Year: 1871

GRAFTON BY FATHER RYAN.


The picnic was one of the largest assem-
oiages OF the season, and fair women and
innocent children in white draperies and
oright colors made up some of the lights
enlivened the scene until the time for the
address OF Father Ryan, whose welcome,
Deaming from every eve, was more express
i've than words. Father Ryan was intro
duced by MIR. 1. I. Jones, and spoke as fol-
lows:


There is in this day much talk of policy.
Ihere was time when Policy knelt at the
throne of Right but now it has usurped
the place of Principle, and there were
many who would make it kneel to and do
the biddings of policy. Yet some e.ef us
still st,il prefer principle to the cool calcula-
preference we meet now, not for enjoyment
under these green branches typifying the
hope which animates us in our adherence
to cherished principles, but with higher
object, which will hallow the amusements
of the hour.


That object is, to build monument, not
to illustrate the deeds of the men who wore
the grey; these are beyond any human IL
lustration; but to show that there were
men brave enough to die for the principles
they professed, and that there are others
brave enough to build their monument
There is in the human heart an instinct to
love the brave and true. It is sometimes
hard to remember the past; to cling to
buried times; to let memory, like q weari-
come sentinel, pace up and down the val
leys OF the glorious past. But he felt that
all those who had come to grace this as
semblage were true to the cause that it now
commemorated, and would pass by the
throne of Wrong, to kneel, with prayer on
their lips, and tears in their eyes at the
grave of Right.


In the fall Of that cause, principle did
not go down. The surrender Of swords was
not the surrender of sentiments it was
only the policy of resistance that we sur
rendered and when we did surrender, we
appealed to that court where right is right,
and as We lifted our manacled hauds to
that tribunal where right never pleaded in
vain, we felt that the day would come
when the rock of wrong would be rolled
away from the sepulchre of our hopes, and
that for the Good Friday of our sorrows
there would be an Easter Sunday morning
of resurrection for our dear Lost Cause.


But while he trusted that the ladies of
the Memorial Monumental Association
were not secret members of the Ku-kluk.
he would warn them that they were doing
a more dangerous thing than he. His words
would pass like the winds; but they intend
to build a monument, and to write some
thing on it-something which the children
yet to come will see, and will ask, "Father,





old soldier of Lee will remember the
scenes of the past, and, as his heart swells
and his eye kindles, and his voice takes
the tone of the days when bis youth was
strong and his courage high, he will tell
him: "Chlld, this is monument to men
under the grandest chief the earth ever
knew. And l was with them and with
Lee OF matchless name. I saw him, and
caught the look of destiny in his eye when
he led US into the thick of the fiery fightn
Aud he Will tell of his courage, his wisdom,
stayed the breaking hearts of thousands
In the hour of despair, his unsullied honor;
and then he will tell them of q grave in
Virginia, beneath whose sod rests the
purest clay that shrined the noblest soul.


Here (and elsewhere as he proceeded)
the siiver-voiced orator glided into his still
happier role of the golden-lipped poet,
charming the audience with passages which
it were barbarous to attempt to produce in
divested of the graceful form,
and lighting again upon the pedestal of
household phrase, "Here," said he,
whisper it on earth-his soul, hope, is in
in a better place."


"All of him." the speaker resumed, "is
not dead. All of him is not buried. Not
only his memory lives with us, but his
spirit lives with rs. 1 know it is disloyal
to say it, but some of us expect, even
tnough It's ecnoes may reach US only in our
graves, to hear the steady tramp Of other
men in gray, led by another Lee"


But he feared he might be too rash if he
spoke longer. Captious ears might receive
his remarks, and captious tongues might
say that he and they who gave them their
applause were not loyal-a very sweet
word and one which pecaniarily means
much. Sometimes concession to the pres
ent is apostacy to the past; but far be such
a thought from us. No true as the stars
to their native heavens, as the flower to the
valley that nurtures it, as the sun to its
throne, as the child to its mother, as
the mountain to the sea it shadows and
whose waves it clasps to it's bosom, as the
ivy to the ruined tower, SO will we be true
to the cause of the past, and to the memory
of those who died in arms for that cause
Mobile Register.


THE WORLD $685. ,9s1 YEARS OLD.-The
Hindoos divide time into four grand
periods called jugs. The first of these is
known as the Sat-jug, or age of truth. the