Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
eyes, "that no other father in all this broad laud made so precious a gift. He only slept a minute,—just one little minute,—at his post, I know that was all, for Bennie never dozed over a duty. How prompt and trustworthy he was! He was as tall as I, and only eighteen! and now they shoot him because he was found asleep when doing sentinel duty!" Just then Bennie's little sister Blossom answered a tap at the door, and returned with a letter. "It is from him," was all she said.
DEAR FATHER,—For sleeping on sentinel duty I am to be shot. At first, it seemed awful to me; but I have thought about it so much now that it has no terror. They say that they will not bind me, nor blind me; but that I may meet my death like a man. I thought, father, that it might have been on the battlefield, for my country, and that, when I fell, it would be fighting gloriously; but to be shot down like a dog for nearly betraying it,—to die for neglect of duty! Oh, father, I wonder the very thought does not kill me! But I shall not disgrace you. I am going to write you all about it; and when I am gone, you may tell my comrades; I cannot now.
You know I promised Jemmie Carr's mother I would look after her boy; and, when he fell sick, I did all I could for him. He was not strong when he was ordered back into the ranks, and the day before that night I carried all his baggage, besides my own, on our march. Toward night we went in on double-quick, and the baggage began to feel very heavy. Everybody was tired; and as for Jemmie, if I had not lent him an arm now and then, he would have dropped by the way. I was all tired out when we came into camp; and then it was Jemmie's turn to be sentry, and I could take his place; but I was too tired, father. I could not have kept awake if a gun had been pointed at my head; but I did not know it until,—well, until it was too late.
They tell me to-day that I have a short reprieve,—given to me by circumstances,—"time to write to you," our good colonel says. Forgive him, father, he only does his duty; he would gladly save me if he could; and do not lay my death up against Jemmie. The poor boy is broken-hearted, and does nothing but beg and entreat them to let him die in my stead. I can't bear to think of mother and Blossom. Comfort them, father! Tell them I die as a brave boy should, and that, when the war is over, they will not be ashamed of me, as they must be now. God help me: it is very hard to bear! Good-by, father. To-night, in the early twilight, I shall see the cows all coming home from pasture, and precious little Blossom standing on the back stoop, waiting for me,—but I shall never, never come! God bless you all!
"God be thanked!" said Mr. Owen reverently; "I knew Bennie was not the boy to sleep carelessly."
Late that night a little figure glided out of the house and down the path. Two hours later the conductor of the southward mail lifted her into a car at Mill Depot. Next morning she was in New York, and the next she was admitted to the White House at Washington. "Well, my child," said the President in pleasant, cheerful tones, "what do you want so bright and early this morning?" "Bennie's life, please, sir," faltered Blossom. "Bennie? Who is Bennie?" asked Mr. Lincoln. "My brother, sir. They are going to shoot him for sleeping at his post," said the little girl. "I remember," said the President; "it was a fatal sleep. You see, child, it was a time of special danger. Thousands of lives might have been lost through his culpable negligence." "So my father said; but poor Bennie was so tired, sir, and Jemmie so weak. He did the work of two, sir, and it was Jemmie's night, not his; but Jemmie was too tired, and Bennie never thought about himself,—that he was tired, too." "What is that you say, child? Come here; I do not understand." He read Bennie's letter to his father, which Blossom held out, wrote a few lines, rang his bell, and said to the messenger who appeared, "Send this dispatch at once." Then, turning to Blossom, he continued: "Go home, my child, and tell that father of yours, who could approve his country's sentence, even when it took the life of a child like that, that Abraham Lincoln thinks the life far too precious to be lost. Go back, or—wait until to-morrow; Bennie will need a change after he has so bravely faced death, he shall go with you." "God bless you, sir," said Blossom. Not all the queens are crowned.
Two days later, when the young soldier came with his sister to thank the President, Mr. Lincoln fastened the strap of a lieutenant upon his shoulder, saying, "The soldier that could carry a sick comrade's baggage, and die for the act without complaining, deserves well of his country."
When telegrams poured in announcing terrible carnage upon battlefields in our late war, and when President Lincoln's heart-strings were nearly broken over the cruel treatment of our prisoners at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Libby Prison, he never once departed from his famous motto, "With malice toward none, with charity for all." When it was reported that among those returned at Baltimore from Southern prisons, not one in ten could stand alone from hunger and neglect, and many were so eaten and covered by vermin as to resemble those pitted by smallpox, and so emaciated that they were living skeletons, not even these reports could move the great President to retaliate in kind upon the Southern prisoners.
Among the slain on the battlefield at Fredericksburg was the body of a youth upon which was found next the heart a photograph of Lincoln. Upon the back of it were these words: "God bless President Lincoln." The youth had been sentenced to death for sleeping at his post, but had been pardoned by the President.
David Dudley Field said he considered Lincoln the greatest man of his day. Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and others were great, each in one way, but Lincoln was great in many ways. There seemed to be hidden springs of greatness in this man that would gush forth in the most unexpected way. The men about him were at a loss to name the order of his genius. Horace Greeley was almost as many-sided, but was a wonderful combination of goodness and weakness, while Lincoln seemed strong in every way. After Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation he said, "The promise must now be kept; I shall never recall one word."
Bishop Hamilton, of Salisbury, bears the following testimony to the influence for good which Gladstone, when a school-fellow at Eton, exercised upon him. "I was a thoroughly idle boy; but I was saved from worse things by getting to know Gladstone." At Oxford we are told the effect of his example was so strong that men who followed him there ten years later declare "that undergraduates drank less in the forties because Gladstone had been so courageously abstemious in the thirties."
The Rev. John Newton said, "I see in this world two heaps of human happiness and misery; now if I can take but the smallest bit from one heap and add it to the other, I carry a point; if as I go home a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something."
A holy hermit, who had lived for six years in a cave of the Thebaid, fasting, praying, and performing severe penances, spending his whole life in trying to make himself of some account with God, that he might be sure of a seat in Paradise, prayed to be shown some saint greater than himself, in order that he might pattern after him to reach still greater heights of holiness. The same night an angel came to him and said, "If thou wouldst excel all others in virtue and sanctity, strive to imitate a certain minstrel who goes begging and singing from door to door." The hermit, much chagrined, sought the minstrel and asked him how he had managed to make himself so acceptable to God. The minstrel hung down his head and replied, "Do not mock me, holy father; I have performed no good works, and I am not worthy to pray. I only go from door to door to amuse people with my viol and my flute." The hermit insisted that he must have done some good deeds. The minstrel replied, "Nay, I know of nothing good that I have done." "But how hast thou become a beggar? Hast thou spent thy substance in riotous living?" "Nay, not so," replied the minstrel. "I met a poor woman running hither and thither, distracted, because her husband and children had been sold into slavery to pay a debt. I took her home and protected her from certain sons of Belial, for she was very beautiful. I gave her all I possessed to redeem her family and returned her to her husband and children. Is there any man who would not have done the same?" The hermit shed tears, and said in all his life he had not done as much as the poor minstrel.
"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor than silver or gold."
A gentleman, traveling through West Virginia, went to a house, and procured food for himself and companion and their horses. He wanted to make payment, but the woman was ashamed to take pay for a mere act of kindness. He pressed the money upon her. Finally she said, "If you don't think I'm mean, I'll take one quarter of a dollar from you, so as to look at it now and then, for there has been no money in this house for a year."