The daily morning Alaskan., 1903-12-29
ON THE BRINK
lorisinal1

to pass judgment upon what ] alone was cognlzant of. have no opinion to offer. One thing I know-we. living In this age of ratlonalism, have ban lshed an save the material Foolsl We see stars in the heavens countless millions of miles away because our eyes are adapted to see them. How easy for our Creator to have given us another lens with which to discern spirits near at hand! And may not a mans eye, under certain strained con dluons. be so changed as to form a spiritual Image?
 From early morning ttl afternoon the Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston had flung one battle wave after another upon the Union army under Grant. He had said at sunrise, Before 1t sets we shall water our horses in the Tennessee" Before that setting he and thousands of his men had passed from their material bodies The first day of the battle of Shiloh had passed. leaving no sound save an occasional boom, here and there a rifle shot, but above all the cries of the wounded
 l had fought in tho hornets nest 20 and there had been severely wound ed. lying where l fell, among a heap of slain. It was early in April and in Tennessee April is what June is in the northern states. l looked up and saw the leaves of a tree lazily hutter Ing in the breeze l remember 1t be- cause of the peaceful contrast with the hell raging within me Oh, that thirst! How it was driving me mad. Then for a time l lost consciousness.
 When l came to myself 1t must have been after midnight l think so be- cause the wounded at least those near me. had been removed. and there was no living thing near me. Doubtless ] had been left for dead Was l not in the first stage Of death, yet not destined for the last stage? ] had no feeling of pain. l lay thinking of the events of the past day. Suddenly l heard a bugle call. It was "the assembly" But Instead of having the rasplng ring of metal 1t was like a seraph's voice.
 I started up. How light was. Nothing was an effort. Looking around. l saw over each body it's coun- terpart rising and hurrying away. ] stood on my feet. and. looking down there lay my own corpse. Turning, saw men forming in the ranks of war. I called to an officer who passed me and asked him:
 What does this all meanr
 "They are comingW
 "Whog
 "The Confederate dead"
 "What! Do the dead fight OnT
 "Yes: we are simply what we left ofi being yesterday. We shall now de velop differently. more rapidly and on much broader scale. But for the present-come. we must join
 We hurried forward to where this singular army was forming. and, pass ing the flank, l stood for a moment looking down the line. In the faces of the men was all the war passion of liv- ing beings. but none of the fatigue. none Of the suffering. The forms were Ike a night mist. and l noticed that they not only tiickered with an un- steady motion. but the line seemed like a flag through which a breeze is passing. imparting undulauons.
 By this time there was a line of bat tie formed composed of regiments, whose meager numbers were Indicated by the uearness of the standards. l heard a cheer-it sounded like a dis tant whisuing of wind-and a man rode by in a generals uniform.
 "He was the ranking sacrifice yester. day" said a man at my elbow, "but he is no match for the Confederate gener- al In chief"
 Our leader waved his sword above his head. beckonlng us to follow him. There was neither sound of firing nor tramp of men. often since, when look ing at the great panoramas of battle fields in which the action is vividly portrayed without the slightest sound l have thought of thls advance of dead men. Here and there we would come to a part of the field occupied by camps, but we passed through them as though they were of vapor. Then sud- denly emerging from a wood we saw the Confederates advancing to meet us
 Their leader was a tall, magnificent looking man in the uniform of Con federate general When l first saw him be was riding back and forth before his troops encouraging them. They were a singular army, infantrymen, artilerymen. cavalrymen, standing shoulder to shoulder The battle flags were torn and dlngy. The singular fea- ture to me was that disembodied spir- It's should have had to do with ma terlal surroundings. But a moments thought shows this to be probably ow- ing to the imperfecton of my spiritual vision Might I not have been able to discern the spirit with an embryo spir- itual eye, clothing 1t with material surroundings with my bodily percep- Honsl Be that as 1t may. the men were dressed and armed and moved as living beings.
 But my vision was cut short in the beginning. for just as I was looking forward to a knowledge of how spirits fight we clashed, and I heard a hu. man voice say. This one isn't dead, ' and in a twinkling the spectral armies vanished, and man stood over me. leaning on a spade. A cloud of smoke sailed past from the muzzles ot the -lan. a-nl n..n- . r.rnun Thnr wnra