Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1896 — Page 6

MM I tell you. O friend, of a proud, sad day what my beautiful boy went marching away 1% a far-away battle-field? VMsa our country's call was beard by me Aad all mothers whose sous were needed to Bar God and our country and the cause of right. Bat ay heart stood still and It seemed that a pall Wrapped me as the world is wrapped by the Bight. had 1 thought as I wrought while the days went by— Aad I prayed to my God, whose throne Is oa high. And who careth for me to care for my boy, Ts bless our land and give us joy h the light of liberty's sun. Then victory came, but 'twas purchased dear. The bella pealed out from far and near, And I heard loud shouts ring In the air, amt the feet of men rush here and there. I called aloud: “Is there news for me? What disi for me?" My tear-dim med eyes can scarcely see— And I beard for auswer, so like a knell: ••It la well with your boy. It Is well.” And then 1 knew my child no more Weald come to me as in days of yore. And thus the Father had answered my prayer My taking from earth to the home over there My darling child, so brave, so dear, Bis sweet "My mother" I’ll never more hear. And yet ’twas a glorious death, and he Mil for the life of our dear country, And your children's children will peace enjoy, Rought with the life of my precious boy.

WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT.

‘fl ft OLD up your right «—J|,> hand, my man.” I The witness held la [I up his left HSnd, and the judge, believing that he was defiant, pIW \ said with a show of Mr J anger: m \ “Hold up your right hand and take the oath!”

Again the left nand was raised, and the fndge, turning to a deputy, shouted: “Arrest that man for contempt of court. Ha refuses to hold up his right hand.” “Judge,” said the man, a dilapidated specimen of humanity, “I can’t hold up my right hand—l left it at Gettysburg a good many years ago. But I can swear all right with my left hand.” There was a sensation in court. No •ne had noticed that the artificially stuffed sleeve was tucked into the coat pocket at the wrist, giving the figure that defiant air that haa aroused the anger of the presiding officer. Now when they knew that bo hand was there, a thrill of sympathy ran through the crowd, and the judge was visibly agitated and even apologized. “I did not know that you had been a soldier,” he said gently, as if that fact were excuse enough for any lapse of duty •n the present occasion. “I am a soldier yet,” said the man in tho witness box; “once a soldier always a soldier, is my creed. I’m under marching orders and likely to join my regiment any time. It’s many years since I first went soldiering, i was a likely chap ttwo. judge.” T “let, yes,” said the judge, who had been staring fixedly at the man while his face, flushed and paled with some secret amotion, “but this is hardly the time or place for reminiscences. Your testimony In the case on hand is all that is required bow. Counsel for the defense will examine this witness," and the judge turned to other business as if the subject no longer interested him.

But he had not done with it. When he want out of the court house on his way home, the one-armei soldier was waiting for him, and he stopped with an impatient air to hear what he had to say. It was •rident that the man had been drinking, and his general appearance was more down at the heels than before. “Judge,” he asked, with tipsy gravity, “might your name be Shields?” “Yes, my name is Shields. Have you any further business with me? I am In something of a hurry.” “So’m I, Judge Shields. I’ve been waitIng over thirty years to ask you a question and get an answer. You don’t happen to know me, judge?” “No,” came the low answer as the judge looked into the face of the soldier with a shifting earnestness, taking in the whole flgure in that uncertain way, “I don’t think I ever saw you before.” “Think again, my friend—you are my friend, ain’t you—did you ever know a young man—a robust, strapping fellow—named Leonard Hurst?” “My God, man, Leonard Hurst died during the war—he was killed in the battle Of Gettysburg, and is buried up in yonder cemetery,” “Is he?' That’s news to me, Hiram Shields, and it’s a lie. He had a friend—a young man like himself—no, not like him, tor Leonard Hurst would have given his life for that friend, and thought it no sacrifice —but the friend didn’t enlist. He staid at nome, and while Hurst was fighting the enemy at the front, Shields, his friend, won his promised wifo away from him, married the girl Leonard Hurst had loted all his life.” ‘Til hear the story at another time,” •aid Shields, who was in a panic of nervousness over this strange recital. “You’ll hear it now,” retorted the other nan, swaying back and forth, yet speak-

