The sunny South. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1875-1907, May 18, 1878, Image 5

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[From the Griffin Daily Nowf.] THE SPEECH of the CENTURY. -BY- COLONEL JOHN H. SEALS, OF THE SIXW SOUTH. A NEW DOCTRINE PROCLAIMED. Wo Lost Cause—Wo Conquered Ban ner—Wo Conquered South. GOD ON THE SOUTHERN SIDE! A BRILLIANT FUTURE. Delivered in tirillin, Ga., on flic 301 li of April ISIS, to an Immense Audience. We copy the speech of onr Col. Seals, with the head lines, from the Griffin Daily ftews. It is eliciting the most favorable comments from every one who reads it, and should be generally read as it certainly opens up a new Held for re flection. What is the meaning of all this demonstra tion? Why have the people with one accord, the old and the young, the middle-aged, the mother and the maiden, the widow and the or phan assembled together this day with flowers, wreathes and crosses? It is the date of no great battle, no great victory, nor is it the birthdty of any great soldier, statesman, plilosopher or philanthropist. Indeed it is the date of no great event in history. True, thirteen years ago the last considerable army of the South surrender ed with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, but the gal lant little Confederacy had already gone down forever with Lee at Appomattox. Then why this grand assemblage of the good people of this city and community ? Do we, as a people, properly comprehend it? Do these bright-eyed boys and girls properly understand it? No, it is not understood. There is no day like it in all history, and no people but those who livp under a Republican form of Government where the will of the people is the supreme law, could have such a day. The Greeks could not have had it, because their peculiar mythology was introduced into all public ceremonies, and they deified their heroes into gods. The Ho man’s could not have had it, for the patricians would have scouted the idea of paying suc- houors to the plebeians. The old feudal sys tems and the monarchies which succeeded them would not have tolerated such ceremonies; and only here in America, where liberty is a senti ment and not a nationality as in Europe, could such a custom be established and receive such universal sanction. And being the anniversary of no particular event it has a broad and na tional sublimity which attaches to no other day in the world’s histpry. It is not dwarfed and circumscribed in its significance by one event, but like “All Souls Day” in the Roman Catho lic church, it has been set apart by special arbi tration as a day when all could unite in a spon taneous outgushing of gratitude and respect to the dead heroes of a noble and gallant struggle. At first it was an occasion when hearts bled afresh at the recollection of personal losses, and each bereaved friend scattered flowers upon the- graves of the loved ones as a token of personal regard and affection; but the sentiment now takes a broader character, and a higher glory consecrates the ceremony. Wherever a soldier sleeps to-day his sepulchre is a sacred Mecca frrim which the living of any oor.'atry oi clime may breathe new inspiration. Liberty stands with classic form and angelic beauty beside each grave with the laurel wreath of victory poised above it, while “glory guards with sol emn r»nnd," and sanctified spirits look from the battlements above with kindliest benedictions upon th<- ineffable pageantry of this day through out the Gulf States. In Virginia the 10th of May is the day for this ceremony, and in the Northern States the :30th of May. Each grave is the nation’s legacy, whether its occupant fell in the blue or died in the gray, and the patriot will shed a tea upon it wherever it may be found. And is there a human being in all this land who does not feel his pulses quicken and his heart to swell with pride and gratitude as he walks amid the graves of these Confederate dead? They were a glorious band. Bat I come not, Fellow Citizens, to utter gushing and empty sentiments to their memory, nor to recount their gallant deeds; these belong to the poets and the historian. No tongue with eloquence ever so impassion ed, could add aught to the glory of their achieve ments, while the finger of the Almighty has re corded upon immortal pages the annals of their sufferings. “They fell devoted but undying, The very gales their names are sighing, The waters murmur of their name, The woods are peopled with their fame; Their spirits wrap the dusky mountain, Their memory sparkles o’er the fountain: The meanest rill, the mightiest river, Boll mingling with their fame forever. Despite every yoke she bears, Our land is glory’s still and theirs, ’Tis still a watchword to the earth When men would do a deed of worth.” But the bloody scenes have long since passed away; and let them be hid forever from our sight. I would not recall them. Let us rather dwell upon the heritage which they have left ns. I come to proclaim a new trnth in this coun try, and I wonld that I could sound it in the ears of the people of all lands. Onr statesmen and poets and editors, onr preachers and all the people are in the habit of speaking of ‘The Lost Cause,’ and lamenting these dead soldiers as having ‘died in vain.’ Bat I proclaim here to-day from this stand that the cause was not lost, and that these soldiers did not die in vain. What was the cause for which they died ? I want yonr close attention for only a very few moments. Speeches on these occasions are expected to be brief, and I have had scarcely a moment from my ten thou sand unremitting duties to elaborate the argu ment which I shall present. You all know the history of this great country. In the blood of our sires and under the special guidance of God himself a grand system of Republican gov ernment was established on this continent with the necessary checks and balances embodied in a wise, if not an inspired Constitution, and under it for CO years the country prospered as no nation on the globe had ever done. Law, order, peace and good will to man reigned in all its borders. The people accumulated wealth and were protected in life, liberty and prop erty. Its ensign was honored upon all the seas and the proudest of all titles was to be called an American citizen. In the beautiful words of Story ‘the spirit of the young nation swept across the waters, ascended the Andes and snnffed the breezes of both oceans; infnsed itself into the life-blood of Enrope; warmed the snnny plains of France, and the lowlands of Holland. It touched the cold philosophy of Germany and the North; and moving on to the South opened to Greeoe the lessons of her better days.' Kingdoms and monarchies trembled under the shadows of its ascending wings, and toiling millions of other lands hailed it as the grand asylum for the weary and heavy ladened. Every man wu a king in his own oastle and a peer before the law, and he rested under the (•hade of hie own trees where none dared molest or make him afraid. He lived under the Con stitution of his fathers which protected him in all his rights and the very shekinah of the Almighty seemed to rest upon the Republic. Bnt the old serpent finally made his aDpear- ance in this Western garden—the same old rep- tile that poisoned the paradise of the East. Ag itators and teachers of a “Higher Law” came upon the scene and began to teach the people that the Old Constitution under which the country had thrived so long, was a “league with Hell and a covenant with death.” They poison ed the minds of the yonng and raised up preju dices in one section against the people of the other. A vast crop of pernicious ‘isms’ from atbeism, abolitionism and free’ loveism down to a lesser species took possession of the masses at the North, and finding the Constitution of the fathers a barricade to the promulgation of their sentiments and the ultimate accomplishment of their purposes, they denied the fundamental principles upon which the government was bas ed and made war npon our Republican theory. They taughttbat the General Government was not Federal in its nature, but a great central au thority in which all power should be concentra ted, and that the people owed it supreme allegi ance. All authority was to be merged into this great central head and States rights and individual rights were to be obliterated or ignored. These pernicious doctrines in the course of thirty or forty years made alarming headway. Preachers, Sunday-school teachers, statesmen, editors, au thors and all those who moulded public senti ment, forced these ideas upon the masses of the North. The South bitterly opposed them, and was therefore hated with an intense hatred, and patriots everywhere trembled for the safety of the Republic. You all know how often it came near going to pieces, but was patched up by compromises like the Missouri compromise and others. Everything was inevitably drifting into Centralism, which is hut another name for Im perialism. The cry was general among the Northern masses for a monarchy. Republican government was a failure, and they demanded a change. Constitutional liberty was to he ban ished the realm forever. Bnt that must not be. But where could it look for defenders? It couldn’t look to the North, for that was lead ing the crusade against it. It couldn’t look to the East nor the West, for they were infected like the North. It couldn’t look to tho Old World, for there they hated a republican form of government. Then where could it look ? Only to the despised, villified and abused South, where its bravest, truest and most consistent friends had always resided. This section had always clung steadfastly to the Old Constitution, and thank God, our brave people rushed to the rescue and, like the heroic Roman youth who threw himself into the yawning gulf to save Rome, they plung ed into the breach to save Republican govern ment and Constitutional Liberty. And did they fail ? TVas their cause lost ? I appeal to the world for an answer; and it comes in the negative from all portions of this great Repub lic which lives to-day as in the days of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. It comes from the halls of Congress, where Southern statesmen are the most honored representatives of the nation; it comes from the Executive Mansion itself where a wise and brave Chief Magistrate has planted himself squarely upon the Constitution of the fathers and administers it in the East and the West, the North and the South without fear, favor or affection to either section. And who is this President? Strange to say, he