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THE GRAY AND THE BLUE
IN PRAYER AND SONG
By General Clement A. Evans
I earnestly invite the assistance of the surviving
chaplains .and soldiers of both armies to furnish
The Golden Age with incidents and other informa
tion through which the people of our country may
learn that the religious life of the men who offered
up themselves in battle was not neglected. The
subject, by its very nature, is exhaustible. Within
a year the story can be told. Soldiers who w T ere
witnesses are passing away. I beg that this call
for assistance may be heeded in the spirit in which
it is given.
Clement A. Evans.
The Gray in 1906.
The South is well satisfied with the sound patri
otism of its old ideas, with the purity of its senti
ment, with the general course of its record, and with
its heroes living and dead. It is also as well sat
isfied with the Union, the Constitution, the flag, the
army and navy, and with the present power and
glory of our country. The attempt to reconcile the
South is a waste of philanthropy. It reconciled
itself nearly forty years ago with very little help,
and now hails all reciprocal reconciliation, let it
come as it will.
The Southern people of these Uniteed States are
quickly and warmly responsive to generous con
sideration. They appreciate the national demon
stration of regard for General Wheeler. Their
hearts responded warmly when their old captured
battle flags were restored to the States. They are
deeply affected by the purpose of the Government
to care for the Confederate soldiers’ graves. They
appreciate the giving of facilities for completing
the rosters of Confederate armies. They welcome
heartily the present investigation of the needs of
their rivers and harbors; they have manifested
with enthusiastic Southern cordiality their delight
at the visits of the Presidents of their country;
they expect increasing sympathy of their country
men for them in dealing with their peculiar local
problems, and they participate in every demonstra
tion that can secure by strong fraternal pressure
that solidarity of the people of the United States
which will leave no line or plane of cleavage any
where.
The South recognizes its share of responsibility
for the good government of the Union. It was
never so much in earnest in efforts as now to have
“a perfect Union, to establish justice, insure do
mestic tranquility, provide for the common de
fense, promote the general welfare and secure the
blessings of liberty for ourselves and our pos
terity.” The South would have the entire land to
be all South from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico,
all North from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great
Lakes, and all the States and Territories to be one
rich realm of liberty, fraternity and equal pros
perity from ocean to ocean.
Rest, Comrades, Rest!
Rest, comrades, rest!
Crowned -with wreaths of roses,
While quiet sleep
Each weary eyelid closes!
Slumb’ring in your tents ye lie,
While the tumult passes by,
Heeding not the years that sweep
O’er your silent, peaceful sleep.
Though we call, ye answer not—
Life with all its cares forgot.
Rest, comrades, rest,
Crowned with wreaths of roses.
Rest, comrades, rest,
Crowned with wreaths of roses,
While quiet sleep
Each weary eyelid closes!
Will ye hear the songs we sing,
Wear the garlands that we bring?
The Golden Age for April 19, 1906.
Shall no word of praise or blame
Reach and stir your hearts again?
Still we call, but, cares forgot,
Ye slumber on and answer not.
Rest, comrades, rest,
Crowned with wreaths of roses!
Memorial Day.
“The dead need no tribute, but the living owe
it to themselves and to posterity to show their ap
preciation of true manhood, lofty honor and exalt
ed bravery and patriotism. But for this duty we
might leave the dead alone. They have no longer
any need for our eulogies, and wfliether we honor
them or not, they will have their reward. Unhon
ored though they be now, sometimes in the provi
dence of God and somewhere in the universe, they
will meet with that recompense due to unselfish de
votion and self-sacrifice.”
Oh, Lay Me Away with the Boys in Gray
When my warfare is o’er and my toiling done,
And your lonely watch you keep,
When your tender eyes are filled with tears,
As in death I peacefully sleep,
When your tender eyes are filled with tears,
As in death I peacefully sleep—
CHORUS.
Oh. lay me away with the boys in gray,
With the comrades I love so well;
For there’s no sacred place on earth’s green space
Like the graves where these heroes dwell.
I ask no heaven-piercing spire or shaft
To mark the narrow burial plot.
Where dear ones come when flowers bloom,
To deck with love the quiet spot—
Wheie dear ones come when flowers bloom,
To deck with love the quiet spot—
CHORUS: But lay me away, etc.
Give me a place in mem’ry’s dearest hours,
When the lost steal through your heart;
My name may start the crystal fount again
And join our souls, though far apart;
My name may stait the crystal fount again
And join our souls, though far apart—
CHORUS: But lay me away, etc.
