Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1904 — “LIGHTS OUT.” [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

“LIGHTS OUT.”

S GilO HE 60110 of the bugles. JI Long hours before Memorial Day had dawned on the western world, a solitary bugler, clad in khaki, stood by i tlie side of a few earth mounds on the far away Island of Guam. Lifting his bugle to his lips, he sounded the mlllJtyT taut cadences of the “taps"—the call of slumber —pathetic Zfi ‘1 lullaby of those who sleep the sleep that knows no waking, tb® singing cadence of the bugle. / Fifteen hundred miles away to the westward rolls its refrain, and the silvery trumpets sound the same song of eternal rest. Now comes the mellow flow of the minor strains, from the fevered swamp and the dark bayou, and the wailing of the bugles steals from the wilds of tropic jungles and from Reside the flower bespangled rivers where bronzed squads of soldiers fire their volleys. Rising, the tnpnpet call’s measured modulations resound from isle to'isle of the great archipelago. The benediction of the bugles! 'China catches the crescendo, and from Pekin to the sea resounds the stirring, soothing tones over the narrow graves of the patriotic soldier dead. Then St. Petersburg and Berlin and Paris and London—wherever Americans in colonies are found —take up the slumber song and show “Old Glory,” lest the refrain be lost ere it cross the sea to Cuba and to Porto Rico. Ah, the invocation of the bugles. From the hills that look down in silence on Santiago harbor, along the heights of San-Juan,—fr-omsoldiers’ cemeteries under the shadows of the castles of Moro, from tropical forests where graves are scarce, from groups of mounds where reconcentrado and soldier are burled side by side —up to the airs of heaven swells the plaintive music of the bugles. Oh, the chorus of the bugles. Crescendo —minuendo! Lo, where the woods and rock fortresses of Maine reverberate to the singing of the trumpets which speak from city cemetery and country graveyard, in ever-swelling cry the bugle’s tones are echoed from soldier’s grave to soldier's grave across the land to “where rolls the Oregon,” to mingle with its dashing. Ah, the dirge of the bugles. The waves of the Pacific catch the dying cadence and bear it to Hawaii. “Lights out!” cry the bugles to the dead in their grassy tents decked with beauteous blossoms. Oh, the wail of the bugles. Samoa’s coral strand hears and re-echoes the requiem over storm-wrecked mariners who wore the blue, and sounds “the taps.” Ah, the benediction of the bugles. From Guam to Samoa how they sing this day of heroism and of glory! Above the sounds of the marching of the hosts, above the roll of muffled drums, above the voices raised in prayer and patriotic speech, above the fair maidens and the sweet flowers, above the cracking rifle's bold challenge of the bivouac of the dead, is the haunting voice of the bugle intoning the mass for a day that is. dead and breathing a blessing upon its heroes. Ah, the benlson of the bugles!—Des Moines News.