One night during the war I went to Hagerstown to look at the army, and I stood on a hill-top and looked down upon them. I saw the camp-fires all through the valleys and all over the hills. It was a weird spectacle, those camp-fires, and I stood and watched them; and the soldiers who were gathered around them were, no doubt, talking of their homes, and of the long march they had taken, and of the battles they were to fight; but after awhile I saw these camp-fires begin to lower; and they continued to lower, until they were all gone out, and the army slept. It was imposing when I saw the camp-fires; it was imposing in the darkness when I thought of that great host asleep. Well, God looks down from heaven, and He sees the fireside of Christendom and the loved ones gathered around these firesides. These are the camp-fires where we warm ourselves at the close of day, and talk over the battles of life we have fought and the battles that are yet to come. God grant that when at last these fires begin to go out, and continue to lower until finally they are extinguished, and the ashes of consumed hopes strew the hearth of the old homestead, it may be because we have "Gone to sleep that last long sleep, From which none ever wake to weep." Now we are an army on the march of life. Then we shall be an army bivouacked in the tent of the grave. IV. Once more: I want you to look at Vashti the silent. You do not hear any outcry from this woman as she goes forth from the palace gate. From the very dignity of her nature, you know there will be no vociferation. Sometimes in life it is necessary to make a retort; sometimes in life it is necessary to resist; but there are crises when the most triumphant thing to do is to keep silence. The philosopher, confident in his newly discovered principle, waited for the coming of more intelligent generations, willing that men should laugh at the lightning-rod and cotton-gin and steam-boat--waiting for long years through the scoffing of philosophical schools, in grand and magnificent silence. Galileo, condemned by mathematicians and monks and cardinals, caricatured everywhere, yet waiting and watching with his telescope to see the coming up of stellar reenforcements, when the stars in their courses would fight for the Copernican system; then sitting down in complete blindness and deafness to wait for the coming on of the generations who would build his monument and bow at his grave. The reformer, execrated by his contemporaries, fastened in a pillory, the slow fires of public contempt burning under him, ground under the cylinders of the printing-press, yet calmly waiting for the day when purity of soul and heroism of character will get the sanction of earth and the plaudits of heaven.