“CAUGHT HIM BY THE THROAT.”

log with the utmost distinctness. “Leonard Hurst went away with drums beatta S> and flags flying, and he was gone three years. One of those years he spent la a Southern prison—the fortune of war. Be came home a wreck, to be nursed back to life and strength by those for whose aake he had suffered —he came home to fad himself a dead man!” The dry lips of the judge worked conralslvely, but he said no word. “Hl# friend had buried him. A stone at the foot of his grave had his name and. ■amber, gathered from the prison hospital. He was dead and buried, and his friend had married his sweetheart.” “You are excited,” said Shields, finding his voice; “come home with me and ” “You haven’t heard it all yet Maybe poo thins it was hard to stand in front of a fire of shot and shell, and be torn Moader by. cannon balls. Why, man, that was nothing, to thi soldier, to what he ■offered when he came home and found himself shut-out of.the; ranks of living ■sen —read his own name on a gravestone, •nd heard his friends talk of his death. And that was nothing to the fact that the girl who swore fealty to him had married his false friend. When he knew that, the hit tern ess of death had passed. It was «he*a first anc last real battle was faaght, when h« conquered himself, and hi the man life who had made earth a “'““■t- » . ..

“Have you no pension?” asked the judge suddenly. “Pension? Do they pension dead men?” The judge was trembling violently. ,As the effects of tL > liquor wore off, the soldier became more excitable, and erratic lights flashed from his sunken eyes. His whole expression was a menace to the man who stood trembling before him. But when his strange companion with a sudden swift motion caught him by the throat, Shields made no resistance, and the other holding him thus a moment, threw ■him off contemptuously. “Tell me to my face I am dead,” sneered the soldier with livid lips, “you who robbed me of the dearest thing I had in life—and of life itself! Assassin! She. too, is dead—perhaps you killed her?” “Hurst,” said Shields, wiping the drops of ghastly fear from his pallid face, “if you are indeed a living man, listen to me.

“THE SOLDIER LIFTED' HIS SHABBY CAP WITH REVERENCE.”

It may be some satisfaction to you to know that Mabel never loved me, although she was my wife. She died with your name on her lips. She believed you dead, and kept your grave green with her tears.” “Say that againl” cried the soldier. “Ob, my God, it pays to have been dead and buried all these years, to know that after all she was true. I had it in my mind to kill you; yes, I meant it when I had my hand at your throat, but those words have saved you! God will settle the account between us!” “He has settled it,” answered Shields solemnly. “He closed the account when he refused-, me Mabel’s love —when He took her from me as the worst punishment He could inflict. But I honestly believed that you were dead—that it was your shattered form I brought from the battlefield and buried up yonder.” “That gave you a right to love Mabel?” “No”—Shields hung his bead in bitter grief and aflame —“I —I had tried to win her before that, but she would apt listen to me —she never would have listened, but for your death—and, Hurst, that knowledge killed her. She was my wife in name, but her heart was witn you.” The soldier lifted his shabby cap with reverence. He raised his eyes to the blue canopy of heaven, and his lips moved in prayer. l ‘l hive fought my last battle,” he said, extending his one poor hand to Shields, “#e are friends from this hour, comrade.” ‘‘You have called me comrade,” said Shields, his eyes filling with tears; “I am 9£> soldier, but I know what that word means. We are comrades for the rest of the march—we will part no more. From this hoar my home is your home.” Thus It came about that these two became to each other even as David and Jonathan, united by a friendship surpassing the love of woman. Nor is the unknown soldier whd sleeps far from home and friends forgotten. On each Memorial day flags wave and flowers bloom over his dust and a white-haired man and a onearmed soldier sit there to talk over the strange enigma of his last resting place. “Enough if on the page of war and glory, Some hand has writ his name.”

