Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1898-05-20


home worn out with dissipation, nurse.
him till he gets well, and starts hin
again, and hopes, and expects, unit
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 a great effort to say something
but out of three or four minutes of in
distinct utterances they can catch but
three words MY poor boym 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.
lhey 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 gotitnot. 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 battlefields. 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
epidemics. Why go? Were 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-
BILE" But he can not rest while so
many are suffering. On and on, un-
til some morning finds him in a
delirium, 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
tendants until he falls back, and is
weaker and weaker, and dies for peo-
pie with whom he had no lsinshnp, 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:
Il was sick and ye visited me-" Life
for life. Blood for blood. Substitu-
tion
In the legal profession | see the same
principle of self-sacrifice. In 1915.
William Freeman, paupcriz,d and idi-
otto negro, was at Auburn, n. Y, on
trial for murder. lie had slain the en-
tire 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
by such an ungrateful task.
All were silent save one, a young law
yer with feeble voice, that could hardly
be heard outside the bar, pale and thin
and awkward. 1t was William IL.
Seward, who saw that the prisoner
was idiotic and irresponsible and
ought to be put in an asylum, rather
than pun to death, the heroic counsel
uttering these beautiful words:
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, pauper, a ne
gro, without intellect, sense or emo
tion. My child with an affectionate
smile disarms my careworn face of its
frown whenever cross my threshold.
The beggar in the street obliges me to
give because he says: God bless you!'
as pass Ny dog caresses me with
fondness if | will but smile on him.
Ny horse recognizes me when fill his
What reward, what graft
tude, what sympathy and affec-
tion can | expect here? There
IL.
Look at the assemblage around
you. Listen to their ill-supprcssed
censures and excited fears, and tell me
where among my neighbors or my fell
lowmen, where, even in his heart,
can expect to find sentiment,
thought, not to say of reward or of ac-
acknowledgement or even of recognition.
Gentlemen, you may think of this evil
dence what you please, bring in what
verdict you can, but assevcrate 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
were wrong, and William II. Seward