is one of their own party ; and why this great conversion ? The answer is that the courage, heroism and. persistent defence of these sacred principles by the South has given them new charms for the American people, and no President who has any regard for the welfare of the ^nation will ever dare to violate them agaAi. Mr. Hayek is a man of conscientious scruples, and I believe him to be a patriot and Christian. He is mak ing a good President. Let him stay where he is. frauds or no frauds. He did not place him self there. Congress did it when they decided upon a commission to determine the result of the election, and it has all worked out right. He’was selected to bring order out of chaos, to restore the government to its ancient landmarks, and to put to eternal shame the anti-republi can anti-constitutional shriekera of his own party. And are they not now gnashing their teeth and gnawing files m the mountains? Ho is doing a good work. Let us hold up his hands. A loud and convincing answer, then, comes from the Executive of the nation; it comes ringing across the waters from the Old World, that the blood and heroism of the South have saved Re publican America, and still it stands as a great asylum with open gates for the oppressed of all lands. Then where is any ‘lost cause?’ At no time since the days of Mr. Monroe has the Constitu tion had a firmer hold upon the great American heart than at this very moment, and Constitu tional Liberty is now the watchword of the na tion. We lost men; we lost treasure and millions of property of all kinds, but these were the sacri fices to be made for the'great boon to be enjoy ed in the future. No great revolution in public sentiment has ever been effected without the shedding of blood and wasting of treasure. It is one of the peculiar characteristics of the Al mighty in his dealings with nations. From the beginning of the world down to the present, blood has marked almost every great event. At one time, you know, He destroyed nearly the entire human family with a flood; He engnlfed Pharaoh and his legions in the Red sea; He de stroyed Sodom and Gomorrha with fire from the heavens; the old Scriptures are a record of blood; through the blood of His own Son on the cross He established His kingdom on the earth; and in the blood of the martyrs was the Chris tian religion perpetuated. Yes, Fellow-citizens, Christ died as a rebel and malefactor, bui His^kingdom lives to-day, Cranmer, Ridley Latimer, and their followers, perished in the flames and in horrible pits and dnngeons, but the Christian religion still lives and is the hope of the world; these Confederate soldiers died, but their cause lives to-day and is the glory of their country. In the old wars, God made Him self almost visible to the eye, as when he direct ed Gideon how to destroy the enemies of his country, and it was the cry in the camp of ‘the sword of Gideon and of the Lord’ that put the Amalekites to flight, and caused them to destroy each other. It is easy and glorious to read God in all things—in war and in peace—in nations and in individuals. I see Him everywhere—in the grand old monntains and flowery savannas—in the deep rolling rivers and murmuring rills—in the fall ing snowflake and flashing oascade—in the sur ging billows and the dancing foam-bells upon the lake—in Orion with his silver belts and the oorgeous rainbow arch which spans the firma ment—in the deep old forest where the breath of the pines smells sweet, and where He has planted the wild flower and painted its tiny petals as none bnt the finger of God can paint them. I read Him throughout all onr late cony, flict, and I assert that He fought on the side of the South. . We did not establish an independent govern ment, for that was simply an impossibility from the beginning without the intervention of a and the day of miracles had long ago passed away. It was indeed a ridiculous absurdity to talk about ten millions of people with no guns, no ships, no factories, no powder mills, no cap factories, no nothing, save a little cotton and four millions of slaves who might be tamed against ns at any time, whipping 990 millions. The trnth is, the South had to fight the whole world. It had no real friend any where save that great and good man who has lately died, Pope Pius the IX, and he was pow erless. But God did not intend for us to es tablish another government. That was not the purpose for which the war was inaugurated, and it was at variance with his own great plans. The whole history of the conflict demonstrates two facts as clearly as a sunbeam : First, that the Lord was on the side of the Southern sol diers ; and second, that He did not intend for us to establish a separate governmont. Look at it one moment! You all know that success at tended onr arms in nearly every conflict with the eneqay. no matter how great the dispari ty in numbers. The North removed general after general for defeat, and added battalion after battalion to their forces, and yet the same results followed almost every engagement. But you all know again that in every decisive en gagement something prevented our armies from reaping the advantages of the victory. After tae first great victory at Manasas it would have been an easy matter for our forces to have marched into the Capital of the nation, and