The Monitor-register., 1897-03-26

NAS o&tN4o AaN SOb
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, and why did these young men,
p%ostponing 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 vallse, n
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-
tions. He arrives in a city over which a
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 fell
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,
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 sacrl-
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, 81 was sick, and We Wis
tied me-" Life for life. Blood for blood.
Substitution!
In the legal profession I see the same
principle of self sacrifice. In 1916 Will
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 u~ngrateful 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 H. Seward, who saw that
the prisoner was idiotic and irresponsi-
BILE and ought to be put in an asylum
rather than put to death, the heroic
counsel uttering these beautiful words:
81 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, a pauper, anegro,
without intellect, sense or emotion. My
child with an affectionate smile disarms
my careworn face of its frown whenever
1 cross my threshold. The beggar in the
street obliges me to give because he
says, God bless you'll as 1 pass. My dog
caresses me with fondness if I will but
smile on him. My horse recognizes me
when I fill his manger. What reward,
what gratitude, what sympathy and af-
lection can | expect here? There the
prisoner sits. Look at him. Look at the
assemblage 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 ever in
his heart | can expect to find a senti-
ment, a thought, not to say of reward
or of acknowledgment, or even of recog-
milton? Gentlemen, you may think of
this evidence what you please, bring in
what verdict you can, but 1 asseverate
before heaven and you that, to the best
of my 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 H. Seward was
right and that hard, stony step of OBJ
loquy in the Auburn courtroom was the
first step of the stairs of fame up 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 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 hypercriticised painter, Joseph
William Turner, was met by a 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 a Lee Shore In Squally
Weather" "Calais Pier" ''The Sur
Rising Through Mist" and "Dido Build.
ing Carthage"-were then targets fo1
critics to shoot at. In defense OF THU
outrageously abused man a young au
thor OF "a years, just one year out O.
college, came forth with his pen ant
wrote the ablest and most famous essay.
on art that the world ever saw or eve
will see - John Ruskin's "Moder1
Painters" For II years this author
fought the battles of the maltreated art
list, and after, in poverty and broker
heartedness, the painter had died ant
the public tried to undo their crueltie.
toward him by giving him a big funera
and burial in st. Paul's cathedral hi.
old time friend took out of a tin boz
10000 pieces of paper containing draw
ings by the old painter, and through
many weary and unc~ompensated months
assorted and arranged them for public
observation. People say John Ruskin il
his old days is cross, misanthropic ant
morbid. Whatever he may do that hi
ought not to do and whatever he may
say that he ought not to say between
now and his death he will leave thil
world i%nsolvent as far as it has any ca
pacity to pay this authors pen for it
chivalric and Christian defense of
poor painters pencil. John Ruskin fol
William Turner. Blood for blood. Sub
stitution!
What an exalting principle this which
leads one to suffer for another! Nothing
SO kindles enthusiasm or awakens elo
quence or chimes poetic canto or moves
nations. The principle is the dominan'
one in our religion-Christ the martyr
Christ the celestial hero, Christ thu