Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1916 — Page 3

Group of Young Patriots

The Old Color-Bearer

Through the city’s crowded highways, Marches on the color-bearer: White his hair falls to his shoulders. White as Colorado’s mountains. Proud he bears aloft the standard, Proud he bore it in the Sixties; Kenesaw and Lookout Mountain, High above the clouds it floated. Heed, ye young men", heed the lesson. Keep untarnished all its glory; Glory kindling first at Concord, 'Spreading West to far Malolos. Heed ye! Heed ye well the lesson! Grow not up untrained for battle; Sell ye not your precious birthright For a sordid mess of pottage. Chant our epic, fellow-patriots. Firmly weld the new-come aliens; Tell of Prescott, Hale and Reynolds, Custer, Benchley and young Cheney. Thus will all the wars and rumors Fade away as fades the twilight, True to all our fathers died for, Firm we’ll march adown the ages. —G. W. Taylor in Uncle Sam’s Magazine.

MEMORIAL DAYS. OF PAST YEARS

. . ACRILEGE, we would have 4 4 W called it in my girlhood, to have failed to give very able assistance in celebrating Memorial day,” said a woman of middle age. “There was, first of all, the delight of gathering the flowers. How eagerly we watched the bushes, hoping that the loveliest blooms would open in time, or delay their coming till the great day. Peonies we could count on. Snowballs helped, despite their droopiness, and spirea was always to be had. We gasped in admiration over Miss Amy’s contributions of exquisite garlands of the pliable bridal wreath, with touches of scarlet columbine, or the faint pink of wild honeysuckle clustered here and there, but we could never evolve anything half so lovely. They were at once our Joy and our despair.” Boys were useful when it came to wild-flower gathering, even if picking garden "posies was not their forte. They knew where early laurel and wild azalea were to be found and they could be trusted to bring home columbine, wild geranium and buttercups. For there never was a Memorial day with too many flowers. There was the town hall to decorate, where the veterans assembled for a brief session before the march to the cemetery. The G. A. R. ladies saw to that, and beautiful it was to childish eyes when, brave with hunting and odorous with flowers, you saw it the night before, under the shelter of mother s enfolding gingham apron. There is only one proper sort of bouquet for village Memorial day, and sorry would one woman be should she ever see it superseded by anything modern. An up-to-date florist would be horrified at its make-up and bewail its lack of grace; an artist might take it as a horrible example of crudity of color scheme. But to many, the stiff, tightly-tied bunch of posies, con- . leal, or bullet-shaped, or flattened into a parti-colored disk, means mingled pathos and pleasure. To the making of these nosegays went all the patience and the primitive taste of the grown daughters of the household. .There must be a rosebud, for the center, grown in the house —for garden roses were still sleeping, and florists were a needless luxury in the town of girl- . hood dayß—and brought to punctual perfection by much watering and sunning. Then ip exact order of prece- '• dence, circle upon circle, came spice pinks, white or pale mauve, mock orange, candytuft,, pansies, purple and yellow, with an encircling fringe of liließ of the valley. And around all, emphasizing the. color scheme, was the green and rose geranium leaves or the striped slenderness of ribbon grass. It was redolent of spicy sweetness and of loving care, even if it were not artistic, this Decoration day bouquet, afld no debutante ever bore" her orchids more proudly than did youthful volunteer soldier boy or tottering veteran the posy of daughter or sweetheart. V ‘V There was one corner just by the First church where every extra bunch of flowers found its way. There, in charge of the minister’s wife, they

were ranged in bowls', in case any soldier be forgotten. Should there be any such, away raced Tom or Johnny, Will or Frank, or tomboy Nell, if the boys had all followed the drum corps, to supply the lack, glad *o be of use on this day of days, and pleased with the grateful “Thank you” of the recipient. “One Memorial day, a tragic day that I shall never forget,” said the lady of the letter, “grandniother promised that I should help make Uncle Henry’s bouquet, an honor that seldom fell to an eight-year-old. Together Aunt Emily and I constructed the masterpiece, a triumph in Bouquet building, for the climbing rose bloomed early that year, and our scheme was simple yellow and white. But Memorial day morning brought some childish ailment, and when Uncle Henry, resplendent in his uniform as a captain of volunteers, and carrying a silk flag just presented to the company, rode up to the door for his flowers, he found a weeping small girl clutching the bouquet and pushing away the sticky balsam remedy that was grandmother’s panacea for all aches. “In an instant he was off his horse and down on his knees, spoon in hand, coaxing me to obedience. In a frantic attempt to be good I Jarred his elbow, and the contents of the tablespoon splashed down over his spotless uniform and the shimmering red, white and blue of the banner. In the general confusion that followed, the white and yellow pyramid got badly damaged, and all that. I recall of the remainder of that holiday is the quiet haven of a big four-poster in a raftered room, and a comforting grandmother, who read me to sleep out of her illustrated Bible.