no doubt throughout the North, for their armies were demoralized, and the people fright ened. This is true, no matter what others may say. Bnt they stopped and thereby lost the advantage. In .terrible battle of the Wilderness when the destruction of the Northern army was imminent an<| there was nothing to save it, just then our immortal Jaok- sod fell and that put an end to the pursuit. And, again, in almost the very same rlsce, and when the enemy were in the same terrible di lemma, Gen. Longstreet was wounded in the same way, which saved them the seeVmd time. General Albert Sidney Johnson fell just as he was winning a great battle. Had our troops pressed forward after the battle of Chiokamauga they would have greatly demoralized the Wes tern army. And at Gettysburg a‘ter victory had perched upon the Southern cross for two days or more, a small circumstance made it necessary for the Confederates to retire before that same son, Johnston, Polk, Bartow, Cobb, Patrick Cleburne and all that martyred host who have passed fron the cypress shadows to the shining asphodels of Paradise are hovering over it as beneficent presences with thanksgivings and rejoicings to the Creator for the grand fu ture that awaits it. Then let it be the most glorious day iu the year. Let it be not a day for mourning over the past and grieving over a lost cause, but let it be a day for reconsecrating ourselves to the principles of a free Republican government and renewing our determination to build up the waste places and reap the benefits conferred by the sacrifices of onr heroic dead. And if there is the grave of one who wore the bine in your cemetery, let it be covered this day with choicest flowers. While the Southern sold-d’ haps was cured of her belief in dreams. One of ier fought to perpetuate Constitutional libert; he fought to perpetuate the union of the States. Both were essential and both must be preserved, and now that their work is done, both sleep side by side waiting the judgment day. As far back as 1874 “The Grand Army of the Repub lic” passed a resolution in New York that there should be no more distinction on decoration days between Federal and Confederate graves, but that every mound which marks a soldier’s grave should be decorated with wreaths and flowers. Yes, “The North anS South, East and West Have set one day apart as blest, An 1 strew with flowers ali the graves That hold in trust Columbia’s braves.” And “No more shall the war-cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red. They banish our anger forever When they laurel the graves of our dead. Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day, Love and tears for the blue, Tears and love for the gray. And in conclusion, shall these beautiful and impressive ceremonies be kept up ? By all means. Let them be continued from year to year through the next hundred years. Con ceived, as they were, in the sentiment of chiv- Drcaras, Pleasant, Unpleasant and Grotesque. Several highly gifted men and women have had a certain faith in dreams. In one of his published letters, Charles Dickens relates a dream he had had, with a seriousness and cir cumstantiality which reveal plainly enough that, to him, it was no shadow of empty air. We read in Fredrika Bremer’s life that she lully believed she should die at a certain age, be cause she had once dreampt that a departed friend had come to her and told her that in such a year she would be with him. She, howevqr, outlived the appointed date, and thereby per- army which they had so often defeated in bat- , ^’^c^ t e. .These things were surely Providential, and & m6 and beautitul f Let us baptize anew thus it is easy to see the hand of the Almighty all through the conflict. He was working out a great plan which is new apparent to our senses. terfered with it. The South did not care for a baptize the Roman Flora in the limpid waters of a liv ing patriotism, and in the bright trinity of heroism, beneficence and love, and let our wo- He intended to purify this country and then to; men ma ’ ke thege places M9CCas of worship holier remove all irritating causes between the two sec- r — ■ • tions and re-nnite them in stronger bonds than ever. He intended to wipe out all those isms, shameless heresies, and ail that puritanical self- righteousness which had taken possession of the Northern masses; and from the So;*tv He inten ded to obliterate African slavery which has so long huDg like an incubus upon fb^' real pros perity and energies of our people. He intended, to purify both sections in the smcJce of battle and baptize them in tho blood of t o Hr best sons, and then re-unite them in fraternal bonds and start the nation upon another hundred years round of glorious prosperity. And i3 He not accomplishing his plans? Where now are all those preachers of a higher law ? Where are those clamorers for a monarchy ? All gone! Slavery is gone; Thadens Stevens, tho most in veterate hater of the Constitution, is gone; Abra ham Lincoln is gone; Charles Sumner is gone; Oliver P. Morton is gone ; Horace Greeley is gone; the carpet-baggers are all gone or trying to change their skins; and peace, law, order and the Constitution reign throughout the nation. Then there is no lo3t cause. Let us hear no more of it. Let our poets and orators change their