HORRORS OF WAR.

Bcenes Among Women, Children and Wounded After'Battle. Shepherdstown lies near a bed in the Potomac river not far from Harper’s Ferry, Martinsburg, Antietam and other places made historic by the civil war. , It iiei in the midst of the region wheye the hardest and bloodiest fighting of 1863 was done and, especially the Antietam battle,

was a scene of horrors. The village had been turned into hospitals where the wounded were cared for and a woman who was a nurse in one of these thus describes tne scenes witnessed in the village after McClellan put Lee to flight at Antietam: “The Confederate army was in full retreat. Lee had crossed the Potomac under cover of the darkness and when morning oslue the greater part of his force had gone on toward Kearneysville. McClellan followed to the river and without crossing got a battery in position on Douglas Hill and began to, shell the retreating army and, in consequence, the town. Panic instantly seized the people. The danger was less than it seemed, for McClellan was not bombarding the town, but the army, and most of the shells flew over us und exploded in the fields. The better people kept some outward coolness, but the poorer classes acted as if the town were already in a blaze, and rushed from their houses with their families and household goods to make their way into the country. The road was thronged, the streets blocked, men were vociferating, women crying, children screaming, wagons, ambulances, guns, caissons, horsemen, footmen, all mingled—nay, even wedged and jammed together—in one struggling, shouting mass. It was pandemonium. The negroes were the worst, and with faces of a ghstetly ash-color, and staring eyes, they swarmed into the fields, carrying their babies, their clothes, their pots and kettles, fleeing from the wrath behind them.

“Had this been all, we could afford to laugh now, but there was another side, to 1 the picture that lent it an intensely painful aspect. It was the hurrying crowds of wounded. Ah me! those maimed and bleeding fugitives! When the firing commenced the hospitals began to empty. All who were able to pull one foot after another, or could bribe or bee comrades to carry them, left in haste. In vain we implored them to stay; in vain we showed them the folly, the suicide, of the attempt; in vain we argued, cajoled, threatened, ridiculed, pointeu out that we were remaining and that there was less danger here than on the road'. There is no sense or reason in a panic. The cannon were bellowing upon Douglas Hill, the shells whistling and shrieking, the air full of shouts and cries; we had to scream to make ourselves heard. The men replied that the ‘Yankees’ were crossing; that the town was to be burned; that we could not be made prisoners, but they could; that, anyhow, they were going as far as they could walk, or be carried. And go they did, hut how? “Men with cloths about their heads went hatless in the sun, men with cloths about their feet limped shoeless on the stony road; men with arms in slings, without arms, with one leg, with bandaged sides and backs; men in ambulances, wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, men carried on stretchers, or supported on the shoulder of some self-denying comrade —all who could crawl went, and went to almost certain death. They could not go far, they dropped off into the country houses, where they were received with as much kindness as it was possible to ask for; but their wounds had become inflamed and angry, their frames were weakened by fright and over-exertion; erysipelas, mortification, gangrene set in; and the long rows of nameless graves still bear witness to the results.”

Their Annual Reunion.

The Man of the Musket.

Soldiers, pass on. from this rage of renown. This ant-hill, commotion and strife. Pass by where the marbles and bronzes look down With their fast frozen gestures of life. Oh, out to the nameless who He ’neath the gloom Of the pitying cypress and pine; Your man is the man of the sword and the plume. But the man of the musket Is mine. I knew him! By all that Is noble, I knew

This commonplace hero I name! I’ve camped with him, marched with him fought with him, too, In the swirl of the fierce battle-flame! Laughed with him, cried with him, taken-a pant Of his canteen and blanket, and known That the throb of this chivalrous prairie boy's heart Was an answering stroke of my own. I knew bim, I tell you! And, also, I knew When be fell on the battle-swept ridge, That the poor battered body that lay there In blue Was only a plank la the bridge Over which some should pass to a fame That shall shine while the high stars shall shine! Your hero Is known by an echoing name, But the man of the musket is mine. 1 knew him! All through him the good and the bad Kan together and equally free; But I judge as I trust Christ will judge the brave lad. For death made him noble to me! In the cyclone of war. In the battle’s eclipse, Life shook out Its lingering sands. And he died with the names that he loved on his lips. His musket still grasped In Ills hands! Up close to the flag my soldier went down. In the salient front of the line; You may take for your heroes the men of renown, -,v,.[-, But the man of the musket is mine!

