The morning news., 1897-03-22


==----------.------- -
length, and breadth, and depth, and hight
of the anguish of the northern and south
ern 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!
But we need not go so far. What is
that monument in Greenwood? 1t is to
the doctors who fell in the southern cpl
demise. Why go? Were there not
enough sick to be attended in these north
ern ATTITUDES? Oh, yes but the doctor
put few medical books in his valise, and
some phials of medicine and leaves his
patients here in the hands of other ply
sicans. 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 a 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 a fel
low-physician says, doctor, you had bet
ter go home and rest; you look misera-
BILE" 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. 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 a newspaper line tells
us of his sacrifce-hs name just men,
toned among five. Yet he has touched
the furthest hight of sublimity in that
three weeks Of humanitarian service. He
goes straight as an arrow to the bosom
of him who said: 81 was sick and We
visited me-" Life for life. Blood for
blood. Substitution
In the legal profession I see the same
principle of self-sacrifice. In 1916, VIII
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 counsel? No attorney wanted
to sacrifice his popularity by such an un-
grateful 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 Will
| liam II. Seward, who saw that the pris-
| oner was idiotic and irresponsible, and
ought to be put in an asylum rather than
| put to death, the heroic counsel utterng
| these beautiful words:
II speak now in the hearing of a peo-
pie who have preiudged prisoner and con-
! demned me for pleading in his behalf. He
| is a convict, a pauper, a negro. without
| intellect, sense, or emotion. My child
| with an affectionate smile disarms my
| care-Worn face of its frown whenever 1
| cross my threshold. The beggar in the
| street oblige me to give because he says,
| God bless your as l pass. My dog ca
| NIT I
| smile on him. My horse recognizes me
| when / fill his manger. What reward,
| what gratitude what sympathy and al
lection can expect here? There the pris-
| oner Sits Look at him. Look at the as
| semblage 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 In his
| heart, can expect to find sentiment, a
| thought, not to say of reward or of ac-
| acknowledgements or even of recognition?
Gentleman, you may think of this evil
| dence what you please, bring in what YER
| dict you can, but l asseVerate before heav-
EN- and you, that, to the best of my knowl-
edge and belief, the prisoner at the bar
| does not at this moment know why II 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, and thai
! hard, stony step of obloquy in the Auburn
| court room was the first step of the stairs
| of fame up which he went to the top, oil
to within one step of the top, that last de-
| MED him through the treachery of Amer
| lean politics. Nothing sublimer was ever
seen in an American court room thar
| William II. Seward, without reward
| hot hp II pf
and the loathsome imbecile. Substitution
| In the realm of the fine arts there was
as remarkable an instance. A brilliant
but unprecedented painter, Joseph VIII
lam Turner, was met by volley OF abuse
from all the art galleries of Europe. His
paintings, which have since won the ap
plause of all civilized nations, THE Fifth
Plague of Egypt" Fishermen on a Lee
Shore in Squally Weather" Calais Pier,
"The Sun Rising Through Mist" anC
"Dido Building Carthage were then tar
gets for critics to shoot at In defense
of this outrageously abused man, youns
author of twenty-four years, just one yeal
out of college, came forth with his pen
and wrote the ablest and most famou:
essays on art that the world ever saw, ol
ever will see-John Ruskins "Moderr
Painters" For seventeen years this au
thor fought the battles of the maltreateC
artist, and after, in poverty and broken
public tried TO undo their cruelties to
ward him by giving him big funeral anC
burial in st. Paul's cathedral his old
time friend took out of a tin box nine
teen thousand pieces of paper containing
drawings by the old painter, and through
many weary and uncompensated months
assorted and arranged them for public
observation. People say John Ruskin II
his old days Is cross, misanthropic, anC
morbid. Whatever he may do that h
ought not to do. and whatever he MAJ
say that he ought not TO say between nov
and his death, he will leave this worl'
insolvent as far as It has any capacity t
pay this authors pen for its chivalrc an'
Christian defense Of a poor painters pen
ell. John Ruskin for William Turner
Blood for blood Substitution!
What an exaitiug principle this whicl
leads one 20 suffer for another! Nothinl
30 kndles enthusiasm or awakens elo
quence, or chimes poetic canto, or move
nations. The principle is the dominan
one in our religion-Christ the Martyr
Christ the Celestial Hero, Christ the De
fender, Christ the Substitute. No ney
principle. for II was as old as human ma
ture: but now on a grander, wided, high