themes. The South did not fight for sla very, for that was in no danger at that time. Tne election of Mr. Lincoln was no ground for a war on that subject for he could not have in- than that of the Saracens. The custom origi nated with our women who are always foremost in all good works, and we trust they will not suffer it to die. No, we have faith in onr wo men. Their pure and unselfish natures always prompt them to noble deeds like this. What ever is pure and good is sure to win their de motion, and in the heavens above they wiil sit nearest the throne and play on the sweetest harps. Noble woman, the last and best gift to man ! She is the poetry of our humanity. And wherever you find her, whether in cooling the brow of the Turcho or staying the blood of the wounded Prussian; whether in tieing the bandage around the wounded Frank or holding the cup to the Ulilan’s parched lips; whether comforting the dying Russe or smoothing the brow of the suf fering Gaul; whether in the Confederate or Fed eral camp or hospital; wherever she may be she the strangest effects of dreams is, when, as we say or do something, we suddenly have a feel ing that we have said or done it before. If we follow back carefully the train of ideas thus called up, we shall find that it originated in some dream we had forgotten, till our present action or thought all at once called it up; but in onr first bewilderment the sensation is, for the moment, singular and uncanny enough. We think that from this sort of feeling might first have arisen the creed of the transmigration of souls. Healthy dreams are usually to be ex plained by looking back to the past. Dreams are very often an odd jumble of things we said; or did, or thought yesterday, and of things wa said, or did, or thought long ago. It is this confusion which makes them sometimes, at first, seem so incomprehensible; but if we patiently trace out every feature in one vivid dream, we find almost to a certainty that it arises from events which have happened in our lives perhaps a f different periods. The mind, in sleep, loses all sense of time, and embraoes a whole existence at a glance. In their dreams the most commonplace men and women are poets. The cook dreams that she is a lovely flower garden, the city clerk that he is a knight at a tournament, the village schoolmaster that he is William the Conqueror. This power of dreams is a sweet and blessed one, for often it is tht only ideal gleam which falls npon some hard, gray path of life. Old people often tell us that their dreams generally carry them back to the days of their youth. The old man sees again in his dreams the smile of his mother in her early womanhood, and hears again the brother, from whom he has been long estranged, prattling as a baby at his side, and gallops his pony across country in all the wild joy of a first fox-hunt, and steals a shy kiss from his first love. Thus do dreams come as kindly sprites to the grandfather, dozing in his arm chair by the fire, when the young ones waltz and flirt and make sweet hay while the sun shines. Some people are always seeing over and over again in their dreams a certain house, or a certain estate, or a certain landscape. They know every room in the house, ev9n to the pic tures on the wall; they could almost draw a map of the estate; the trees in the landscape are as familiar to them as the bushes in their garden, and yet they declare that they never beheld either house, or estate, or landscape, with their waking eyes. This phenomenon seems certainly difficult to explain. We sus- “ v “ , i pect, however, that it usually arises from a mass is always the same sall-sacrmcing and devoted , „*• „„ „ Then of indistinct, confused memories of scenes and being striving to do good in the world, j p laceg tbe dr9am e r Las once beheld, perhaps in to our noble brave aud generous women ui tu„ - ftrlv chi i dbood) but wbich in his waking South must be left the task ot keeping up these hfl has fintirelv f 0r30 tten. We often, impressive ceremonies. “Women ofGeorgia—women of the South, Revere the sacred dust Of our warriors tried and true, Who bore the flag of our nations trust And died for me and you; We care not whence they came, Dear is their lifeless clay ! Whether unknown or known to fame, Their cause aud country are tile same, f They died n n/l wore the grey V’ separate government. All it wanted was the protection which the Coostitu Jv luaranteed. It as\ed nothing more, and at'Tmi*rt3'ilrne the gun-boats left Washington to leinfdrce Fort Sumter we bad commissioners there authorized to settle ali matters, and there was no time j during the whole conflict when the South would j . . not have laid down its arms and gone back into | A Str&llgO I il®110111611011 ill St. LOUIS-- the Union if it could have had satisfactory guar- j antees of Constitutional protection. The Con- j j stitution was the rock upon which it planted ! itself and it must have that or it would sacrifice J all its blood aud trea-ure in its defence. It; A SHOWER OF FISH. Thirty Acres of Ground Covered with Citifisli and Croppies. greatest mistake was in going out of the Union. It should have made the war in the Union, for then all the good and true men of the North like Douglas and Vallandingham would have joined ns, but it plunged in regardless of