Parades were personal affairs in those days. Every other man in the procession was a friend, or at least an acquaintance. You knew even the distinguished gentlemen In the carriages. In the first rode the squire and'the First church minister, escorting the orator of the day, Hon. Mr. Brown, congressman of the district. Judge Smith and the school superintendent, with the editor of the Daily News, came next, and so on down the line of lesser notabilities. Cheers were loudest when the crippled, age-worn veterans rode by, in the village bandwagon, followed by Grand Army men who were still able-bodied. A goodly array they presented in that decade. More than half have gone since. Every man who could hobble held his place in the line till the cemetery was reached. There was a thrill in every blue coat, in each bit of tarnished metal, a story in the empty sleeve, a tale of adventure in halting step and twisted back. Bull Run and Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and Antietam, were near at hand when the thin blue columns passed us by. At the end of the company, the last man of all in the procession, one girl knew, there came inevitably German Charlie, general utility man in the newspaper office, so bent and crippled by wounds and rheumatic pains that his treacherous legs could not be relied on to keep time to the martial Btrains of the band. .But he plodded along, eyes shining under his service hat brim, a posy in his button-hole, a loyal veteran of the Union army he had enlisted in when a boyish immigrant, proud to the core of his uniform and his right to wear it. German Charlie has gone, and so have most of the men who marched with him; and bo, alas, has some of the spirit they kept alive.

DECORATION DAY Flags and the band and marching— Of faithful veteran feet. Fathers, young men and children With voices shrill and sweet; And Lincoln’s spirit marching In every’ shining line, And Lincoln’s peace and freedom lit with the smile divine! Flags and the band and marching— Banners that proudly wave,. May green upon the meadows And on the soldier's grave; The boys in blue are ashes *neath the lilacs on their sod, But their souls are free-forever with lincoin and with Oodi- j Flags and the band and marching— And the drum-beat’s steady throb, Pipe on above, O robin. To drown a sudden sob! The laurel wreath for heroes dead! And a. cheer for all the brave Who march with Lincoln's soul today to liberate and save! —Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, INP.

MEMORIAL Gather the garlands rare today. Snow-white rosea and roses red; Gather the fairest flowers of May, Heap them upon the heaps of clay, Gladden the graves of the noble dead. This day the friends of the soldiers keep, And they will keep It through all the years, To the silent city where soldiers sleep Will come with flowers, to watch and weep And water the garlands with their tears. —Cy Warm an.

THOUGHTS ON MEMORIAL DAY

Decoration day, day of flags, and flowers, and green, grasscovered graves. Decoration day, the time of sobs and tears, of prayers, and memories, and smiles. Decoration day! It comes only once a year, this brave holiday, on the boundary line between May and June, spring and summertime. Schools give a holiday and banks close. Business is shut up, and the tired workingman hangs a flag out over his porch, and rests. Old soldiers, tottering on canes, soldiers bent and white-headed, waiting for the last “taps” to be sounded, get out their suits of blue and gray, covered with tarnished gold lace and brass buttons, and hobble to the cemetery to lay a wreath on some comrade’s last resting place. It is a beautiful thing to think of a nation celebrating a day—setting it apart from all others —for the purpose of honoring the nation’s heroes. I was sitting in a trolley car when a lady entered —a woman no longer very young, with a pale, sorrowful face. She wore expensive black, and her two carefully gloved hands held a huge dewy mass of roses. Like an oasis in a desert they filled the dusty city air with sweetness and color. In a little while a small newsboy dragged himself up the step and presented a grimy transfer to the conductor. “I found it,” he confided loudly to a man seated near the door. Then he tramped down the aisle, and climbed up on the seat next to the lady. “Them flow’rs are swell,” he told her in a soft, wondering tone of voiced “I never saw any like ’em before.” Reverently he touched the nearest blossom with moist, grimy fingers.

The lady moved down on* the seat, putting several feet of space between herself and the small intruder. “Don't touch them!” she ordered crossly. Several blocks farther on she got out, her arms full of her fragrant burden. With halting foosteps and tearfllled eyes, she turned in at a great marble-columned cemetery gate. She was taking her roses to lay on the grave of some loved dead one. I was' sorry for the woman ; but I could not help thinking of the little newsboy. He was very much alive, and a single flower would have meant paradise to him. I know a girl who had a very dear friend —a friend who meant more to her than I could possibly put into words. One day, the friend died and left her plunged in grief. A year after, the dead girl’s birthday came around, and the day before the anniversary I happened to meet my friend on the street. We went to tea together. I did not speak to the absent one, but suddenly, as we sat quietly gazing out of the window, the girl began to talk.

