Something of Men I Have Known: With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and RetrospectiveStevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing)
History
Something of Men I Have Known: With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective
Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing)
United States -- Biography; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933
"I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide.
I saw him at Toulon; I saw him putting down the mob in the streets
of Paris; I saw him at the head of the army in Italy; I saw him
crossing the bridge at Lodi with the tricolor in his hand; I saw
him in Egypt in the shadow of the Pyramids; I saw him conquer
the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the
crags; I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm, and at Austerlitz; I saw him in
Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild
blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves; I saw
him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster--driven by a million bayonets
back upon Paris--clutched like a wild beast--banished to Elba.
I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius.
I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and
Fortune combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king, and
I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing
out upon the sad and solemn sea.
"I thought of the orphans and widows he had made, of the tears that
had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him,
pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition; and I said I
would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes; I
would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door,
and the grapes growing purple in the rays of the autumn sun; I
would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my
side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children
about my knee and their arms about me; I would rather have been
that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust,
than have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder."
In his eloquent eulogy upon Abraham Lincoln, my neighbor and friend,
Hon. Isaac N. Phillips, said:
"He lived with Nature and learned of her. He toiled, but his toil
was never hopeless and degrading. His feet were upon the earth
but the stars shining in perennial beauty were ever above him to
inspire contemplation. He heard the song of the thrush, and the
carol of the lark. He watched the sun in its course. He knew the
dim paths of the forest, and his soul was awed by the power of the
storm."
The closing sentences of Senator Ingalls's tribute to a departed
colleague were sombre indeed:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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