the consequences, to rescue the nation from the great gulf of centralism into which it was inevi tably rushing, and, thank God, it saved it anyhow. As the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, so the blood of these Confederate soldiers was the salvation of this nation. And wherever one sleeps this day, whether upon the heights of the Alleghan- ies or on the banks of the Potomac, the James, Rapidan or Susquehannah; whether in the granite hills of old Tennessee, or in the far off fields of Texas and Louisiana; whether here in beautiful * Stonewall Cemetery ’ or amid the wild flowers of Florida; no matter if his he one of ‘The graves which no man names or knows, Uncounted grave which never can be found; Graves of the precious missing where no sound Of tender weeping is ever heard; Wheregoes No living step of friend or kindred,’ ♦ Wherever his bones sleep this day it is the grave of a conquering hero, and not the hero of a lost cause. ‘Such graves as his are pilgrims shrines, Shrines to no code or creed confined.’ And when all faction shall have hushed; when all passion and prejudice shall have died away and even justice shall hold the scales, then shall constitutional liberty ascend the heights of government for its permanent abode, and pilgrims from other lands will tread with reve rential step amid the graves of onr Confede rate dead, while those who follow tfs’ will trea sure their names as household gods. And when the impartial historian shall go down into the vaults of the dead for traditions of liberty he will record it in living glory that the world is indebted for their perpetuation to onr gal lant dead. Then let us thank God Jhat we had such heroes to die. They died iot in vain. Their banner is furled, ‘Yet’tii wreathed around with glory, And ’twill live in song and story,’ hut 'twas not conquered. There is no conquered banner — no conquered South. Where is the battle in which they were conquered ? History does not record it. Then pile up wreaths and immortels npon her sleeping heroes this day. Let your children and your children’s children visit their graves as the resting places of trium phant martyrs. Let the wild birds warble their grandest diapason and the flowers breathe their holiest incense on their sepulchres; let the hills clap their hands with joy and the waters min gle their musical monotones in the grand jubi lee of song to their memories. Their blood was an acceptable sacrifice, and coming generations shall reap the heritage which it purchased. Constitutional liberty will be written npon the lintels of every man’s door, and Republican America, re-baptized and re-united, is already starting out upon its second century of trium phant progress to startle the world.as in the past, with its ultimate gran dear. And oar own Son ny South, where the ‘Oriole swings her nest* and the ‘mocking bird trills his descant free,’ rich in all that makes a nation prosperous and happy, and freed from all shackles, is now enter ing npon the grandest career ever known in its history. The world is gazing npon it with pride and admiration, and the spirits of Lee, Jaok- Occasionally an article will find its way into the newspapers and go the rounds, depicting in glowing style the shower of minnows in John Smith, Esq.’s, backyard, and the statement is vouchsafed for by all of Smith’s relatives; but the storm of Monday night and Tuesday morn ing causes the insignificant little minnow story to pale into nothingness. At 11:130 o’clock'on Monday night the storm burst in all its fury at the Tuscan mills on the St. Charles Rock Road, and tor almost an hour rained fish, crawfish, lizzards and leeches, and when day dawned and the good denizens of that part of the city looked out over the surrounding neighborhood it was literally alive with fish, both small and large, ranging from the wee innocent fresh hatched one to the five pound cat with a head as large as a saucer, and as cruel as a steel trap. They were not confined to one species alone, but con sisted of catfish, bass, salmon, croppies, sunfish and a fish similar to the Louisiana goggle-eyes, that are only found in the bayous and lagoons of the south. They covered a tract of ground extending from the St. Charles Rock Pond on the east to the Tuscan Mills on the west, and from the German Lutheran Church and school on the sonth to the St. Charles Rock Road on the north, about thirty acres in all. During the forenoon the citizens worked incessantly with baskets, buckets, wheelbarrows and carts, and when a Journal reporter visited the neighbor hood at a late hour yesterday afternoon there were still tons of them laying in winrows as it were. The first man found who know anything pos itive about the miraculous sUower was James Kavanagh, the conductor of street car No. 1, of the Crtizens’ Railway. He was the last man in, and, after turning his car into the stable, he smarted home. The rain poured down in torrents but he was already wet to the skin, and, palling his hat a little lower down he strode on. When opposite the German Lutheran Church aud school he was struck on the head by some heavy body that partly stunned him, and in another instant he was pelted all over at once by a host of slimy, wriggling creatures. He at first thought that he was afflicted with the jim jams, hat