“The past rises before me like a dream.... We hear the sound of preparation, the music of boisterous drums—the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men, and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more.... We see them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing the babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses—the divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms—standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves—and she answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone,—and forever.... [Illustration: FOUR VICTIMS OF CHEAP PATRIOTISM] “We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory fields—in all the hospitals of pain—on all the weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood—in the furrows of old fields.... We see them pierced by balls and torn with shell, in the trenches, by the forts, and in the whirlwind of the charge.... “We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old man bowed with the last grief.... “They sleep ... under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willow and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest....” (=E=) INGERSOLL’S VISION OF THE FUTURE.[284] “A vision of the future rises: ... I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth. “I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature’s forces have by science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and flame, and all the secret subtle powers of the earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.