mothers who, after they have navigated a large family of children
through all the diseases of infancy, and got them fairly started up
the flowering slope of boyhood and girlhood, have only strength enough
left to die. They fade away. Some call it consumption; some call it
nervous prostration; some call it intermittent or malarial
disposition; but I call it martyrdom of the domestic circle. Life for
life. Blood for blood. Substitution!

Or perhaps the mother lingers long enough to see a son get on the
wrong road, and his former kindness becomes rough reply when she
expresses anxiety about him. But she goes right on, looking carefully
after his apparel, remembering his every birthday with some memento,
and when he is brought home worn out with dissipation, nurses him till
he gets well and starts him again, and hopes, and expects, and prays,
and counsels, and suffers, until her strength gives out and she fails.
She is going, and attendants, bending over her pillow, ask her if she
has any message to leave, and she makes great effort to say something,
but out of three or four minutes of indistinct utterance they can
catch but three words: "My poor boy!" The simple fact is she died for
him. Life for life. Substitution!

About twenty-four years ago there went forth from our homes hundreds
of thousands of men to do battle for their country. All the poetry of
war soon vanished, and left them nothing but the terrible prose. They
waded knee-deep in mud. They slept in snow-banks. They marched till
their cut feet tracked the earth. They were swindled out of their
honest rations, and lived on meat not fit for a dog. They had jaws all
fractured, and eyes extinguished, and limbs shot away. Thousands of
them cried for water as they lay dying on the field the night after
the battle, and got it not. They were homesick, and received no