St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1897-04-24

DOrs
homes hundreds Of thousands Of men
to do battle for their country. All the
poetry Of war soon vanished. and left
them nothing but the terrible prose.
They wsded knee-deep In mud. They
slept in snowbanks. 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
eyesextinguished, and limbs shot away.
Thousands of them cried for water
rs they lay dying ON the field
the night after the battle and
got it not They were homesiclx,
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 in
finite God who knows everything,
knows the ten-thousandth part of the
length and breadth, and depth, and
height of the anguish of the northern
and southern battle fields. Why did
these fathers leave their children and
60 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. Lite for life. Blood for
blood. Substitution!
But we need not GO 50 far. What h
that monument in Greenwood? 1t is
to the doctors who fell in the southern
epidemicS Why 60? Were there not
enough sick to be attended in these
northern ATTITUDES? Oh, yes; but the
doctor puts few medical books in his
valise, and some phials Of medicine,
and leaves his patients here in the
hands Of other physicians, 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 populations. 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 . fellow-physi-
clan says: doctor you had better
go home and rest; You look mis-
erable." But he can not rest while SO
many are suffering. On and on, until
some morning finds him in . delirium,
in which he talks Of home, and then
rises and says he must go and look If
ter those patients. He is told to lie
down; but he fights his attendants un-
til 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 = newspaper line tells us Of
his sacrifice-his name just mentioned
among five. Yet he has touched the
furthest height of sublimity in that
three weeks of humanitarian service.
He goes straight IS an arrow to the
busom of Him who said: II was sick
and We visited me-" Life for life.
Blood for blood. Substitution!
In the legal profession 1 see the same
principle of self-sacrifice. In 1876, Will
liam Freeman, . pauperized and idiotic
negro. was ut Auburn, N. Y, ON trial
Van Nest family. The foaming wrath
of the community could be kept on him
only by armed constables- Who would
volunteer to be his counsel9 No attor-
ney wanted to sacrifice his popularity
by such IN ungrateful task. All were
silent save one, . young lawyer with
feeble voice, that could hardly be heard
outside the bar, pale and thin and
awkward. It was William H. Seward,
who saw that the prisoner was idiotic
and irresponsible, and ought to be put
in IN asylum rather than put to death,
the heroic counsel uttering these beau
tiful words:
II speak now in the hearing of peo-
pie who have prejudged prisoner and
condemned me for pleading in his be-
half He is . convict, . panper, .
tion. Ny child with m affectionate
smile disarms my care-worn face of its
frown whenever cross my threshold.
The beggar in the street obliges me to
give because he says: God bless you!
Is pass. My dog caresses me with
fondness if will but smile ON
him. My horse recognizes me when
I fill his manger. What reward,
what gratitude. what sympathy
and affection can expect here?
There the prisoner sits Look ut him.
Look 1t the assemblage around you.
Listen to their ill-suppresed censures
and their excited fears, and tell me
where among my neighbors or my fel-
low-men, where, even in his heart /
can expect to find = sentiment. .
thought not to say of reward or of
acknowledgment, or even of recogni-
ton? Gentlemen, you may think Of
this evidence what you please, bring
in what verdict you can, but I assever-
ate before Heaven and you, that, to
the best Of my knowledge and belief,
the prisoner 1t the bar does not 1t this
moment know why it in that my shad-
ow 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 al the world that the public was
wrong, that William n. Seward was
right, and that hard. stony step of
obloquy in the Auburn court room 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 in IN American court room than
william H. Seward, without reward,
standing between the fury Of the
populace and the loathsome imbecile.
In the realm Of the fine arts there
was as remarkable IN instance. A
brilliant but hypercriticised painter.
Joseph william Turner, was met with
. volley Of abuse from Ill the art gal
leries Of Europe. His paintings which
have since won the applause Of Ill
civilised nations, THE Fifth Plague Of
Egypt" Fishermen on . Lee Shore in
Weather" /" Calais Pier, ? The
Sun Rising Through MIST" and s'Dido
Building Carthage" were then tar
gets for critics to shoot q. In
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