MISCELLANEOUS rAPERS. 381 



It is but miserable comfort at least, poor consolation, indeed, for the 

 soldier in life's battle for truth and right, laboring under the lashes of 

 persecution, ** The whips and scoffs of time, the oppressor's wrongs, the 

 proud man's contumelies," to be rewarded only with the unenvied priv- 

 ilege of feeling that when he lays down his arms and ''has shuffled off 

 this mortal coil " and gone to his rest, somebody, to keep up the form of 

 a useless custom, may, formally, drop a withered flower upon his grave. 



" Oh ! its a sad and bitter world, indeed," exclaimed the exile of 

 Erin, " For a man never has any flowers put on his grave until he is 

 dead." 



Our Society would teach to labor for the living, to " Trust no future, 

 however pleasant. Let the dead past bury its dead." 



" Act, act in the living present, 

 Heart within, God overhead." 



I close by appropriating the last stanza of the beautiful and practi- 

 cal address of the women's president, at their last national convention : 



" O, friends, I pray to-night, 



Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow ; 

 The way is lonely, let me feel them now. 



Think gently of me ; I am travel worn, 

 My faltering feet are pierced by many a thorn, 



Forgive ! O heart estranged, forgive, I plead ; 

 When dreamless rest is mine, I shall not need 



The tenderness for which I long to-night." 



