ife. We hear the sounds of preparation--the
music of boisterous drums--the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators; we see
the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the
great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they
adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as
they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing
babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some
are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their
hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and
kisses--divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with
wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to
drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the
wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms--standing in the
sunlight sobbing---at the turn of the road a hand waves--she answers by
holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.

We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
keeping time to the grand, wild music of war--marching down the streets
of the great cities--through the towns and across the prairies--down to
the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.

We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory
fields--in all the hospitals of pain--on all the weary marches. We stand
guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with
them in ravines running with blood--in the furrows of old fields. We are
with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst,
the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them
pierced by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches, by forts, and
in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of
steel.

We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but human speech
can never tell what they endured.

We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden
in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old
man bowed with the last grief.

The past rises before us, and