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Show AS TIMES CHANCE. j ia the old, old day before the war, when railroads rail-roads were not very plenty, f daily excitement at Yickaburg wa when the racing steamers on the Mississippi, loaded with freight and .passengers, battled for supremacy on the Mississippi and called At Vicksburg for wood and boose. Later, the great river steamers began to disappear and people turned to the locomotive on shore and the daily coming of the trains, for eommercj waa changing it methods. Then there came gloomy day and the only boat seen about Vicksburg were tinclals and less formidable gunboat. There earn ' one awful night, when the plan to capture Vicksburg from above failed, and General Grant ordered th boat to run the gauntlet of the forts. Then the night was ablaze with exploding guns, with wrecked boats on fire, and everyone afloat and on shore knew that the harvest that was being gleaned then waa only the harvest of dead and wound men. The war went by and then there were many year when there was not much commerce on the greit river when there wa an attempt to return to the old boating days. But it was almost a failure fail-ure ; only a few fast boata could be put in serviee. The river itself, like the shore, had seemed to grow weary of work, hopeless for the future, and-wh.'n it made any display of itself it waa in floods which devastated the field on either bank.' That day passed, and last week a new sensation came to Vicksburg. The great new ' battleship Idaho found its wsy through the jetties at one of the mouths of the great river, sailed up to-New Orleans, Or-leans, on and on until it anchored off Vicksbu.g and roared a welcome to the people .with its great guns. Then the rasyor went aboard 'and greeted the crew with a hearty welcome. Thee, the commander com-mander of the ship, with his " aides, went ashore and returned the eall. Tho next day 400 bluejackets blue-jackets went on shore snrl, joihing the state militia, mi-litia, passed in review before the 'mayor and before be-fore the commander of the ship;, and, whatever else was done or thought of. the one msgnificent thought over sll wss that there, were no fort on either side to arrest the progress of the great fighting fight-ing ship, and that the men of Mississippi, like the men of every other state, were part ov ner in that ship and joined in the pricl.. of the fart, that the United State owned such .hips and held iheru ready for its defense. It is better thsn it wss. much be-tter thsn it ws in '63. The focliuR.i? muoh better, because there is not only s filling fhit we sre all onoe more iinitc-, but bolow- thst feoling is that whatever what-ever differenifs, msy srihe between ststes in the yeers to come, there must be no war; they mint be settled as sensible people settle their differences, or as loving families settle Ihe differences between their members, but keeping in mind all the time that we are one nation and that so long as we are united we shall be invincible in peace and in war; that in peace we can feed the world and in war we can make the pruuU-st nations respectful to us. |