Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1898-04-21

to die. They fade away. Some call i
consumption; some call it nervous
prostratiou; som. call it intermitten nj
or malarial indisposition: but | call il
| martyrdom OF the domestic circle
| Life for life. Blood for blood Sub.
stitution!
Or perhap, mother fingers long
| enough to SIS soI get on the wrong
road and his former kindness becomes
rough reply when she expresses ankle
| ty about him But She goea right on
looking carefully after his apparel, re-
memDering 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. until
her prays, and counsels. and suffers,
until her strength gives out and she
fails. She is going, and attendants,
bending over her pillow, ask her il she
has any message to leave, and she
makes great effort to say something,
but out of three or four minutes of in.
distinct uttcrances they can catch but
three words: "My poor boy!" The
simple fact is she died for him. Life
for life. Substitution!
About thirty-eight years ago there
went forth from our northern and
southern homes hundreds of thousands
of men to do battle. All the poetry OF
war soon vanished and left them moth
ing but the terrible prose. They
,yuInI II ~. IL, ,,tI Ufhnu Slpnt
in snowbanlts. They marched till their
cut feet tracked the earth. They were
swindled out of their honest rations,
and lived on meat not fit for "a dog.
They had jaws fractured, and eyes ex-
tingushed, and limbs shot away.
Thousands of them cried for water as
they lay on the field the night after the
battle and got it not. They were home
sick 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 obs cquies. 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 battlehelds. 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 principle they
died Life for life Blood for blood
Substitution!
But we need not go so far. What is
that monument in the cemetery? 1t is
to the doctors who fell in the southern
epidenics. Why goP 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 walls of medicine, and
leaves his patients here In the hands of
other physicians, and takes the rail
train. Before he gets to the infected
region he passes crowded rail-trains,
regular and extra, taking the dying
and atfrighted populations. He ar
rives in II city over which u great hor-
ror is brooling He goes from couch
to couch, feeling the pulse and study
ing systems, aud prescribing day after
day, night after night until II fellow
physician says: Doctor, you had bet
ter go home and rest; you look miscra-
BILE. but he can not rest while SO
many are suffering. On and on, I'M
Til some morning finds him in a
deirium, in which he talks of home,
and then rises and says he mast go
and look after those patients He is
told to lie down; but he fights his at
PENDANTS until he falls back, and is
weaker and weaker, and dies for peo-
Pile with whom he had no l<nshlp, and
far away from his own family, and is
hastily put away In II strangers tomb,
and only the nth part Of Il newspaper
line tells us of his sacrifice his name
just mentioned among tive. Yet he
has touched the furthest height of sub
Unity in that three weeks of humane
tartan service, lie goes straight ms IN
arrow to the bosom of Him who said
Il was sick and ye visited me" Life
for life. Blood for blood. Suhstitu.
ton!
In the legal profession | ste the same
principle of self-sacrihce In 1916,
William Freeman, pauperized and idi-
otto negro, was ut Auburn, y. Y, on
trial for murder. lie had slain the on
tire Van Nest family. The foaming
wrath of the community could be kept
of him only by armed constables
Who would voluutecrto be his counsel?
No attorney wanted to sacrifice his
popularity by such an ungrateful task
All were silent save one, II young law
yer with feeble voice, that could hardly
be heard outside the bar, pale and thin
and awkward, 1t was William II.
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 counsel
utteriug these beautiful words:
speak now In the hearing of peo-
pie who have prcjudged prisoner and
condemned me for pleading in his be-
half. lie is u convict, a pauper, u ne
gro, without intellect, sense or emo
ton, My child with an atfectionate
smile disarmS my careworn face OF it's
frown whenever cross my threshold.
The beggar In the street obliges me to