The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1898-05-28

out into the probabilities Of never
coming back? For a principle they
died. Life for life. Blood for blood.
Substitution!
But we need not go SO far. What is
that monument in h cemetery? tits
to the doctors who fell in the southern
epidemics. Why go? We're there nat
enough sick to he attended IN these
northern l~atitudesp oh, yes, but the
doctor puts a 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 flying
and affrighted populations. He ar
rives in a city over which "A great
horror is brooding. He goes from
couch to couch, feeling the pulse and
studying symptoms, and p%rescrib-
ing day after day, night after
night, until a fellQw-phYsician
says: doctor, yOu had better go home
and rest; you look miserable" But
he cannot rest while so many are s4f-
ferlng. On and on, until some morn
ing finds him in a delirium, in WHICH he
talks of home, and then rises and says
he must go and look after those pa
tients. He is told to lie down; but he
fights his until he falls
back, and is weaker and weaker, and
dies for people with whom he had no
kinship, and far away from his own
family, and is hastily put away in a
strangers tomb, and only the fifth
part of IL newspaper line tells us of his
sacriice-his name just mentioned
among five. Yet he has touched the
furthest 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 We visited me-" Life for life.
Blood tor blood. SHRstitGtiqnl
In the legal profession | see the
same principle of s~elf-sacrifce. In 1876,
William Freeman, a pauperized and
id;otic negrc, was at Auburn, N. Y,
on trial for murder. lie had slain the
entire Van Nest family. The foaming
wrath of the communi v could be kept
off him only by ar, i co~nstables.
Who would volunteer to DE his conn
sci? No attorney wanted to sacrifice
his popularity by such an Hngrateful
SHDA 49, ',AS tA~1 =
young lawyer 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 idlqtic 4nd irresponsible,
and ought to be put In an asylum. rather
than put to death, the heroic counsel
uttering these beautiful words:
Il speak now in the hearing of a
aaA,a1n uuIA Iar, 1-aI
and condemned me for pleading in his
behalf. He is a convict, Il pauper, Il
negro, without intellect, sense or emo
ton. My child with an affectionate
smile disarms my careworn face of its
fToTn whenever | c'oss my threshold.
The beggar in the street Obliges me to
give because he says, God bless your
as l pass. My dog caresSes me with
fnndness if will but smile on him.
My horse recognizes me when | fill his
manger. What reward, what grail
tude, what sympathy and affection
can | expect here? There the prisoner
sits. Look at him. Look at the as
semblage around you. Listen TO their
Unsurpassed censures and excited
fears, and tell me where among my
neighbOrs or my fellow-men, where,
even III his HedfL, l can expect 10 ma
p sentiment, "A thought, not To say of
reward or Of acknowledgement or even
Of recognition. Ge4tlemen, You may
think of this evidence what Won please,
bring in what verdict you can, bat
assevsPate before Heaven and Won,
that, to the best Of my knowledge aud
belief, the prisoner at the bar does not
at this moment know why it is that
my shadow falls on yon instead of his
own" The gallOws got its victim, but
the post-mortem examination OF the
poor creature showed to all the sur
geons and to all the world that the
public we're wrong, and William II.
Seward vas right, and that hard,
stony step of obloquy in the Auburn
court room was the first step Of the
stairs of fame u which he went to the