“Margaret,” she said, “something had been bothering me. I want to ask you if I’m doihg right.” “Perhaps I won’t help any. I’m not so good at advice —but go on.” “You see, it’s this way,” she told me. “Tomorrow is Alice’s birthday—the first birthday when we haven’t been together for ten years. I had earned five dollars —it seemed more personal that way—and I was going to buy flowers for her grave. 1 was Just on my way to the florist to order them when I met a woman I know —a woman Who used to wash for us. Margaret, you should have seen her. Her eyes were large and black and her cheeks were perfectly hollow. I asked her what was the matter, and she said she was hungry. Hungry? She was starving! And so wete the three children that belonged to her! Well, I told her that I would find some work for her today, and then I gave her all the money I had. It was only after she had left me that I remembered Alice’s flowers —I can’t get them now. Do you think that she’ll mind —very much?”

"Mind?” I groped blindly for words. "Mind? Of course not! She would be glad and thankful if she only knewr 1 Do you think so too, friends of mine? One day this week I felt rather blue and unhappy. It was a dark, gloomy day, with a biting wind coming around the bleak corners and a heavy rain that fell drenchingly to the ground—a steady downpour of big splashing drops. Somehow the world inside my office seemed very lonely and gray. I had a headache, my work had been going badly and I was rather discouraged. When the mail came in—-a big package of letters to be opened—l was not much cheered. But .my special guardian angel was on duty that day. When I cut the first envelope, I found a. plain little letter, written in pencil

on cheap paper, by an unknown lady, old enough to be my grandmother. But the words, lightly written in an old-fashioned hand, fell across my heart like a ray of golden sunshine, through the grayness of the rain. "Dear Friend," read the letter, “I have been seeing your pieces in the Christian Herald for some time, and I made up my mind to write to you. Some people believe in keeping their kind words and their flowers and their love until a person is dead. But I don’t. I want you to know, right now, that you’ve cheered me up lots of times, and that I like your stories and that I like you.” Now, I don’t want you to think that I am disapproving of Decoration day. The world is stupid enough and mat-ter-of-fact enough to forget easily the heroes who lie in our cemeteries. But we should consider the living, too. Let us place roses over the little green mounds, but don’t let us overlook the pleading child-hands that are stretched out for their sweetness. While we honor the memory of those beautiful spirits that have passed from us, let us not forget the living, breathing souls that need our help. It is not necessary to save all the flowers, the kind words and the kisses until lips and hearts and minds are cold and dead. —Margaret E. Sangster, Jr., in the Christian Herald.

UNITY OF NATION PROVED

Great Southerner Long Ago Pointed Out How Complete Has Been Its Restoration. From an address delivered by ITenry Watterson at the National cemetery, Nashville, Tenn., Decoration day, 1877. We are assembled, my countrymen, to commemorate the patriotism and valor of the brave men who died to save the Union. Jhe season brings its tribute to the scene; pays its homage to the dead; inspires the living. There are images of tranquillity all about us; in the calm sunshine upon the ridges; in the tender shadows that creep along the streams; in the waving grass and grain that mark God’s love and bounty; in the flowers that bloom over the many graves. There is peace everywhere in this land today.

Peace on the open seas, In all our sheltered bays and ample streams, Peace where’er our starry banner gleam*, And peace in every breeze. The war is over. It is for us to bury its passions with its dead; to bury them beneath a monument raised by the American people to American manhood and the American system, in order that “the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The Union is, indeed, restored when the hands that pulled down that flag come willingly and lovingly to-put it up again. I come with a full heart and a steady hand to salute the flag that floats above me —my flag and your flag—the flag of the free heart’s hope and home —the star spangled banner of our fathers —the flag that, uplifted triumphantly over a few brave men, has never been obscured, destined by the God of the universe to "waft on Its ample folds the eternal song of freedom to all mankind, emblem of the power on earth which is destined to exceed that on which it was said that the sun never went down.

IMPRESSING YOUNG AMERICA

Wasn’t That Sort.

Experience does not show that the strength of the domestic affections is impaired by the long separations unavoidably incident to war. On one occasion a private soldier said to General Thomas: .“General, I want to go home and see my wife.” “How long is it since you have seen her ?” asked the general. A “Over three months.” “Three months,” replied Thomas. “Why, I haven’t seen my wife for three years." "That may be so,” admitted the soldier, “but, you see, general, my wife and me ain’t that sort.”

