, without rushing into folly, have
leaped the barriers of ignorance and ancient custom that kept them in an
atmosphere odorous of villainous drugs and combinations of drugs, and,
untrammeled by old traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means
of mitigating our bodily ills. All honor to them. They have driven away
the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the
amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump
missionary. The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and
his immense boulders--I beg pardon, I should say, _boluses_ of
nastiness--has vanished like a surly ghost at the approach of daylight,
and in his stead we have a gentleman, placid and self-poised, with a
velvet touch and a face beaming with cheerful smiles. And if they have
not made the measles a luxury, they have given us a syrup that children
are said to cry for.

In the industrial arts, too, there is a spirit of chivalry that is
marching bravely on, overthrowing old notions. What knight of the olden
time ever did as much for his ladye fayre as he did for all womanity who
wrought out the problem of the sewing-machine? How many aching hands and
eyes and hearts has that little instrument, with its musical
_click-click, click-click_, relieved! No more songs of the shirt, no
more wearying of hands and curving of spines over the inner vestments of
mankind. We have changed all that. And every stroke of the pioneer's ax,
as he fells the mighty forest-trees, is a blow struck by the honest and
earnest chivalry of labor, battling with wild nature, carving a way for
civilization's triumphal march. And the cheery whistle of the plowboy,
as he drives his team a-field; the ring of the hammer on the anvil; the
clatter of the busy loom; the scream of the locomotive, as it sweeps
over the land, plunging through the mountains and dashing out across the
prairies--all these are the clarion-notes of modern chivalry's bugles,
ringing through the world in joyous and triumphant tones.

And this war--who shall tell; what historic pen can record its grand and
glorious chivalry? Is not every one, from the pale young student, fresh
from the breast of _Alma Mater_, to the large-handed and larger-hearted
rustic, with the hay-seed yet in his hair, and the rugged bod-carrier,
redolent of sweat and brick-dust--are not all these, who have come forth
from the field and the workshop, the office and the lecture-room, to
defend