The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1898-05-19

The fact is that there are al uncounted
of mothers who, after they
have navigated large family of chill
dren through the diseases of infancy,
and got them fairly started up the
Towering slope of boyhood and girl
hood, have only strength enough left
to die. They fade away. Some call it
some call it nervous
some call it intermittent
or malarial indisposition; but call it
martyrdom of the domestic circle.
Life for life. Blood for blood. Sub
stitution!
Or perhaps mother fingers long
enough to see son get on the wrong
road, and his former kindness becomes
rough reply when she expresses ankle
ty about him. But she goes right on
looking carefully after his apparel, re-
membering 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 if she
has any message to leave, and she
makes great effort to say something,
but out of three or four minutes of in
distinct utterances 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
waded knee-keep in mud. They slept
in snowbanks. They marched till their
cut feet tracked the earth. They were
swindled out of their honest rations,
and lived on meat not fit for dog.
They had jaws fractured, and eyes ex-
tinguished. 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 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 battlefelds. Why did these
fathers leave their children and 20 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
epidemics. Why go? We're there not
enough sick to be attended in these
northern latitudes? Oh, yes; but the
doctor puts few medical books in his
valise, 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
region he passes crowded rail-trains,
regular and extra, taking the flying
and affrighted populations. He ar
rives in city over which great hor-
ror is brooding. He goes from couch
to couch, feeling the pulse and study
ing systoms, and prescribing day after
day, night after night, until fellow
physician says: Doctor, you had bet
ter go home and rest; you look misera-
ble." But he can not rest while Sc
many are suffering. On and on, un'
til some morning finds him in a
delirium, in which he talks of home,
and look after those patients. He is
told to lie down; but he fights his at.
tendants until he falls back, and is
weaker and weaker, and dies for peo.
| pie with whom he had no kinshlp, and
far away from his own family, and is
hastily put away in strangers tomb,
and only the fifth part of newspaper
line tells us of his sacrifice-his name
just mentioned among five. Yet he
has touched the furthest height of sub
Unity in that three weeks of humani
tartan service. He goes straight as an
arrow to the bosom of Him who said
II was sick and We visited me-" Life
for life. Blood for blood. Substitu
ton!
In the legal profession l see the same
principle of self-sacrifice. In 1876,
William Freeman, pauperized and idi
otic negro, was at Auburn, N. Y, on
trial for murder. He had slain the en-
tire Van Nest family. The foamine
wrath of the community could be KEEP
off him only by armed constables
Who would volunteer to be his counsel
No attorney wanted to sacrifice hi
popularity by such an ungrateful task
All were silent save one, a young law
yer with feeble voice, that could hardl,
be heard outside the bar, pale and thil
and awkward. 1t was William II
Seward, who saw that the prisone
was idiotic and irresponsible, AM
ought to be put in an asylum, rathe
than put to death, the heroic counse
uttering these beautiful words:
| speak now in the hearing of pee
pie who have prejudged prisoner an
condemned me for pleading in his bt