THE REVEILLE Earle! 1 hear the tramp of thousands. And of armed mm the hum; Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum —- Raying, “Come, Preemen, comel Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming drum, m Let me of my heart take counsel: War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall comet" But the drum Echoed, “Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the solemn-sounding drunu “But when won the'coming battle, - ~ What of profit springs therefromf What if conquest, subjugation, Even greater ills become t" But the drum Answered, “Come! You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee-answering drum. “What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numbl" But the drum, Answered, “Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant — Come!" ’ * . Thus they answered — hoping, fearing, Some in faith, and doubting some, Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming, Said, “My chosen people, come!" , Then the drum, Lo! was dumb, For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, “Lord, we comer —BRET EARTE.

LITTLE LEFT OF OLD APPOMATTOX

Soldiers of 1865 who revisit the tpwn of Appomattox find that the half-century which has done so much for their country has done nothing for the hamlet made famous by the great event of Lee’s surrender. Indeed, the place has gone (backward in fifty years, its houses have fallen into decay or have disappeared, and its fields have grown up to pine. The village of Appomattox Courthouse was never a considerable settlement. Like many another county seat in the South, it had its origin in a courthouse, a Jail, a tavern, a house or two and a blacksmith shop—a center to which the inhabitants of a rural district could come at intervals to transact legal business. A visitor to Appomattox Courthouse today—or “old Appomattox," as it is now: called in that neighborhood—must be disappointed, unless he has the faculty of visualizing the momentous events that took place there, and near there, in April, 1865. The court building had then stood there half a century. About 1890 it whs burned. Today the square in which the old courthouse stood is covered with the debris of the fire, but out of the wreckage trees have grown up as companions to those that shaded the old courthouse before the fire.

The village that clustered around the courthouse has nearly disappeared. Four old frame structures have survived fire, storm and neglect, but these are sagging and out of joint and seem soon to pass away. One or two of these houses are tenantless. The tavern, once the Appomattox hotel, is the home of a farmer and the overseer of about 1,500 acres of adjacent land now owned by Col. George A. Armes, a retired officer of the United States army, who lives in Washington. Another house is occupied by a small farmer who has not dwelt long in that part of the state. The Surrender house, the McLean house, in which General Grant and his staff met Lee and his military secretary, is not there. It was a broadfronted brick house with a covered porch across the front, with the entrance in the middle and a hallway through the center. The hduse was torn down in 1892. It was proposed to reconstruct it at the World’s Fair in Chicago, but after the demolition of the house the plan was carried no further, presumably for lack of funds. The piles of brick and lumber that had been the house are rotting in the garden. There has been some talk of a patriotic society building the house on its oM site. An interesting personal story goes with the history of the Surrender house. It was the home of William McLean, who had moved to Appomattox from the vicinity of Bull Run, to avoid the scenes of war that destroyed the peace and safety of his family in 186 L

McLean was a farmer, then living in a frame house near Manassas on the road leading to Blackburns Ford, on Bull Run. July 18 the first fighting between th,e ; troops of Gen. Irwin McDowell and Gen. G. T. Beauregard took place at that ford, and General Beauregard took up his headquarters in the McLean house. A shell trom a Union battery struck the house. After the battle of Bui! Run, July 21, 1861, McLean and his family moved to upper Fauquier county. He next moved to Lunenburg county. War followed him. Then, declaring that he would

take his family so far from the fighting grounds that war would not further trouble them, he rented a house in the hamlet of Appomattox. Fate made this house the Surrender house. The McLean house near Manassas long ago was a ruin, but another house near it, which Beauregard also used as headquarters, is often erroneously pointed out as the McLean house. McLean’s son—J. Wilmer McLean — is a business man in Manassas —a hamlet that since the war has grown into a thriving town. The table in the McLean house at Appomattox on which the articles of surrender were written is in the National museum at Washington. The flag of truce under which the negotiations between Grant and Lee were conducted is also there, having been loaned to that institution by the widow of George A. Custer. Colonel Whittaker of Grant’s staff, who carried the flag, lives in Washington and Is expected to take part in the celebration at Appomattox. Maj. George C. Rounds of Manassas, a Civil war veteran, resident since the war at Manassas, who promoted the Blue and Gray reunion on the field of Bull Run, has promoted the coming fraternal celebration at Appomattox. Major Rounds has been urging upon the war department and congress for years the desirability of converting the battlefields of Bull Run into a national park. He also takes a keen interest in the future of Appomattox Courthouse. On the surrender ground is now a dense pine growth, in which is the only important monument at Appomattox. It was erected by North Carolina, April 9, 1905. ra Though the Appomattox Courthouse village of the Civil war period has practically disappeared, there is a new and thriving town called Appomattox, which is now the county seat of Appomattox county. It is three miles from old Appomattox and is on the Norfolk & Western railroad. During the Civil war there was a siding on this railroad called Appomattox station. It was here that Custer with his cavalry division got in front of Lee. The place has grown to be the town which today is called Appomattox. When the old court building was destroyed by fire, the courthouse was rebuilt at Appomattox station. *

FULLY PROTECTED