Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1899 — Significance of the Day. [ARTICLE]

Significance of the Day.

There is a melancholy pleasure in considering this great anniversary, second only in iniportance to Fourth of July, but overshadowed by a vastly different sentiment. Independence Day is the birthday of American freedom. Memorial Day may well be called its day of baptism and consecration. On this occasion we turn from the everyday concerns of life and give ourselves up to the contemplation of acts of heroism that raise humanity above the common level and link it more closely to the Divine Spirit. These heroes whose graves we strew with flowers gave their lives for their country; sacrificed themselves and all that they possessed that liberty and peace as established by the Constitution of the United States might be freed from the bands that had been thrown around them, and might flourish untrammeled, unconditioned and without reproach.