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