THEY ARE BROTHERS NOW.

The Spirit that Exists Between Veterans of Both Sides. Although the horrors of war are the more conspicuous where the conflict is between brothers and the struggle is a long and desperate one, the evidences are numerous that, underneath the passion and bitterness oi our civil war, .there were counter currents of kindly feeling, a spirit of genuine friendliness pervading, the opposing camps. This friendliness was something deeper than the- expression of mere human instinct; the combatants felt that they were-indeed brothers. Acts of kindness to wounded enemies began to be noted at Bull Run, while in every campaign useless picket firing was almost uniformly discountenanced, and the men shook hands at the outposts and talked confidingly of their private affairs and their trials and hardships in the army. This feeling, confined perhaps, to men on the very front line culminated at Appomattox, where the victors shared rations with their late antagonists and generously offered them help in repairing the wastes of battle. When the Union veteran returned to the North he did not disguise his faith in the good intentions of the Southern fighting man. The spirit that moved Lincoln to say in his last inaugural, “With malice toward none,” has continued its holy influence. That which must appear to the world at large a startling anomaly, is in truth the simple principle of good-will, unfolding itself under favorable conditions. The war, that is, the actual encounter on the field, taught the participants the dignity of American character.

Candidates and Age.

The ages of the Republican entries run as follows: McKinley, 52; Reed, 57; Cullom, 67; Allison, 67; Morton, 72. —Clncirihati Tribune.

TALMAGE’S SERMON.

THE WASHINGTON PREACHER ON THE DRAMA OF LIFE. It Appears that People Used to Go to the Theater ia the Lay* of Job — A Unique Peroration Vindicating Shakespeare of Infidelity. Caaaes of Failure. Ret. Dr. Talrnage in this discourse seta forth the causes of failure in life, drawing on a Biblical teference to the theater for •tartling illustration. His text was Job xxtii., 23, “M«» shall cftl’p their hands at him and shall hiss him out of bis place.” This allusion seems to be dramatic. The Bible more than once makes such allusions. Paul says, “We are made- a theater or spectacle to angels and to men." It is evident from the text that some of the habits of theater goers were known in Job's time, because he describes Our iletor hissed off the st»ge. » The impersonator eornos on the boards and. either through lack of study of the part he is to take or Inaptness or other incapacity, the audience- is offended ami expresses its disapprobation and disgust by hissing. “lien shall dap their hs-nds at him and shall hiss him out of his place:” The Actons of Life. My text suggests that each one of us-is-put on the stage of this world to take some part. What hardship and suffering and discipline great aetots have undergone year after year that they might be perfected in their parts you have often read. But we, put on the- stage of thislife to represent charity and faith and htrmility and helpfulness—what little preparation we have made; although we have three galleries of spectators, earth and heaven and he!!! Have we not been more attentive to the part taken by others than to-the part taken by ourselves, and, whilewe needed to be looking at home and concentrating on our own:dnty,.we have been criticising the other performers, and saying, “that was too highs”'or “too low,” or “too feeble.” or “to extravagant,” or “tpotame,” or “too demoirttrative,” while we ourselves wore making aulbad failure and preparing to be ignominibusly hissed off the stage? Each one is assigned a place, no supernumeraries hanging arouud tiledrama of life to take this or that or theother part, as they may be-called upon, No one can take our place: We can take no other place. Neither can- we put off our character; no change* of apparel can make us any 0110 else than) that which we eternally are.

