The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1898-04-15

AuOub uAAn. Dut eno BOob EiBhb I'LL AcS~
ing carefully after his apparel. remem-
boring his every birthday with some
memento, and when he is brought
home worn out with dissipation nurses
him till he gets we'll and starts him
again and hopes and expects and prays
and oounsels and suffers until her
strength gives out and she fails She 10
going, and attendants, bending over her
pillow, ask her If she has any message
to leave, and she makes great effort to
Ray something, but out of three or four
minutes of indistinot utternnoe they can
catch but three words, my poor boyP
The simple fact ia she died for him.
Life for lifel Substitution
About 39 years ago there went forth
from our northern and southern homes
hundreds Of thousands Of men to do bat
tie. All the poetry Of war soon vanish
ed, and left them nothing but the terri
BILE prose. They waded knee deep In
mud. They slept in snow banks They
marched till their cut feet tracked the
Garth. They were swindled out Of their
honest rations and lived on meat not Mt
for dog. They had jaws fractured, and
eyes extinguished and limbs shot away.
Thousands of them cried for water 40
they lay on che 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 battle
fields. Why did these fathers leave
their children and go to the front, and
why did these young men, postpontng
the marriage day, start out into the
probabilities Of never coming back? For
principle they died. Life for life!
Blood for blood Substitution
Principle Of Self Sacrifice.
But we need not 60 10 far. What 10
that monument in the cemetery? It 10
to the doctors who fell in the southern
epidemios. Why go3 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 re-
gions he passes crowded rail trains, reg
ular and extra, taking the flying and
affrighted populations. He arrives in
a city over which great horror is
brooding. He goes from couch to
couch, feeling the pulse and studying
symptoms and prescribing day after
day, night after night, until fell
low physician says, Doctor, you had
better go home and rest; you look mis-
CRADLE" But he cannot rest while SO
many are suffering. On and on, until
some morning finds him in delirium,
in which he talks of home, and then
rises and says he must 60 and look after
those patients. He is told to lie down,
but he fights his attendants 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 newspaper line tells US Of his sac
rifice-his name just mentioned among
five. Yet he has touched the farthest
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 ye Wis
tied me" Life for life! Blood for
blood Substitution
In the legal profession see the same
principle Of self sacrifice. In 1846 Will
liam Freeman, a pauperized and idiotio
negro was at Auburn, N. Y, on trial
for murder. He had slain the entire
Van Nest family. The foaming wrath
of the community could be kept of him
only by armed constables. Who would
volunteer to be his counsel? No attor-
ney wanted to sacrifice his popularity
by such an ungrateful task. All were
silent save one, young lawyer with
feeble voice that could hardly be heard
outside the bar, pale and thin and awk
ward. 1t was William H. 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 uttering these beautiful
words:
Substitution.
II 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 negro,
without intellect, sense or emotion. Ny
child with an affeotionate smile disarms
my oareworn 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
oaresses me with fondness If will but
smile on him. My horse recognizes me
when fill his manger. What reward.
what gratitude, what sympathy and
affection can expect here? There the
prisoner sits. Look at him. Look at the
assem- blage around you. Listen to their
| i'll suppressed oensures and excited fears
and tell me where among my neighbors
or my fellow men, where, even in his
heart, l can expect to find a sentiment,
thought, not to say Of reward or OF
acknowledgment or even of recognition.
Gentlemen, you may think Of this evil
dence what you please, bring In what
verdict you can, but i asseverate before