Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1915-06-03

The past IS it WERE rises before m e like a dream. Again W TT
= in a great struggle for national life. We hear the sound of preparation
: the music of the boiderous drums, the silver voices of heroic bugles.
y We see thousand of assembages and hear the appeals of orators; W e
+ see the pale cheeks of women and the flushed faces OF men. and u" in
x those assemblages We see all the dead whose dust we have covered
y with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We re with them when
* they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those
* they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places
x with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet
= VOWS of eternal love a they lingeringly part forever. Others arr bend
over cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the
x blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them
and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing; and
= SOM ar talking with wives and endeavoring with Grave words spoken
" in the old tones to drive away the awful fear. We se them part. We
* see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms-standing
+ in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves-she
4 answers by holding high in her loving hands the child. He is gone,
and forever.
We see them all as they march proudly away under the Haunting
flags keeping time to the wild music of war-marchng down the
streets OF the great cities-through towns and across the prairies-
down to the fields of glory, to do and dare for the eternal right.
We go with them one and all. We II by their side n all the CORY
helds' in III the hospitals of pain-on all the weary marches. We
stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars.
We are with them in ravines running with blood-in the burrows of
old fields. We are with them between contendng hosts, unable to
move, wild with thirst. the life ebbing slowly away among the with
cred leaves. We see them pierced by ball and torn by shells in the
trenches OF FORTS and in the whirlwind of the charge where men be-
come iron with nerves of steel. We ire with them in the prisons of
hatred and famine, but human speech can never tell what they n
We are at home when the new comes that they are dead. We
see the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered
head of the old a bowed with the last brief.
The past rises before u We hear the roar of mighty human be-
Mgs governed by the lash-we hear them bound hand and foot-we
near tn strokes Of cruel whips-we see the hounds tracking women
through tangled swamps. We e babes sold from the breasts of
mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Outrage infinite!
Four million bodies in chains-four million souls in letters. All
the sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child tramped be-
meath the brutal feet of might. And all this was done under or own
beautiful banner of the free.
The past rises before usWe hear the roar If mighty cannon, the
Shrek of bursting shell. The broken letters fall. These heroes died.
We look. Instead of slaves We see e and women and children.
The wand of progress touches the auction blocks, the slave pen and
the whipping post, and we SCI homes and fresides, and schoolhouses
and books, and awhere all was want and woe, and crime and cruelty,
and fear and letters, W see the happy faces of the free.
These heroes died. They died for liberty, they died for humanity
they died for is. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they
made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn
pines, the sad hemlocks, the fearful willows, the embracing vines.
they sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sun
shine o storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may
u red with other warS-they are at peace. In the midst of battle.
in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. have one
tears for the dead.