When all the voices were in full chorus, and all the batons in full
wave, and all the orchestra in full triumph, and a hundred anvils under
mighty hammers were in full clang, and all the towers of the city rolled
in their majestic sweetness, and the whole building quaked with the boom
of thirty cannon, Parepa Rosa, with a voice that will never again be
equalled on earth until the archangelic voice proclaims that time shall
be no longer, rose above all other sounds in her rendering of our
national air, the "Star Spangled Banner." It was too much for a mortal,
and quite enough for an immortal, to hear: and while some fainted, one
womanly spirit, released under its power, sped away to be with God. It
was a marvel of human emotion in patriotic frenzy.

Immediately following the Civil War there was a great wave of
intemperance, and bribery swept over our land. The temptation to
intemperance in public places grew more and more terrific. Of the men
who were prominent in political circles but few died respectably. The
majority among them died of delirium tremens. The doctor usually fixed
up the case for the newspapers, and in his report to them it was usually
gout, or rheumatism, or obstruction of the liver, or exhaustion from
patriotic services--but we all knew it was whiskey. That which smote the
villain in the dark alley smote down the great orator and the great
legislator. The one you wrapped in a rough cloth, and pushed into a
rough coffin, and carried out in a box waggon, and let him down into a
pauper's grave, without a prayer or a benediction. Around the other
gathered the pomp of the land; and lordly men walked with uncovered
heads beside the hearse tossing with plumes on the way to a grave to be
adorned with a white marble shaft, all four sides covered with eulogium.
The one man was killed by logwood rum at two cents a glass, the other by
a beverage three dollars a bottle. I write both their epitaphs. I write