Many make it failure-of their part: in the drama of life through dissipation. They have enough intellectual equipment and good address and geniality unbounded. Rut they have a wine closet that contains all the forces for their social and business and normal overthrow. So far back as the year 939, King Edgar of England made a law that the drinking cups should have pins fastened at a certain point in the side, so that the indiilger might be reminded to stop before he got to the bottom. But there are no pins projecting from the sides-of the modern wine cup or beer mug, and the first point at which millions stop is at the gravity bottom of their own grave. Dr. Sax of France has discovered something which all drinkers ought to know. He has found out that alcohol iu every shape, whether of wine or brandy or beer, contains parasitic life called bacillus potumaniae. By a powerful microscope these living things are discovered, and when you take strong drink you take them into the stomach and then into your blood, and, getting into the crimson canals of life, they go into evory tissue of your body, and your entire organism is taken possession of by these noxious infinitesimals. When in delirium tremens, a man sees every form of reptilian life*it seems it is only these parasites of the brain iu exaggerated size. It is not a hallucination that the victim is suffering, from. He only secs- in. the room what is actually crawling and rioting, in his own brain. Every time you take strong drink you swallow those maggots, and every time the imbiber of alcohol in, any shape feels vertigo or rheumatism or nausea it is only the jubilee of those maggots. Efforts are being made for the discovery, of some germicide that can kill the parasites of alcoholism, but the only thing: that will ever extirpate them is abstinence- from, alcohol and teetotal abstinence,, to which 1 would before God swear ail: these young men and old:

Dangers, o£ Strong Drink. America is a fruitful country, and we raise large crops of wheat and corn and oats, but the largest crop we raise ia this country is the crop: of drunkards. With sickle made out of the- sharp, edges of the broken glass o£ bottle and! demijohn they are cut down, and there are whole swathes of them, whole windrows of them, and it takes dill the hospitals and penitentiaries and graveyards and cemeteries to. hold this harvest of helL Some of you are going dawn under this evil, and the never dying worm of alcoholism has wound around you one of its coils and by next New Year's day it will have another coil around you, and it will after awhile put a coil around your tongue, and a coil around your hrain, and a coil around your lung, and a coil around your foot, and a coil around your heart, and some day this never dying worm will with one. spring tjghten all the coils at once, and in the, last twist of that awful convolution you will cry out, “Oh, my God!” and be gone. The greatest of dramatists in the tragedy of “The Tempest” sends staggering across the stage Stephano, the drunken butler; but across the stage of human life strong drink sends kingly and queenly and princely natures staggering forward against the footlights of conspicuity and then staggering back into failure till the world is impatient for their disappearance, and human and diabolic voices join in hissing them off the stage. Many also make a failure in the dratna of life through indolence. They are always making calculations how little they can, do for the compensations they get. Thqre are more lazy ministers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, artists and farmers than have ever been counted upon. The community is full of laggards and shirkers. I can tell it from the way they crawl along the street, from their tardiness in meeting engagements, from the lethargies that seem to hang to the foot when they lift it, to the hand when they put it out, to the words when they speak.

Oat of Place. Two young men in a store. In the morning the one goes to his post the last minute or one minute behind. The other is ten mlnntes before the time and has his hat and coat hung up and is at his post waiting for duty. The one is ever and anon in the afternoon looking at his watch to see if it is not most time to shut up. The other stays half an hour after he might go, and when asked why, says he wanted to look over some entries he had made to be sure he was right, or to put up some goods that had been left out of place. The one is very' touchy about doing work not exactly belonging to him. The other is glad to help the other clerks in their work. The first will be a prolonged nothing, and he will be poorer at 60 years of age than at 20. The other will be a merchant prince. Indolence Is the cause of more failures in all occupations th%n yon have ever suspected. People are too la*y to‘do what they -can do, and want to'undertake that wbkh they

