The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1898-04-21

AGAIN, anu uOpeS, anu expects, ana
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 indistinct ut
terance 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 no.
thing but the terrible prose-. They
waded knee-deep in mud. They slept
in snow-banks. They marched till
their cut feet tracked the earth They
were swindled out of the honest ra-
tions, and lived on meat not fit for
dog. They had jaws fractured, and
eyes extinguished, and limbs shot
away. Thousands of them cried for
water as they Jay on the field the night
after the battle and got it not. They
were homesick, and received no mes
sage from their loved ones. They died
in barns, in bushes, in bitches, the buz-
yards of the summer heat the only at
tendants on their obsequies. No one
but the Infinite God who knows every
thing, 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
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 south
ern epidemics. Why go? Were 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
| regions he passes crowded rail-trains,
regular and extra, taking the flying and
affrighted populations. He arrives in
a city over which a 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 a fellow
physician says: Doctor, you had bet
ter go home and rest; you look mis-
CRADLE" But he can not 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 go and look
after those patients. He is told to lie
down; but he fights his attendants un-
til 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 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 sublimity in that
three weeks of humanitarian service.
bosom of Him who said: 81 was sick
and We visited me-" Life for life.
Blood for blood. Substitution!
In the legal profession I see the same
principle of self-sacrifice. In 1886
William Freeman, pauperized and
idiotic negro, was at Auburn, N. Y,
on trial for murder. He had slain the
20
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 popu-
larity by such an ungrateful task. All
were silent save one, a young lawyer
with feeble voice, that could hardly be
heard outside the bar, pale and thin
and awkward. 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:
II speak now in the hearing Of a
people who have prejudiced prisoner
and condemned me for pleading in his
behalf He is convict, pauper, a
negro, without intellect, sense, or emo
ton. My child with an effectionate
smile disarms my care-worn face of it's
frown whenever I cross my threshold.
The beggar in the street obliges me to.
give because he says, God bless you!
as pass. My dog caresses me with
fondness if will but smile on him. MY
horse recognizes me when I fill his
manger. What reward, what gratitude,
what sympathy and affection can I ex-
pect here? There the prisoner sits.
Look at him. Look at the assemblage
around you. Listen to their ill-sup-
pressed censures and excited fears,
and tell me where among my neighbors
or my fellow men, where, even in his
heart, I can expect to find a sentiment,
a thought, not to say Of reward or of
acknowledgment, or even of recogni-
ton. Gentlemen, you may think of
this evidence what you please, bring in
what verdict you can, but I asseverate
before heaven and you that, to the best
Of my knowledge and belief, the pris-