born before the war, has any full appreciation of the four years
martyrdom of 1861 to 1865, inclusive. I can scarcely remember, and yet I
still feel the pressure of domestic calamity that overshadowed the
nation then.

Since things have been hardened, as was the guardsman in the Crimean War
who heartlessly wrote home to his mother: "I do not want to see any more
crying letters come to the Crimea from you. Those I have received I have
put into my rifle, after loading it, and have fired them at the
Russians, because you appear to have a strong dislike of them. If you
had seen as many killed as I have you would not have as many weak ideas
as you now have."

After the War came a period of great national rejoicing. I shall never
forget, in the summer of 1869, a great national peace jubilee was held
in Boston, and DeWitt Moore, an elder of my church, had been honoured by
the selection of some of his music to be rendered on that occasion. I
accompanied him to the jubilee. Forty thousand people sat and stood in
the great Colosseum erected for that purpose. Thousands of wind and
stringed instruments; twelve thousand trained voices! The masterpieces
of all ages rendered, hour after hour, and day after day--Handel's
"Judas Maccabæus," Spohr's "Last Judgment," Beethoven's "Mount of
Olives," Haydn's "Creation," Mendelssohn's "Elijah," Meyerbeer's
"Coronation March," rolling on and up in surges that billowed against
the heavens! The mighty cadences within were accompanied on the outside
by the ringing of the bells of the city, and cannon on the common, in
exact time with the music, discharged by electricity, thundering their
awful bars of a harmony that astounded all nations. Sometimes I bowed my
head and wept. Sometimes I stood up in the enchantment, and sometimes
the effect was so overpowering I felt I could not endure it.