cannot do. In the dram* of life they don't want to be a common soldier, carrying a halberd across the stage, or a fal-" 1 coner, or a mere attendant, and so they lounge about the scenes till they shall be 1 called to be something great. After awhile, by some accident of prosperity or circumstances, they get into the place for which they have nO qualification. And very soon, if the man lie a merchant, he Is going around asking bis creditors to 1 compromise for 10 cents on the dollar. Or, if a clergyman, he is making tirades against the ingratitude of ebwrebe*.«:,Or, if an attorney, bj unskillful management fee lose* a cgse.br which widows and orphan* are robbed of their portion. Or. if | a physician, he by. malpractice gives his patient rapid transit from this world to flic next. Our incompetent friend would have made a passable horse doctor, but be wanted to be professor of anatomy in a nniversity. He could have soid enough confetTionery to have supported his famil.v, but be wanted to have a .sugar refinery like the Hnvemeyers. He could have mended shoes, “but fit? wanted to amend the constitution of the United States. Town rrl the end of life these people are out of patience, out of mouey, out of friends, ont of everything. They go to the poorhouse, or keep ont of it by running in debt to all ,tlie grocery and dry goqds stores wUI Trust them. People begin to wonder when the enrtnin will drop on the scene. After awhile, leaving nothing but tlieir compliments' to pay doctor, undertaker irnrf GabfiePt,rubb, the gravedigger, they disappear. Exeunt! Hissed off the stage;. * A Moral Nuisance. Others fall in the drama of life through demonstrated selfishness. They make all the rivers empty into their sea, all the ; roads of emolument end at their door, and they gather all the plumes of honor for their brow. They help no one, encourage no one, rescue no one. “How big a pile of mtney eaa I get?” and “How much of the world can I absorb?” are the chief i questions. They feel about the common people as the Turks felt toward the Asapi, or common soldiers, considering them of no use except to fill up the ditches with their dead bodies while Abe other troops .walked over them to take the fort. After awhile this prince of worldly success is sick. The only interest society has in his illness- is the effect that his possible decease may ha:ve on the mouey markets. After awhile fie- dies. Great newspaper capitals announce how he started with nothing and ended with everything. Although for sake of appearance some people put handkerchiefs to the eye, there is not one genuine tear shed. The heirs sit up all night when he lies in state, discussing what the old fellow has probably done ■with his money. It takes all the livery stables within two miles to furnish funeral equipages, and' all the mourning stores are kept busy in selling weeds of grief. The stone cutters send in proposals for a monument. The minister at the obsequies reads of the resurrection, which .makes the hearers fear that if the unscrupulous financier does come up in the general, rising, he-wilLtry to get a “corner” on tombstone* and graveyard fences. All good men are-glad that the moral nuisance has- been removed. The Wall street speculators are glad because there is more room for themselves. The heirs are glad because they get possession of the long delayed inheritance. Dropping every feather of all his plumes, every certificate of all his stock, eve-y bond of all his investments, every dollar of all his fortune, he departs, and all the rolling of “Dead March” in “Saul," and nil the pageantry of his interment, and nil the exqnisiteness of sarcophagus, and all the extravagance of epitapbology, cannot hide the fact, that my text has come again to tremendous fulfillment, “Men shall clap their hands at him and shall hiss him out of his place.”’ You see the clapping comes before the hiss. The world cheers before it damns. So it is-said the deadly asp tickles before it stings. Going up, is he? Hurrah! Stand back, and let his galloping horse dash by, a whirlwind of plated harness and tinkling headgear and arched neck. Drink deep of his madeira and cognac. Boast of how well you know him. All hats off as he- passes. Bask for days and years in the sunlight of bis prosperity. Going.down, is he? Pretend to be nearsighted so that you cannot see him as he walks, past. When men ask you if you know, him, halt and hesitate as though you vuere trying to call up a dim memory and say, “Well, y-e-s, yes, I believe I once did know him, but have not seen him for a long while.” Cross a ditferent ferry from the one where you used to meet him lest he ask for financial help. When you started life, he spoke a good word for you at the bank. Talk down his credit now. that his fortunes are collapsing. He put his name on two of your notes. Toil him* that yon have changed your mind about such things, and that you never indorse. After awhile his matters, coipe to a dead halt, and an assignment or suspension or sheriff’s sale takes place. Yo* say: “He ought to have stopped sooner. Just as I expected. IJe made too big asplash in the world. Glad the balloon has burst HA, ha!” Applause when he" went up, sibilant derision when he came down. ‘(‘Men shall clap their, hands at him and hiss him out of his place.” So, high up amid the crags, the eagle flutters dust into the eyes of the roebuck, which then, with eyes blinded, goes tumbling over the precipice, the great antlers crashing on tKfe rocks. <, i Consecrated to God.

