Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1898-04-16

from our northern and southern homes
hundreds of thousands of men TODD bat
tie. All the poetry of war SOON vanish
ed, and left them nothing but the terri
BILE prose. They waded knee deep in
mud. They slept i'll SHOW banks. They
marched till their cut feot tracked tho
earth. They woro swindled out of their
honest rations and lived on meat not fit
for a, dog. They had jaws fractured, and
eyes extinguished and limbs shot away.
Thousands of them cried for water as
they lay on the field the night aftor the
battle and got it not. They were home
sick and received no message from their
loved ones They died i'll barns, in
bushes, III bitches, tho buZZards of the
summer heat the Only attendants OH
their obsequies No one but the infinite
God. who knows everything, knows the
ten thousandth part of the length and
breadth and depth and height of anguish
of the northern and southern battle
fields. Why cid these fathers leave
their children and 90 to the front, and
why did these young men, postponing
the marriage day, start out into the
probabilities OF never coming Jack? For
a principle they died. Life for life
Blood for blood Substitution
Principle of Self Sacrifice.
But VIC need not go so far What is
that monument in the cemetery? 1t is
to the doctors who fell in the southern
epidcmics. 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
yalise, and some vials of medicine, and
leaves his patients here in the hands of
other physicians and takes the rail
train. Before he gets to the infected re.
gions he passes crowded rail trains, reg
ular and extra. taking the flying and
affrighted populations He arrives in
a city over which a great horror is
broodng lie goes from couch to
COUCH feeling the pulse and studying
symptoms and prescribing day after
day. night after night until fel.
low physician says, doctor, you had
better 60 home and rest; you look mis-
cradle But he cannot rest while so
many arc suffering. On and on. until
some morning finds him in delirium,
in which he talks of home, and then
rises and says he must 20 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
ifo l1inship and far away from his own
family, ard is hastily put away in Il
strangers tomb, and only the fifth part
of a newspaper line tells US of his sac
rifice-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, II was sick and ye Wis
tied me-" Life for lifel Blood for
blood Substitution!
AIN the legal profession see the same
principle of self sacrifice. In 1916 Will
liam Freeman, a pauperized and idiotic
negro, was at Auburn, n. Y, OH trial
for murder He had slain the entire
Van Nest family The foamins wrath
of the community could be kept off him
only by armed constables. Who would
volunteer to be his counsel? No attor-
ney wanted to sacrifice his popularity
by such an ungratcful task. All were
silent save one, Il young lawyer with
feeble voice that could hardly be heard
outside the bar, pale and thin and awk-
ward. 1t was William H. Seward, who
saw that the prisoner was idiotic and
irresponsible and ought to be put III all
asylum rather than put to death, tho
heroic counsel uttering these beautiful
words:
Substitution.
Il speak now in the bearing of a peo-
pie who have rrejudged prisoner and
condemned me for pleading i'll his be-
half He is a convict, pauper, negro,
without intellect sense or emotion. My
child with an atfectionate smile disarms
my careworn face OF its frown whenever
1 cross my threshold. The beggar in the
street obliges NE to give because he
says God bless you as pass My dog
caresses me with fondress if will but
smile Oil him. My horse recognizes me
when fill his manager. What reward,
what gratitude, what sympathy and
affection can expect here? There the
prisoner sits. Look at him. Look at the
assem- blage around you. Listen to their
i'll suppressed censures and excited fears
and tell ne where among my nelshbors
or my fellow men, where, even III his
heart, l can expect to find a sentiment
thought. not to say of reward or OF
acknowledgment or even of recognition.
Gentlemen, you may think of this evil
dence what you please, bring in what
verdict you can, tut asseverate before
heaven and you that to the best of my
knowledge and belief tho prisoner at
the bar does not at this moment know
why it is that NY shadow falls Oh you
instead OF his own. y
The gallows got its victim, but the
post norton examination of the poor
creature showed to all the surgeons and
to ali the world that the public were
wrong and William H. Seward was
right, and that hard, stony step OF
obloquy in the Auburn courtroom was
the first step of the stairs of fame up
which be 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 all American courtroom than
William H Seward without reward,
- -:---:.s between the furious populace
and the loathsome imbecile. Substltu-
ton!
In the realm of the fine arts there
was as remarkable an instance. A
brilliant but hypercriticised painter.
Joseph William Turner was met by a
volley of abuse from all the art galleries
of Europe. His paintings, which have
since won the applause of all civilized