What a wonderful embalmer is death!  We who survive grow daily older.  Since the war closed the youngest has gained some new wrinkle, the oldest some added gray hair.  A few years more and only a few tattering figures shall represent the marching files of the Grand Army; a year or two beyond that, and there shall flutter by the window the last empty sleeve.  But these who are here are embalmed forever in our imaginations; they will not change; they never will seem to us less young, less fresh, less daring, than when they sallied to their last battle.  They will always have the dew of their youth; it is we alone who shall grow old.

And, again, what a wonderful purifier is death!  These who fell beside us varied in character; like other men, they had their strength and their weaknesses, their merits and their faults.  Yet now all stains seem washed away; their life ceased at its climax, and the ending sanctioned all that went before.  They died for their country; that is their record.  They found their way to heaven equally short, it seems to us, from every battle-field, and with equal readiness our love seeks them to-day.

“What is a victory like?” said a lady to the Duke of Wellington.  “The greatest tragedy in the world, madam, except a defeat.”  Even our great war would be but a tragedy were it not for the warm feeling of brotherhood it has left behind it, based on the hidden emotions of days like these.  The war has given peace to the nation; it has given union, freedom, equal rights; and in addition to that, it has given to you and me the sacred sympathy of these graves.  No matter what it has cost us individually—­health or worldly fortunes—­it is our reward that we can stand to-day among these graves and yet not blush that we survive.

The great French soldier, de Latour d’Auvergne, was the hero of many battles, but remained by his own choice in the ranks.  Napoleon gave him a sword and the official title “The First Grenadier of France.”  When he was killed, the Emperor ordered that his heart should be intrusted to the keeping of his regiment—­that his name should be called at every roll-call, and that his next comrade should make answer, “Dead upon the field of honor.”  In our memories are the names of many heroes; we treasure all their hearts in this consecrated ground, and when the name of each is called, we answer in flowers, “Dead upon the field of honor.”

FOOTNOTE: 

[5] Delivered at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass., Decoration Day, May 30, 1870.

FAITH IN MANKIND[6]

BY ARTHUR T. HADLEY

In order to accomplish anything great, a man must have two sides to his greatness:  a personal side and a social side.  He must be upright himself, and he must believe in the good intentions and possibilities of others about him.

The scholars and scientific men of the country have sometimes been reproached with a certain indifference to the feelings and sentiments of their fellow men.  It has been said that their critical faculty is developed more strongly than their constructive instinct; that their brain has been nourished at the expense of their heart; that what they have gained in breadth of vision has been outweighed by a loss of human sympathy.