Tread Lightly, Ye Comrades!
Tread lightly, ye comrades, his lone grave around—
Those ashes are sacred and sacred the ground;
’Tis one of earth’s noble, so gallant and brave,
That here lies asleep in the volunteer’s grave.
He’s fought his last battle, the vict’ry he’s won,
And now the brave soldier is resting alone.
His young life was given his country to save,
And low here he lies, in the volunteer’s grave.
CHORUS.
Disturb not, disturb not his rest, calm and deep;
The last trumpet, only, shall wake him from sleep.
Tribute of Senator Hoar of Massachu
setts to Southern People.
“Now, my friends, having said what I thought
of to say on this question, perhaps I may be in
dulged in adding that, although my life, political
ly and personally, has been a life of almost con
stant strife with the leaders of the southern peo
ple, yet as I grow older I have learned not only to
respect and esteem, but to love the great qualities
which belong to my fellow-citizens of the Southern
States. They are a noble race! Their love of home,
their chivalrous respect for women, their courage,
their delicate sense of honor, their constancy which
can abide by an opinion or a purpose or an interest
for their states through adversity and through
are things by which’ the people of
the more mercurial north may take a lesson.
And there is another thing—covetousness, cor
ruption, the low temptation of money have not yet
found any place in our southern politics.”
Why Not?
There recently appeared in a magazine a clever
suggestion of a silent system in society, being a
plan of more or less benevolence not to introduce
people in your house, but let them find each other
out. This would have its charm. None of us are
born acquainted, none of us wish acquaintance
thrust upon us; in this as in some other things,
middle ground is best. Left to acquire our friends
by natural selection what delightful people not to
know we could avoid! The perennial bore! Who
knows him not afar off? And the people who
appeal to us at sight. Instead of a tiresome wait
on convention we could walk up and say, “I like
the look of you. Will you let me know you bet
ter?” Should he decline—an improbability—it
would be no worse than the plan which now ob
tains in polite society.
Then, too, this habit of direct address would
encourage and foster a spirit of frankness every
where and in every relation of life. If Mrs. Next
Street called when Mrs. Busy Day could not pos
sibly appear the maid would say at the door, “my
mistress says she regrets it very much but must
deny herself the pleasure of seeing you, as she is
helping take down the stove pipe. She will return
your call promptly and recover the lost enjoyment.”
Would not this be more amiable and easier to be
lieve than “not at home” when you have just seen
the flutter of a familiar skirt across the back hall,
or overheard hurriedly whispered instructions? We
are told that polite fabrication is necessary to oil
the wheel of social life, and doubtless it does serve
the purpose in our present pur-blind conviction
that truth is the most dangerous thing to handle.
If we were more familiar with its pristine clear
ness we’d see it wears not so fearful a mien, but
is to be trusted, not to bridge over a social chasm,
but to fill it to the level and make solid ground.
In that golden time when all shall speak the
truth from the least to the greatest no broken
hearts and ruined homes will mark the path of the
scandal-monger; no heart-burning with the racking
thought, “I wonder what she meant by that?”
will be left by the innuendo; for being honest and
knowing others to be we can take all we hear and
say at par, and not waste precious nerve force try
ing to read into things what we’d have them Inean,
or to read out what hurts and displeases. But we
anticipate. All this comes in the millennial.
NORA SANDERS.
News of General Interest.
Alexander Lange Kleland, the popular Norwe
gian poet and author, is dead of paralysis of the
heart. He was born in 1849.
Thursday morning, April 12, the cornerstone of
the main building of the Baptist Orphanage at
Hapeville, now in course of erection, was laid.
The house passed the national quarantine bill by
an overwhelming vote. The bill carries with it an
appropriation of $500,000 for begining an imme
diate campaign against yellow fever.
Colonel Thomas Jackson, of Montgomery county,
one of the few surviving members of the Confeder
ate Congress, is dead, at the age of 96.
1 he Georgia State President of the Daughters of
the Confederacy has issued a stirring appeal for
assistance in the work of building a monument to
the memory of Captain Wirz, the commander of
Andersonville prison, who was unjustly executed
under charges trumped up against him by his op
ponents. It is pointed out that something should
be done in conspicuous refutation of the allegations
to the effect that Captain Wirz treated the Federal
prisoners in his keeping with cruelty,