The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield: Twentieth President of the United States, Including Full and Accurate Details of His Eventful Administration, Assassination, Last Hours, Death, Etc., Together with Notable Extracts from His Speeches and LettersBrown, E. E. (Emma Elizabeth)
History
The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield: Twentieth President of the United States, Including Full and Accurate Details of His Eventful Administration, Assassination, Last Hours, Death, Etc., Together with Notable Extracts from His Speeches and Letters
Brown, E. E. (Emma Elizabeth)
Garfield, James A. (James Abram), 1831-1881; Presidents -- United States -- Biography
From farthest south comes the voice of mourning for the soldier of the
Union. Over fisherman's hut and frontiersman's cabin is spread a gloom
because the White House is desolate. The son of the poor widow is dead,
and palace and castle are in tears. As the humble Campbellite disciple
is borne to his long home, the music of the requiem fills cathedral
arches and the domes of ancient synagogues. On the coffin of the
canal-boy a queen lays her wreath. As the bier is lifted, word comes
beneath the sea that the nations of the earth are rising and bowing
their heads. From many climes, in many languages they join in the solemn
service. This is no blind and sudden emotion, gathering and breaking
like a wave. It is the mourning of mankind for a great character already
perfectly known and familiar. If there be any persons who fear that
religious faith is dying, that science has shaken the hold of the moral
law upon the minds of men, let them take comfort in asking themselves if
any base or ignoble passion could have so moved mankind. Modern science
has called into life these mighty servants, press and telegraph, who
have created a nerve which joins together all human hearts and pulses
simultaneously over the globe. To what conqueror, to what tyrant, to
what selfish ambition, to what mere intellectual greatness would it not
have refused response? The power in the universe that makes for evil,
and the power in the universe that makes for righteousness, measure
their forces. A poor, weak fiend shoots off his little bolt, a single
human life is stricken down, and a throb of divine love thrills a
planet.
Every American State has its own story of the brave and adventurous
spirits who were its early settlers; the men who build commonwealths,
the men of whom commonwealths are builded. The history of the settlement
of Massachusetts, of central New York, and of Ohio, is the history of
the Garfield race. They were, to borrow a felicitous phrase, "hungry for
the horizon." They were natural frontiersmen. Of the seven generations
born in America, including the President, not one was born in other than
a frontiersman's dwelling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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