The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1903-05-12

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sons, written for ever by the tattered
school master in gray.
| First and foremost, the Confederate
soldiers were patriots. Never did truer
patriots answer to the stirring bugle
note than were those boys in gray who
sprang from the plough share to grasp
the bayonet and follow their peerless
leaders through stress of conflict and
poverty and ragged suffering until at
last, in the trenches around Petersburg,
| they grimly massacrcd the French Ian
| guage and called themselves Lees
miserables." Patriots they were, in
| very deed and truth fighting with as
lofty spirit and as worthy motive as
ever filled the breasts of courageous
men. Patriots even when you set the
| highest standard of patriotism, which
can be no other than the stl lggle for
human freedom. The right of a church
| to be free made the wars of Cromwell.
The right Of colony to be free made
| tina war Of the Revolution. The right
of State to be free made the war for
Southern independence the right of
State to be free.
What is patriotism? Patriotism, both
in word and in fact, is bound up with
the family. The reason why you love
the rocks and rills of this your native
| land is because it is your native land
| and the land where your fathers died.
Patriotism in its last reduction is home
love. And that is why the men of the
| South responded to the battle call with
such glad eagerness leaping to the en-
brace of the war gcd as babe to the
| arms of its father; because the right of
] state to be free meant to them the
| right of home to be free and sacred.
The first great lesson which the hand of
the teacher in gray writes high upon
| the tablets of his learning children is the
lesson of the love of home.
This word home is the distinctive of
the Anglo-SaXon race. And | tell you
when that word loses with US its won
drous sweetness of unfathomable mean
ing, when "home" means to us less
than it does now, when it no longer
stirs the deepest emotions of the heart,
when manly tears no longer flow unbid-
den at the singing of that simple match
less song of Payne's, "Home, Sweet
Home" no other people have such a
song as that why, in that day the glory
of the Anglo-Saxon race will have per-
lshed, because it will have lost its hold
upon the magic "open sesame which
has unbarred the gates of glory and of
grace before it since Hermann first
fought for his wife and child and home
against the Romans in the Teutoburger
forest.
The second great lesson Of the teach
er in gray is manliness. challenge the
world to produce a spectacle of manli-
ness surprising that of the Southern
soldier in his hour of defeat. Such an
exhibition of manlness was never wit
messed before and will never be wit
messed again.
The ranliness of the hero in gray
teaches us to be on guard against all
| inslIious invasion Of our home life. The
speaker referred as an instance to the
corrupt literature which is invading the
country.
DR.. Scherer said he had no respect
for the commercial patriot, the man
who goes to Washington with his hat
in hand begging favors. Nor had he
any respect for the man who is ALWAYS
raking up dead issues. There was some
thing noble about the old time mode of
dueline. 1t is past and it is well that
it has. But the fight ended the bicker-
ing. We fought the North. The North
won. Let the issue be closed.
The regal quality of the Confederate
soldier was his seIflcssncss whatcycr
cause he had no man has ever claimed
| that the Confederate soldier foupht for
himself. Whatever the principle it was
principle. He displayed the highest
type of selllessness-an sclnessncss is
the crowning glory of man.
He did not stand here tcdav and thank
God that the Southern Cause was lost
but he did stand here today and thanl,
God that the South in its history had a
Lost Cause, because the Lost Cause of
the South is the most precious hcriLage
| which can belong to any nation or to
any man. Selflessness, which it ex-
empiiies, is the supreme lesson written
in our hearts by the teacher in gray.
The speaker concluded with tribute