Now, compare some of these goings, out of life with the departure of men and women who in the drama, of life take the part that God assigned, l them and then went away honored of men and applauded of the Lord Almighty. It is about fifty years ago that in a comparatively small apartment of the. city a newly married pair set up a home. The first guest invited to that residence was the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Bible given the bride on {he day of her espousal was the guide of that household. Days of aunshine were followed by days of shadow. Did you ever know a home that for fifty years had no vicissitude? The young woman who left her father’s house for her young husband’s home started out with a paternal benediction aqd good advice she will never forget. Her mother said to her the day before the marriage: “Now, my child, you are going away from us. Of course, as long as your father and I live you will feel that you can come to us at any time. But your home will be elsewhere. From long experience I find it is best to serve God. It is very bright with you now, my child, and you may think yon can get along without religion, but the day will come when you will want God, and my advice is, establish a family altar, and, if need be, conduct the worship yourself.” The counsel was taken, and that young wife consecrated every room in the house to God. Years passed on and there were in that home hilarities, but they were good and healthful, and sorrows, but they were comforted. Marriages as bright as orange blossoms could make them, and burials in which all hearts were riven. They have a family lot in the cemetery, but all the place is illuminated with stories of resurrection and reunion. The children of the household that lived have grown up, and they are all Christians, the father and mother leading the way and the children following. What care the mother took of wardrobe and education, character and manners! How hard she sometimes worked! When the head of the household Was unfortunate in business,

Ae fnrrf gntD her finger* were mnmlr ■*d bleeding at the tip*. And what close calculation of economies and what ingenuity in refitting the garments of the elder children for the younger, and only Gorf kept account of that mother’s sideaches sad headaches *nd heartaches and the rremrsloßs prayers by the side of the sick child’s cradle and by the couch of this one- fofly grown. The neighbors often noticed bow tired she looked, and old acquaintances hardly knew her in the street. But without complaint she waited and toiled and’ endured and accomplished aH these years. The children are out in the world —an honor to themselves and their parents. After awhile the mother’s last sickness- comes. Children and grandchildren, summoned from afar, come softly into the room one by one, for she is too weak to see more than one irt a time. She runs her dying finger* lovingly through their hair and tells them not to cry, and that she is- going now, but they will meet again in a little while in a better world, and then kisses them good-by and says to each, “God bless and' keep you, my dear child." The day of the obsequies comes, and the officiating clergyman tells the story of wifely and motherly endurance, and many hearts on earth and in heaven echo the sentiment, and as she is carried off the stage of this mortal life there are cries of “Faithful unto death," “She hath done what she could,” while overpowering all the voices of earth and heaven is the plaudit- of the God who watched her from first to last, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will mak-ethee ruier over many things; enter thou into .the joy of thy Lord!”

