Brought long years of mourning, and countless graves made; In striving to fetter their black fellow-men, And make of the Southland a vast prison pen, Their cause was unholy, but "Nick" Biddle was just— And hosts of pure spirits watch over his dust. [Illustration: _THE GRAVE OF NICK BIDDLE._] Deeds are indestructible; ideas are imperishable, and mind is immortal. "Children," says George Eliot, "may be strangled, deeds never; they have an indestructible life, both in mind and outside of our consciousness." It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that many of the ancients of the distant past should have predicated eternal life upon deeds and ideas. Deeds which are formidable, and ideas which grow and expand, and gather strength, until they become the very life of the social, moral and religious structure of the nation. To my mind there can be no truer measurement of a man, or a race, or a nation, than the standard of ideas which formulate themselves into deeds. "Deeds and ideas," which, according to Disraeli, "render a man independent of his constituencies, independent of dissolution, independent even of the course of time." [Illustration: _THEODORE ROOSEVELT._] Measure from this standard Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States of America, is the most unique figure before the American people to-day. No President since the days of Lincoln, the emancipator, merits in a larger degree the unselfish praise and devotion, not only of his countrymen, but of the whole civilized world. In the strictest sense of the term, he is a man of destiny. Born, like all true leaders and reformers, at a particular time, for a particular purpose; endowed by nature with a constitution which defies the encroachment of disease; with an intellect which craves the most rigid discipline; with a courage which knows no daring, and a conscience which repels the slightest innovation which might result to the detriment of his fellow-man, regardless of race, color or creed. It was for Abraham Lincoln to issue the proclamation of freedom, and thus save the nation from disintegration; it is for Theodore Roosevelt to preserve that proclamation, and preserve the amendments to the Constitution, which is the very life of the freedom guaranteed to the emancipated. From the time of President Grant down to the present time, there has been a persistent attempt on the part of the South to paralyze the spirit and practice of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, without which freed men would have no legal standing in the nation.