ADDRESSES 157 



Athenian, the antique dreamer, holds the ear and the eye 

 of the race to-day. Philip and his phalanx drove Demos- 

 thenes to death; while Demosthenes touches the lips of 

 every fiery-souled orator that has ever stirred us to tears 

 or rage. It is Plato's page against the sword of Sparta. It 

 is the difference between Hamilton, the financial savior of 

 a poor and struggling nation, and Jay Gould, the mere 

 dancing bear of a stock-market, the statesman versus 

 the speculator. It is Napoleon at Wagram, riding up and 

 down his shot-riddled ranks to save his crown, as opposed 

 to Winthrop or Shaw leading the assault to save his coun- 

 try. It is the man who thought and fought for all time as 

 opposed to the man who fought only for himself and his 

 little hour. It is spirituality against sordidness; it is high 

 thoughts against low; it is the visible against the invisible; 

 it is the dollar against the whole duty of man; it is the world 

 and its baseness against heaven and its purity. 



There has been a great amount of nonsense written about 

 the war and its heroes. In books, war is most dramatic 

 and poetic reading; in life it is horrid cruelty, pure, unadul- 

 terated cruelty the savagery of wild beasts. The harvest 

 blackens beneath its breath, the sweet, fair flowers cower 

 and pale at its approach. The springing grass is crushed 

 under the ceaseless roll of artillery wheels, or is dyed a 

 crimson red, drunk with the blood of heroes. Leonidas and 

 his brave three hundred, dark with the dust and blood of 

 conflict, that was real war, and yet fair ladies who have 

 read their story with kindling eyes and burning cheek would 

 have thought them no lovely sight in their hour of travail. 

 The hero of a Sunday-school book is sometimes a muff or a 

 milk-sop, sometimes a fair ideal; but the hero of a battle- 



