Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1898-03-31
A Literary Jem.

al GAo AOWtr house OF congress last
week when bill was under considera-
ton to pay personal losses to the sur
vivors Of the Maine disaster, Mr.. Cous
lns OF Iowa, made the following clas-
sical and electrifying speech:-
MIR. Speaker, whether this measure
shall prevail, either in the form in
which it has come from the committee
or in the form as proposed in the
amendment, it is both appropriate and
just; but hardly is it mentionable in
contemplation of the great calamity to
which it appertains. 1t will be an in
cidental legislative footnote to a page
OF history that shall be open to the
eyes of this Public and of the world for
all time to come. No human speech
can add anything to the silent graft
tude, the speechless reverence, already
given by a great and grateful nation
to its dead defenders and to their liv-
ing kin. No act of Congress providing
for their needs can make a restitution
for their sacrifice. Human nature does,
in human ways, its best, and still feels
deep in debt.
Expressions of coincidence have come
from every country and from every
cline, and every nerve of steel and
ocean cable has carried on electric
breath the sweetest, tenderest words
of sympathy for that gallant crew who
manned the Name. But no human
recompense can reach them. Human
ity and time remain their everlasting
Il cebtors. brave and strong
and splendid |ney we're a part
of the blood and bone and sinew OF a,u.
land. Two of them were from my ma
tive State of Iowa.
Some were only recently at the Uni
ted States Naval Academy, where they
had so often heard the morning and
the evening salutation to the flag
| that flag which had been interviewer
with the dearest memories of their
lives, that had colored all their friend
ships with the lasting blue of true
fidelity. But whether they came from
naval school or civil life, from one
State or another, they called each 9th
er comrade-that gem of human Ian
guage which sometimes means but
little less than love and little more
than friendship, that gentle salutation
of the human heart which lives in all
the languages Of man, that Winds and
turns and runs through all the joys
and sorrows of the human race, through
deed and thought and dream, through
song and toll and battlefield.
No foe had ever challenged them.
The world can never know how brave
they were. They never knew defeat;
they never shall. While at their posts
of duty sleep lured them into the abyss;
then death unlocked their slumbering
eyes but for an instant to behold it's
dreadful carnival, most of them just
when life was full of hope and all it's
tides were at their highest, grandest
flow; just when the early sunbeams
were falling on the sleeps of fame and
flooding all life's landscape far out in
to the dreamy, distant horizon; just at
that age when all the nymphs were
making diadens and garlands, waving
laurel wreaths before the eyes of young
and eager nature-just then, when
death seemed most unnatural.
lowering above the dark waters of
that mysterious harbor of Havana, the
black-winged vulture watches for the
belated dead, while over it and over all
there is the eagles piercing eye sternly
watching for the truth. [Applause,
Whether the appropriation carried
by this resolution shall be ultimately
charged to fate or to some foe, shall
soon appear. Meanwhile patient and
patriotic people, enlightened by the
lessons of our history, remembering the
woes of war, both to the vanquished
and victorious, are ready for the truth
and ready for their duty.
The tumult and the shouting dies
The captains and the kings depart
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice
An humble and contrite heart
Lord God ef Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget-lest we forget.
Loud and long continued applause.