before have the people in like manner manifested their approbation and
esteem. Thus has the military spirit of the country been nursed;
to-day it needs not the monarchial bundles of ribbons, orders and
titles to sustain it. Thus has the American citizen been made to
realize that it is sweet and honorable to die for one's country; and
to feel proudest among his family memories of the names of those who
successfully fought or bravely died in defence of the national flag.
Often he had had occasion to feel, and to mark the mingled sensation
of pride and of sorrow with which friends revert to those who
gallantly died in the field. Even at this now remote day he could not
travel in Mississippi without having the recollection of his fallen
comrades painfully revived by meeting a mother who mourns her son with
the agony of a mother's grief; a father, whose stern nature vainly
struggles to conceal the involuntary pang, or tender children who know
not the extent of their deprivation, though it is indeed the sorest of
all. Let none then be surprised that he could not see thee laurel save
through the solemn shade of the cypress. Time, however, softened the
shadow long before it withers the leaf. On his way to this place he
learned that it was possible, and he seized the occasion to visit the
residence of Gen. Knox, of revolutionary memory. His own desire to see
something which had been identified with a patriot soldier who had so
largely contributed to the success of the revolution, and the
establishment of the institutions we inherited, was but an indication
of the military sentiment which lives in the American heart. It turns
the step of the traveller from his direct path, it attracts the boy in
his first reading, it fires the ambition of the youth, and encircles
the veteran with the kindness of his neighbors, and swells the train
which follows his bier when, his duty to his country performed, he
answers the summons of his God, and is translated to a better sphere.
It is that same military enthusiasm which calls you from the