-enjoyment. And what, in the meantime, is the situation of the only person for whom we can suppose that the author, protected at such a cost to the public, was at all interested? She is reduced to utter destitution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. Milton's granddaughter is starving. The reader is pillaged; but the writer's family is not enriched. Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant price for the poems; and it has at the same time to give alms to the only surviving descendant of the poet.

AMERICAN COURAGE. Printed for the first time, with permission. Copyright, 1899, by Herbert S.

Stone & Company. By SHERMAN HOAR.

ONE

NE of the best of those paintings which have made the name of Edouard Detaille famous is called "The Salute to the Wounded.” In the painting one sees a country road in France, along which are marching some wounded Prussian prisoners under an escort of French cuirassiers. A French officer of high rank and his staff are seated upon their horses by the roadside, and are in the act of saluting their wounded enemies, who are passing before them. The picture always has had an attraction for me, because it shows that strong patriotic feeling which led the French painters at the time of the Franco-Prussian war to find, even in the incidents of a struggle fraught with so much shame and disaster for their nation, opportunities to paint nothing that did not put in evidence the best qualities of their national character.

Here in the United States there is no lack of that admiration for courageous self-sacrifice which the French painter has put so faithfully into his picture; but I sometimes feel that we fail to find in the devotion, the self-denial, and the sacrifice of those who have given themselves to make and maintain our country, all the inspiration that should be derived from them, or that would be got out of them by the men of France had those qualities been displayed by their countrymen.

I fear we undervalue the devotion to country which comes from a contemplation of what has been done and suffered in her name. I feel that we teach those who are to make or mar the future of this nation too

Courage is the char

The world's history teaches. American

much of what has been done elsewhere, and too little of what has been done here. acteristic of no one land or time. is full of it, and the lessons it courage, however, is of this nation; it is ours, and if the finest national spirit is worth the creating; if patriotism is still a quality to be engendered in our youth; if love of country is still to be a strong power for good, those acts of devotion and of heroic personal sacrifice with which our history is filled, are worthy of earnest study, of continued contemplation, and of perpetual consideration.

"Let him, who will, sing deeds done well across the sea,

Here, lovely Land, men bravely live and die for Thee."

The particular example I desire to speak about is of that splendid quality of courage which dares everything not for self or country, but for an enemy. It is of that kind which is called into existence not by dreams of glory, or by love of land, but by the highest human desire; the desire to mitigate suffering in those who are against us.

In the afternoon of the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, General Kershaw of the Confederate army was sitting in his quarters when suddenly a young South Carolinian named Kirkland entered, and, after the usual salutations, said: "General, I can't stand this." The general, thinking the statement a little abrupt, asked what it was he could not stand, and Kirkland replied: "Those poor fellows out yonder have been crying for water all day, and I have come to you to ask if I may go and give them some." The "poor fellows" were Union soldiers who lay wounded

between the Union and Confederate lines. To get to them Kirkland must go beyond the protection of the breastworks and expose himself to a fire from the Union sharpshooters, who, so far during that day, had made the raising above the Confederate works of so much as a head an act of extreme danger. General Kershaw at first refused to allow Kirkland to go on his errand, but at last, as the lad persisted in his request, declined to forbid him, leaving the responsibility for action with the boy himself. Kirkland, in perfect delight, rushed from the general's quarters to the front, where he gathered all the canteens he could carry, filled them with water, and going over the breastworks, started to give relief to his wounded enemies. No sooner was he in the open field than our sharpshooters, supposing he was going to plunder their comrades, began to fire at him. For some minutes he went about doing good under circumstances of most imminent personal danger. Soon, however, those to whom he was taking the water recognized the character of his undertaking. All over the field men sat up and called to him, and those too hurt to raise themselves, held up their hands and beckoned to him. Soon our sharpshooters, who luckily had not hit him, saw that he was indeed an Angel of Mercy, and stopped their fire, and two armies looked with admiration at the young man's pluck and loving kindness. With a beautiful tenderness, Kirkland went about his work, giving of the water to all, and here and there placing a knapsack pillow under some poor wounded fellow's head, or putting in a more comfortable position some shattered leg or arm. Then he went back to his own lines and the fighting went on. Tell me of a

more exalted example of personal courage and selfdenial than that of that Confederate soldier, or one which more clearly deserves the name of Christian fortitude. In that terrible War of the Rebellion, Kirkland gave up his life for a mistaken cause in the battle of Chickamauga, but I cannot help thanking God that, in our reunited country, we are joint heirs with the men from the South in the glory and inspiration that come from such heroic deeds as his.