catching a large catfish in the neighborhood of the waistband of his indispensables, he grappled it and carried it home through the live shower, and then ascertained what it was raining. Captain Powers, an old river man, who took the first steamboat up Red River, was not caught in the shower, but saw the ground covered in front of his residence at daybreak yesterday morning. The captain had heard of such occuren ces before, bnt had never seen them with his own eyes, and now expresses himself as both ready and willing to be called home. Mr. Weber, a butcher on the St. Charles Rock road, gathered np five barrels of the fish, and Mrs. Fleming, who resides just east of the Tus can Mills, secured a cart-load. There are always some doubting Thomases around, and as the St Charles Rock road neigh borhood is no exception to the rest of earth, there are a few people who make no bones of saying that, owing to the heavy rainfall, the pond west of the oar stables overflowed and the fish swam out with the current, and, as the volume of water spread oat and receded, the fish, orawfish, lizzards and leeches were left on the sward; bat of coarse that idea is prepos terous, and will not be entertained by a sane person for a moment mo ments he has entirely forgotten. We often, too, meet in our dreams people whom we cannot ever remember to have seen when awake. We believe that these mysterious dream acquain tances are, like the houses and the landscapes, made np of dim remembrances of the faces and figures of persons casually seen somewhere by the dreamer when awake. If our theory about this phenomenon in dreams is true, sleep must have the same power of bringing back lost col ors to Luijmory, that certain oheoncils have of bringing back the colors of the Pompeian fres coes. When the mind is in a morbii state from disease or over-work, a- dream will some times produce a roost unpleasant feeling of vague discomfort, by first startling us from sleep, making itself distinctly remembered; and then, as soon as slumber falls again upon the j weary senses, flitting a way, so that in the oiorn- j ing no trace of it can be recalled. All day the | dream hovers about the sickly fancy, never far j off, and never near enough to take hold of. It was surely some such feeling as this which, exaggerated by divine wrath of old, tormented the Babylonian king, and doomed to death all the wise men except the chosen prophet of the Lord. The dreams we remember are never dreampt when we are in deepest sleep, but al ways a few minutes before we awake, so that outward things often have a considerable in fluence in producing them.—[Argosy. THEY KISSED OFTEN. WIDOW WHO SET HER CAP, BUT FOUND IT DID NT FIT, At Bristol, England, recently was tried the breach of promise case of Newcombe vs. Simp son. The suit was brought by a widow, thirty- two years of age, against a retired merchant, aged fifty-five. The defendant was a friend of the plaintiff's late husband, and when he died defendant called upon the widow, condoled with her, and continned his visits daily till he be came strongly attached to her. He nursed her baby ou his knee aud taught it to call him ‘Papa.’ The marriage was fixed to take place in February last, but the defendant’s ardor sud denly cooled down. He was confined to his house by illness, and when the plaintiff called, he said he did not remember any promise to marry, and if he had promised, every man had a right to change his mind. In the meantime, the plaintiff had given up business in view of her approaching marriage. The plaintiff, in her examination, said the defendant had asked her if she would he kind to him in old age, and she had promised to be so. He was always received as a lover, and kissed her at the door. He had stated that he had never kissed her, but that she used to kiss him, but that was not true. Mr. Cole, for the defense, suggested that they kissed each other. The plaintiff also said that she never kissed the defendant unless he kissed her. Men did not generally ask women to do that kind of thing; they generally did it for themselves. The plaintiff was struck with her, and kissed her in July, but did not propose till February. She was sure it was not the old story of a widow setting her cap at a widower. (Laughter.) Her lawyer had written him a letter. She called to see defendant during his illness, and he then said he should like a kiss, only he was afraid she would tell her solicitor. She could not say that he suggested that he might have a kiss without prej udice. Daring his illness she sent her little boy daily to inquire after him, and sent him any little dainties she thought he might like. She asked him to come again, as he always did; and, if necessary, she would wait two or three years: The defendant was examined, and denied that he courted her, bat said the widow made love to him aud pat her arm around his waist She got rather familiar, and thinking it was a “bit of draw,’’ he was very cautious. After farther evidence, the jary stopped the case and found a verdict for the de fendant A Chicago man says that he is going to pat 1,000 hires of bees on bargee drawn by tog, starting from Louisana northward on the Mis sissippi, halting every fifty miles to allow the bees to feed, arriving at the olover fields of Min nesota in July.