Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1888 — IN ACTION. [ARTICLE]

IN ACTION.

Tnit Mt UAltogether too ranch scrarn- * ble for office by the Republicans—fdF Cabinet positions down to “repairer of mail sacks.’’ It is unseemly. One can not live by office alone. • • Ths dispatches which daily appear in the newspapers of Jhe doings of Kilrain, Mitchell and Sullivan are disgusting. The talk is maintained for a put pose, that so-called “sporting” men—perish the word—may be fully advised of the braggadocio of these blatherskites and at the proper time be properly gulled. Self-respect inc people care very little about them. < Tub fifty Congregational and Methodist ministers of Chicago who the other day adopted resolutions condemning in the most sweeping way the publication, sale and reading of Sunday newspapers managed to put themselves in a queer predicament. According to a dispatch from Chicago they hate made themselves liable to prosecution for conspiracy under the Merritt, taw, which provides imprisonment in the penitentiary for people who conspire to injure financially any legally conducted business. There is not much likelihood, of course, that any of the clergymen will be prosecuted under this act; the Sunday newspaper is not allowed to justify itself by resorting to such a device:Jbut the minisof Illinois will probably see the necessity of knowing and obeying the laws of the State hereafter.

Mrs. Lucy Parsons, wife of one of the Chicago “martyrs,” has unfo.riuna.tely returned tb this country from Europe, where she has b en hob-nobbing with her ilk. She takes the very first opportunity, upon her arrival of giving her very weighty opinion, upon affairs in this country as compared with affairs in Europe, and, as is to be expected of such as she, with an unfavorable opinion of this government. Mrs. Parsons is small potatoes and few in a hill, and yet it is aggravating to have such fistes barking at one’s heels. It is unfortunate, we stated, that she should have returned, and our reason is that it will force the proper persona to suppress her long and loose tongue, together with several others that are wagging in the old way. There is not room enough here for such as she and the country would be very well satisfied if they would leave, never to return.

Tns smoldering discontent with educational methods has broken out in England in a great flame. An able protest against the mischief of competitive examinations has been signed by nearly all the leading Professors of Oxford, Cambridge, London, Edinburg, and by members of Parliament, authors and clergymen. The objection is, first, to the dangerous pressure of such examinations; and, secondly, to the misdirection of energies and aims. The latter point is illustrated by the statement that young men at the Universities are led to believe that the main purpose of education is to enable them to win some great money prize. The moral damage is pointed out with equal directness. Our American education is full of the same mischief, the indirection of purpose, moral perversion and physical overpressure. The whole prize system is a nuisance, and should be abated. No young man is benefitted by having his aim diverted from securing thorough mental equipment and development to securing honors and prizes.

War Not As Historians Tell It, But as Fighting Men Know It to Be. New York Voice. One who has fought on many a battlefield writes the following thrilling description of the work of a battery of six guns: Did you ever see a battery taxe .position? hasn't the the thrill of a cavalry charge, nor the grimness of a line of bayonets moving slowly and determinedly on; but there is a peculiar excitement about it that makes old veterans rise in their saddles and cheer. We had been fighting on the edge of the woods. Every cartrge box had bifen emptied once or more and one-fourth of the brigade had melted away in dead and wounded and missing. Not a cheer is heard in the whole brigade. We know that we ’are being driven foot by foot, and that when break once more the line will go to pieces and the enemy will pour through the gap. Here comes help! Down the crowded highway gallops a battery, withdrawn from some other position to save ours. The field fence is i scattered while you could count thirty, I and the guns rush for the hill behind i us. Six horses to a piece—three riders to each gun. Over dry ditches where a l former would not drive a wagon, through clumps of bushes, over logs a foot thick, j every horse on the gallop, every rider ashing his team and yelling—the sight behind us making us forget the foes in front. The guns jump two feet high as the heavy wheels strike rock or log, but not a horse slackehs his pace, not a aan,noneer loses his seat Six guns, six sixty horses, eighty men, race

for the brOw of a hill as if he who reachad it first would be knighted. A moment ago the battery was a con{uaed mob. We look again and the six guns are in position, the detached horses hurrying away; the ammunition chests open, and along our line rung the command! “Give them one more volley i g. a ini, a _i__ i i iif fh> wnr-' 0 . TV™ have scarcely obeved when boom! boom! opens the Jjattery, and jets of lire jump down and* scorch the gretn trees under which we fought and despaired. The scattered old brigade has a chance to breathe for the first time in three hours as we form a line and tie down. What grim cool fellows these cannoneers are! Every man a perfect machine. Bullets splash dust in their faces, but they do not wince. Bullets sing over and around; they do not dodge. There goes one to the earth, shot through the head as he sponged his gun. That machinery looses just one beat, misses just one cog in the wheel and then works away again as before. 4

Every gun is using short fuse shell. The ground shakes and trembles, the roar shuts out all sounds from a line three miles long,and the shells go shrieking into the swamp to cut tre es short off, to mow great gaps in the bushes, to hunt out and shatter and mangle men until their corpses can not be recognized as human. You would think a tornado was howling through the forest, followed by billows of fire, and yet men live through it —aye! press forward to capture the battery. We can hear their shouts as they form for the rush. Now the shells are changed for grane and cannister, and guns are fired so fast that all reports blend into one mighty roar. The shriek of a shell is the wickedest sound in war, but nothing makes the flesh crawl like-the demortf* cal singing, purring, whistling grape shot, and the serpent-like hiss of canister. Men’s legs and heads are torn from bodies, and bodies cut in two. A round shot or shell takes two z men out of the rank as it crashes through. Grape and canister mow a swath and pile the dead on top of each other. Through the smoke we see a swarm of men. It is not a battle line, but a mob of men desperate enough to bathe their bayonets in the flame of the guns. The guns leap from the ground, almost as they are depressed on the foe, and shrieks and screams and shouts blend into one awful and steady cry. Twenty men out on the battery are down, and the firing is interrupted. The foe accepts it as a sign of wavering and come rush on. They are pot ten feet away when the guns give them the last shot. That discharge picks living men off their feet and throws them into the swamp, a blackened, bloody mass. Up, how, as the enemy are among the guns! There is a silence of seconds, and then the flash and roar of more than 3,000 muskets and a rush forward with bayonets. For what? Neither on the right nor left nor in front of us is a living foe! There are corpses around us which have been struck by three, four, and even six bullets, and nowhere on this acre of ground is a wounded man. The wheels of the guns can not move until the blockade of dead is removed. Men can not pass from caisson io gun without climbing over winrows of dead. Every gun and wheel is smeared with blood; every foot of grass has its horrible stain. Historians write of the glory of, warBurial parties saw murder where his. torians saw glory.