The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1897-03-26

rough reply when she expresses anxiety
about him. But she goes right on,
looking carefully after his apparel, re-
Numbering his every birthday with
some memento, and when he is brought
home worn out with dissipation, nurses
him till he gets well, and starts him
again, and hopes, and expects,
and prays, and counsels, and suf-
fers. until her strength gives out and
she fails. She is going, and attend
ants, 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 catch but
three words: my poor boyw The
simple fact is she died for him. Life
for life. Substitution!
About Sc years ago there went forth
from our northern and southern 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 waded knee-deep in mud. They
slept in snowbanks. They marched
till their cut feet tracked the earth
They were swindled out of their h Onest
rations. and lived on meat not fit or 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 fl ED
tho night after 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 obse-
quies. No one but the infinite 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 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. Sub
stitution.
But we need not go so far. What is
that monument in Greenwood? 1t IS
to the doctors who fell in the southern
epidemics. Why go? We're 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 pitfalls of medicine.
and leaves his patients 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
a city over which a great horror is
broOding. He goes from couch to
couch, feeling of the pulse and study
ing the symptoms, and prescribing day
after day, night after night, until a
fellow physician says, Doctor, you
had better 60 home and rest; you look
miserable" 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 ne
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 strangers
tomb, and only the fifth part of a news
paper 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 hui
manitarian service. He goes straight
as an arrow to the bosom of Him who
said: Il was sick and We visited me-"
Life for life Blood for blood. Sub
stitution!
In the legal profession see the same
principle of self-sacrifce. In 1916,
William Freeman, a pauperized and
idiotic negro, was at Auburn, N. Y,
on trial for murder. He had slain
the entire Van Nest family. The foam
ing 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 ungrateful task.
All were silent save one, a young law
yer with feeble voice, that could hard
ly be heard outside the bar, pale and
thin and awkward. 1t was William
81. Seward, who saw that the prisoner
was idiotic and irresponsible, and
ought to be put in an asylum rather
than put to death, the heroic council
uttering these beautiful words:
81 speak now in the hearing of peo-
pie who have prejudged prisoner and
condemned me for pleading in his be-
half. He is a convict, a pauper, a
negro, without intellect, sense, or emo
ton. My child with an affectionate
smile disarms my care-worn face of its
frown whenever l cross my threshold.
The beggar in the street obliges me to
give because he says, God bless yOur
as l pass. My dog caresses me with
fondness if | will but smile on him.
My horse recognizes me when | fill his
manager. What reward, what graft
tude, what sympathy and affection can
l expect here? There the prisoner sits.
Look at him. Look at the assemblage
around you. Listen to their ill-sup-
pressed censures and their excited
fears, and tell me where among my
or my fellow-men, where,
even in his heart, can expect to find