_'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'_ Then, straightening himself to his full height, and his eye beaming with a holy feeling inspired by the time and place, he commenced:-- "'_They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'_ 'Soldiers and Countrymen: We have met this evening perhaps for the last time. We have shared the toil of the march, the peril of the fight, the dismay of the retreat--alike we have endured cold and hunger, the contumely of the internal foe, and outrage of the foreign oppressor. We have sat, night after, night, beside the same camp-fire, shared the same rough soldiers' fare; we have together heard the roll of the reveille, which called us to duty, or the beat of the tattoo, which gave the signal for the hardy sleep of the soldier, with the earth for his bed, the knapsack for his pillow. 'And now, soldiers and brethren, we have met in a peaceful valley, on the eve of battle, while the sunlight is dying away behind yonder heights--the sunlight that, to-morrow morn, will glimmer on scenes of blood. We have met, amid the whitening tents of our encampment,--in times of terror and of gloom have we gathered together--God grant it may not be for the last time! 'It is a solemn moment. Brethren, does not the solemn voice of nature seem to echo the sympathies of the hour? The flag of our country droops heavily from yonder staff; the breeze has died away along the green plain of Chadd's Ford--the plain that spreads before us, glistening in the sunlight; the heights of the Brandywine arise gloomy and grand beyond the waters of yonder stream, and all nature holds a pause of solemn silence, on the eve of the uproar and bloodshed and strife of to-morrow.' "The propriety of this language was manifest. Breathless attention was pictured upon every countenance, and the smallest whisper could be distinctly heard. Pausing a moment, as if running back, in his mind's eye, over the eventful past, he again repeated his text:-- "'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.' 'And have they not taken the sword? 'Let the desolated plain, the blood-soddened valley, the burnt farm-house, blackening in the sun, the sacked village, and the ravaged town, answer; let the whitening bones of the butchered farmer, strewn along the fields of his homestead, answer; let the starving mother, with the babe clinging to the withered breast, that can afford no sustenance, let her answer; with the death-rattle mingling with the murmuring tones that mark the last struggle for life--let the dying mother and her babe answer! 'It was but a day past and our land slept in peace. War was not here--wrong was not here. Fraud, and woe, and misery, and want, dwelt not among us. From the eternal solitude of the green woods arose the blue smoke of the settler's cabin, and golden fields of corn looked forth from amid the waste of the wilderness, and the glad music of human voices awoke the silence of the forest.