The Choice. But what became of the father of that household?-* He started as a young man in business and had a small income, and having got: a little ahead sickness in the family swept it all away. He went through aIL the business panics of forty years, met many losses, and suffered many betrnpls, but kept right on trusting in God, , whether business was good or poor, setting his children a good example, and giving them the best of counsel, and never, a prayer did he offer for all those years but they, were mentioned in it. He is old now and realizes it cannot be long before he must quit all these scenes. But he, is going .to leave his children an inheritance of prayer and Christian principles which all the defalcations of earth can never touch, and as he goes out of the world the church of God blesses him and thfe poor ring his doorbell to see if he is any better, and his grave is surrounded by. a .multitude who went on foot and stood there 1 before the procession of' carriages came up, and some say, “There will be no- one to take his place, ’’ and others gay, “Who will pity,me now?’.’ and others remark, “Fie shall be held in overlasting remembrance.” And as the drama of his life closes, all the vociferation and bravos and encores that ever shook the amphitheaters of earthly spectacle were • tame and feeble compared with the long, loud thunders of approval that shall break from the cloiid of witnesses in the piled . up gallery of the heavens. Choose ye between the life that shall close by being.hissed off the stage and the life that shall, cloie amid acclamations supernal and - archangelic.Oh, men. and women on the stage of life, many of you,in the first act of the druma, nnd others in the second, and some-/of r you in the third, and a few in the fourth, and here and there one in the fifth, but all of you between entrance and exit, Ilquote to you as the peroration of this sermon the most suggestive passage that Shakspeare ever wrote, although you never heard it, recited. The author has often been claimed as infidel and atheistic, so the quotation shall be not only religiously helpful to ourselves, but grandly vindicatory- of. the great dra,matist. I quote from -hie last will and testament:

“In the name of God, Amen. I, William Shakkpeare, of Stratford-upon-i Avon, in the county of Warwick, gentleman, in perfect health and memory (God be- praised), do make this my last will and testament, in manner and form following: First, I commend my soul into the. hands of God; my. Creator, hoping and-assured-ly believing through the only merits- of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to, be,-made partaker of life everlasting.”

A BISON IN PHILADELPHIA.

Divine- Specimen of K a re America*. Buffalo Seen on Up-Town Streets, Residents of the neighborhood of 11th and Yerk streets yesterday discovered a: living specimen of that, rare animal,. onee so plentiful, the American bison,.trotting along at their very, curbstones. On the plains of the West, where millions of bison grazed;free and; unmenaneed by the white man's-pow-der, the extermination has been, so great that the herd kept by the United States Government at, Yellowstone Park is taking a place in science - beside the auk and dodo. The surprise of the Philadelphians, wbo so,unexpectedly found; sucha- rare and valuable specimen roaming at large, may be Imagined. There was, indeed,, a whole herd of bison grazing near by, and the one they discovered had wandered from it. It is. not the habiit of the bison to travel alone, the species being accustomed to graze in large herds, both for the sake of companionship and safety,. M sush large numbers they are very dangerous, and. plainsmen say that once they are stampeded nothing can stop, their disastrous course. J ' . Realizing their extraordinary opportunity, the people who discovered thebison, at once prepared to capture it, intending to add it to- tme of v the most famous herds of the couatry. They gave chase to the animal, it dashed away at a furious pace. People who met it on the street hurried out of Its way with an alacrity that showed how well the danger of a buffalo stampede was known. The plan of pursuit was not to head it off, but to. tire the animal out When running wild' on the plains it Is said that frightened sometimes run for hundreds of miles before they fall dead. It soon, however, became evident to the scientists who were attracted to the mot by the report of the startling the specimen they were after not in such active training as the deify, spirited bisons of the plains, and was not as wild as the bisons of the Oooper novels. The animals was eventually captured by a party of scouts and cowboys who were encamped in the and was taken back where R bptohged, inside the fence with the other buffaloes and the big gathering of men and hprses that go to make up the Wild West Show.—Philadelphia Public Led. ger.

Astronomers calculate that the surface of the earth contains 81.025,625 square miles, of which 23,814.121 are water and 7,811,504 are land, the water thus covering about seven-tenths of the earth’s surface. Dear weeps bat ones; cheap always tteepa.—Bfedon,