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Show At Appomattox THERE Is a little sketch about Appomattox Court House and the events of that clay in Apiil, 1SG5, when the war was brought to a close, in the current Munsey. There Is a picture pic-ture of Grant's last headquaiters. The writer of the story went over the ground that Sheridan's cavalry advanced' on that morning when he was drawing the last coils about the Confederate force The final conference took place In the Wllmer McLain house. That, unfortunately, has been destroyed; at least it ws taken down in 1893 and every brick numbered so that it might be set up again .in Washington but .the panic came and the ruins lie there and probably always will. And it is "just as well. In the yard of the Peer's residence the arms of the Army of Northern North-ern Virginia were stacked, and he says: "There was no cheering during the nolemn ceremony, and not a gloating word fell from the lips of the Federals, Fed-erals, whose faces seemed to show sympathy as they watched the ragged Confederates give up their weapons. One Confederate band struck up as it retreated from the yard, but General Chamberlain Cham-berlain sent an orderly to stop it. He was forestalled, fore-stalled, however, by a similar message from a Confederate officer." The old Court-House was burned about five years ago. The county seat has been removed from there, there is nothing left but a few straggling strag-gling houses. Grant and Lee and Sheridan and Gordon and Custer and Longstreet and the rest are all dead, and it is as though nature, in her mercy, wanted to wipe the whole record away, that is, so far as material objects are concerned. And when men recall that day and the events of the day the thought that should possess them, if they are Ameiicans, should be that all that sacrifice, sacri-fice, all that suffering, all that despair and sorrow sor-row came because the race of Americans that had lived for a few years prior to that event had not individually done their duty, they had not carefully care-fully enough guarded their ballots, they had not enough asserted themselves. What began as a little wiong giew until the whole land was tainted, tainted so badly that only a great bath of blood could wash it away. And the lesson it taught was that all Americans in future fu-ture should guard carefully their ballots, should use their best judgnrentsin "casting themr and should never forget that as ours is a government of the people and by the people, it is the duty for each unit of our population to always be alert, and when any wrong is being perpetrated upon the country, to protest against that wrong, to vote against it, to fight it until it is righted. In the years to come possibly there will be greater wars than that, but when the next war comes there must be no south fighting the north it must be the north and the south together fighting every enemy that may come, and if there is anything wrong now in our system, anything that leads toward to-ward what may eventuate in a great rebellion, it should bo the duty of every American to try to fight it back. That is why it is that when any set of Americans permit their votes to be dic tated by some power, no matter what, they are false to their country, false to the trust that has been put upon them, and they should be ashamed. The same magazine has an entertaining article on peasant life in the Black, Forest. That Black Forest has been famous since the days of Charlemagne, Charle-magne, and the idea that a stranger forms of it is that it is a great forest of rough ground, not fit to be cultivated, but a kind of national park for the German nation. This article shows that it is quite thickly inhabited. -There are pictures of the houses, of the girls and boys, of the beautiful roads through the park, and one takes up an idea that, on sentimental grounds :alone, it is worth all the care that is taken of it. It is where the Ce mans, when they want to rest, may findi a resting rest-ing place. There are fine drives all through the park, and with the German imagination, it is very easy for them, as they ride or drive through it, to imagine that all the old kings of Ger-.rnany Ger-.rnany looked out upon these same trees, rode over that same road and tried to1 fathom how great their Germany would some tiriie be, without one of them ever reaching the slightest perception of what it is now. Germany, with its 800 trained soldiem, with its swift ships, with .d .. wonderful manufactures, manufac-tures, its wonderful schools, its wonderful practical practi-cal education to fill the wants of poor humanity, the great, central, steadying empire of Europe, which it seems is now tending toward, and which the .German Emperor is determined shall be eventually, even-tually, the arbiter of Turope; to tell nations when they shall go to war and when they shall call their war dogs off, and the denizens of this forest are real, primitive Germans. - One picture shows all tlie Pldsimjjle ways and,. the ceaseless toil of the peasants. One picture shows a village smith's wife and five of her fouiteen children. She is smiling in the door, the same old smile that she had when she first went to the rude home to take the world as it came, to do her duty as it was pointed out and to be happy, no matter what might come. The dissatisfied men and women of the United States who, surrounded by all their opportunities, are still impatient, should take a little money and go over there and see how simple those lives are, see the women with neck-yokes neck-yokes carry butter and milk on either end of the yoke, just as the boys carried sap in the woods foity yeais ago. And they always have clean white apions and white caps and to work is with them a matter of couise from the eaiiy dawn until the evening. When night comes H IB f: they All it with songs. A great people those Ger- f mans, and it is a pity, we say again, that the HBB youth of the United States, young men and young i women who are impatient that they were not born every one with a silver spoon, cannot go there m mm . and see, after all, how very littlo people can get m I along upon and still be happy. |