look at him. Look AT the
assemblage around you. Listen to thei
i'll suppressed censures and their ,Xcltet
fears and tell me where among my neigh
bors or my fellow mCn, whIe even il
his heart can expect 20 find SEM
ment, a thought, not to say Il reward
or of acknowledgment, or even CT ifcoe-
milton? Gentlemen, you may tlink OF
this evidence what you pleaie, bring IL
what verdict you can, but l asseverate
before heaven and you that, to the best
of nv knowledge and belief, the prisoner
at the bar does not at this moment know
why it is that my shadow falls on 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 II. Seward was
right i. ] that hard, stony step Of OBJ
loquy H. ,..e Auburn courtroom was the
first step of the stairs of fame mp 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 III an
American courtroom than William H.
Seward. without reward, standing be-
tween the fury Of the populace and the
loathsome imbecile. Substitution
A Painters Pencil.
In the realm of the fine arts there
was as remarkable an instance. A bril-
liant but bypercriticised painter, Joseph
William Turner, was met by volley OF
abuse from all the art galleries Of Eu-
rope. His paintings, which have since
won the applause of all civilized ma.
tions-"The Fifth Plague Of Egypt, "
FISHERMEN on Lee Shore In Squally
Weather" "Calais Pier" "The Sun
Rising Through Mist" and Dido Build
ing Carthage"-were then targets for
critics TO shoot at In defense Of this
outrageously abused man young au-
thor Of "a years, just one year out OF
college. came forth with his pen and
-. A.. o,,ioet aud ,,,oet famOuS ESSAYS