Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1920-01-30
FORMER SLAVE PAYS
FINAL, TRIBUTE TO
CONFEDERATE MASTER
Continued from Page y

81 sure, fel like a quiet hand of
comfort.
"It had been my sad duty to stand
beside the graves Of many of my
comrades he said. More than four
hundred times 1 have stood in such
circumstances as this since the home
opened. Once it was to tell three of
them goodby Today it is two Yes
terGay 1 officiated at the funeral of a
young man, only nineteen years old.
and ! was very sad, for it is always
sad to NE for the young to die.
But declare to you I do not feel that
way when l otiiciate at the funerals
of old men or of old women OF
course We do not wish to give, up
these old heroes. We shall miss
them. But to me there is rejoicing,
not sorrow, that these men who have
borne the heat and fury of the
day, who have suffered on many a
battlefield, who have Outlived their
generation, shall pass on. They have
but made a happy exchange, they
have but left behind them the trials
and sorrows of this earth. Today
they are with Jesus
In such simple, clear phrases he
pictured death not as a mystery or
sorrow, but as a blessing to the
very old. These men called home,
he said, are not dead, for they will
live in their children and their
grandchildren and in those yet I'M
born. They will live, said DR.. Hold
erby, in the pages of history.
1T is a blessed thing for a child
of God to die. In my long expert
ence I have never seen an audience
like this one. 1t has often been
a pain to my heart as I stood beside
caskets of men who have fought
and suffered for this land, that not
a flower rested on them, there was
not one to pay respect, only six old
men and a minister to follow them
to the grave. I am not blaming any
one, but it shows how, as the years
go by, we forget those who are dear
to us. 1t is a blessed thing, I say,
for a Child of God to die"
DR.. Kirkpatrick spoke, too, of the
dead, paying to Captain Yopp his
tribute of love and veneration.
When he ended, Adjutant r. De. T.
Lawrence, gentle, white-haired
veteran, talked for a moment of
his comrades and then introduced
I6u-C6ul Dill, WHO rose Ill HIS
place and began to speak.
MY dear friends" he said, "I
thank you from the depths of my
heart for the kind compliment you
are paying me and the permission
| you have given me. Like the minister
who spoke before me, /, too, wish
to God that the same old feeling ex-
listed today between white and black
that existed in 1860.
"I have known Captain Thomas
Mccall Yopp my former master, for
sixty-seven years. My mother nursed
him, and so his father, who thought
so much of him, gave my mother to
him before [ was born. I know that
he never spoke an unlIind word to
her or to any of his servants.
"Since 1854, when I was only a
little pickaninny in nothing but a cot
ton shirt and he wasn't too proud
to pick me up and ride me on the
back of his horse, we have been
friends We hunted together and
fished together all day long. I rode
with him week in and week out.
We would eat our lunch out in the
woods and then come home together.
Every night before he would go to
bed he would go to one servants
house and to another's and another's.
and sit and laugh and joke with them.
BY and by he would say, Bill, I'm
getting sleepy and we would go back