We approach now a topic that was once nauseating in the extreme, but which is now robbed of many of its disagreeable features—­medicine.  Let it be understood in the beginning, disciple of Hahnemann, I am not upholding you and your pellets of sugar; by no means.  But there have been some knights of the pill-box who, without rushing into folly, have leaped the barriers of ignorance and ancient custom that kept them in an atmosphere odorous of villainous drugs and combinations of drugs, and, untrammeled by old traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means of mitigating our bodily ills.  All honor to them.  They have driven away the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump missionary.  The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and his immense boulders—­I beg pardon, I should say, boluses of nastiness—­has vanished like a surly ghost at the approach of daylight, and in his stead we have a gentleman, placid and self-poised, with a velvet touch and a face beaming with cheerful smiles.  And if they have not made the measles a luxury, they have given us a syrup that children are said to cry for.

In the industrial arts, too, there is a spirit of chivalry that is marching bravely on, overthrowing old notions.  What knight of the olden time ever did as much for his ladye fayre as he did for all womanity who wrought out the problem of the sewing-machine?  How many aching hands and eyes and hearts has that little instrument, with its musical click-click, click-click, relieved!  No more songs of the shirt, no more wearying of hands and curving of spines over the inner vestments of mankind.  We have changed all that.  And every stroke of the pioneer’s ax, as he fells the mighty forest-trees, is a blow struck by the honest and earnest chivalry of labor, battling with wild nature, carving a way for civilization’s triumphal march.  And the cheery whistle of the plowboy, as he drives his team a-field; the ring of the hammer on the anvil; the clatter of the busy loom; the scream of the locomotive, as it sweeps over the land, plunging through the mountains and dashing out across the prairies—­all these are the clarion-notes of modern chivalry’s bugles, ringing through the world in joyous and triumphant tones.

And this war—­who shall tell; what historic pen can record its grand and glorious chivalry?  Is not every one, from the pale young student, fresh from the breast of Alma Mater, to the large-handed and larger-hearted rustic, with the hay-seed yet in his hair, and the rugged bod-carrier, redolent of sweat and brick-dust—­are not all these, who have come forth from the field and the workshop, the office and the lecture-room, to defend the dear old flag, true and gallant knights?  There is a boy out there in the woods, on picket, slowly pacing his lonely beat, with the tender-eyed stars for company.  And as the silent hours pass by, slowly he turns the