And then it came to me in a blinding
flash. Old Webster's voice has been hushed in death, but his soul lives
in the hearts of our boys. There's hardly one of us who hasn't repeated
at school his immortal words. They came back to me with thrilling power
the day I read of that shot. They are ringing in my soul to-day----"
John paused and a rapt look crept into his eyes, as he began slowly to
repeat the closing words of Webster's speech:
"'When mine eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments
of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent;
or a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, with
fratricidal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather
behold the gracious ensign of the Republic, now known and honored
throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies
streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not
a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable
interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of
delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward," but everywhere,
spread all over with living light, blazing in all its ample folds, as
they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under the
whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every American
heart--"Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and inseparable----"'"
He paused, his voice choking with emotion, as he seized Ned's arm:
"O, Boy, Boy, isn't that a greater ideal? That's all the President is
asking to-day--to stand by the Union----"
"He is making war on the South!"
"But only as the South is forcing him reluctantly to defend the Union by
force.
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