The Newtown bee., 1905-06-09

cusSed what things should be exacted from his conquered foe, said: "Give them back their horses; they will need them for their crops."
 Two Memorial days have we? Yes; but they both belong to this one land: no other nation has in them any part. A Memorial day for the boys who wore the blue and a Memorial day for the boys who wore the gray; but for some years it has been the beautiful custom for the Northern men to decorate the Southern graves and for the men below Mason and Dixon's line to return the compliment as generously. May this custom increasingly grow
 UNTIL THE LAST DEAR COMPANION
 DROPS sMILINGLY AWAY.
 May Heavens sun shine sweetly on both these Memorial days, and may every cloud of bitterness soon diSap- pear from our Nations sky! Last winter Congress had the courage to do what, several years ago, it lacked the courage to do; it sent back to the South the battle-dags that had been captured in the war. This act drove from our National legislative halls,
 
 hate; how long shall it be before all rancOr disappears from every corner of our land? When the men from the South and the men from the North, side by side and shoulder to shoulder, took part in the battles that made lit tie Cuba, the fair gem of the Antilles, free, did they stop to argue, before they fired gun, that they, or their fathers, had once fought under differ ent flags, or that it would be quite inn proper for them to try to reconcile diff ferences in that way? Oh, there is no healer for all wounds quite so effective so curative as few years in which one has time to think. A few tardy years, and we shall see what it now seems to some perhaps impossible that we shall ever see: we shall see mOnu- ments of brass enduring accorded throughout the North to Lee and Jackson and Johnston with as gener- ous honor as we now accord them to Grant and Sheridan and Meade. Are that any other nation should have a portion of the courtly honor that we pay to such brave men?
 In Gods house to-day we are com memorating not a bloody war, we are commemOratlng brave men. They were heroes, those men who responded to their country'S call. The world never saw a grander army than our Grand Army of the Republic. They left shop and forge and hammer and plough when treason's vulgar form shook the ground; and back they came to the shop and forge and hammer and plough when their work was over and they had done it we'll. To the ever lasting glory of these men be it said l that they fought not for themselves; they fought for nation, for a cause, for a flag. Theirs was an unselfish | warfare. Never was their agony de- | bauched to the level of the politicians stripe. Never did their rich blood i soak the ground that they might get to themselves gain. That, and that l alone, lifts war from the level of the slugging match and the cooking main when men strike heavy blows for the defence of the eternal right. In de- fence of pure girl whose chastity was aSSailed, a strong man might deal telling blows: and every blow would be as spotleSS as an infants cheek and as holy as mothers caress.' Yes, it is better, it is better in life to execute one holy commission than to have the mines of GOlconda for our treasure house and to indulge in years of crimi- nal ease.
 Over in Scotland there is a battle field unmarked by monument or any device to show how famous it has been-an old stone fence runs across the field. But on that spot where once the native Scots fought in savage contest with their Saxon foes there grows a little flower, little blue flow CT that grows nowhere else in all the world. Of course the seeds of this flower were there before the battle came; but the warm blood of the brave men that fell nourished the seeds and brought them forth into bloom. They call this f lower the flower of Culloden Field ] of course there was patriotism, of course there were brave hearts, of ;ourse there was adherence to the ( right, of course there were l love and woman'S sympathy how little in this sermon I have said ] n reference to the great part women played in that war;, of course there were all these things before the shot across Charleston Harbor and before Fort Sumter fell; but it took he call to arms and the threatened , disruption of our Union to bring these ! lOble qualities into flower and bloom. This is big land, very big land; the I American eagle now screams his wild lotes round half the world. We have jig rivers, big cataracts, big lakes, big :, nonopolies, big corruption funds, big ! candals and big mines: but when we lave only bigness in material things f nd forget to enter up in our Nations inventory the bigness of soul that won 2 ictory at Gettysburg and charged up h he steepS of Missionary Ridge, then. nd not till then, does our eagle lower Q lis proud note and one great, inerasi ' 'le scar get into the wool of our flag.