ening and the barriers are breaking on the pathway up which the South of the present is moving in majesty to the richer realities of the South of the future. Every day seems to bring us nearer to the fruition of the heroic hope of one upon whom the South never relied in vain, and who, in the hour of her deepest desolation uplifted her heavy heart when he exultantly exclaimed:

"True, alas! Hector is slain, and Priam is dethroned and Troy, proud Troy, has glared by the torch, crumbled 'neath the blows and wept 'mid the jeers of revelling Greeks in every household. But more than a hundred Æneases live! On more than a hundred broader, deeper Tibers, we will found greater cities, rear richer temples, raise loftier towers, until all the world shall respect and fear, and even the Greeks shall covet, honor, and obey!" -F. H. Richardson.

[Extract from an address delivered before the Southern Society of New York in 1902.]

THE WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY.

How well the brave sons of the Confederacy kept faith with her holy women, the blood-stained battle-fields from Pennsylvania to Texas richly attest. In song and marble and bronze, those deeds have been memorialized and history is writing them in emperishable glory.

But who has, or ever shall, record the achievements of our women in that war? What history has written the story of her noble deeds of her sacrifices and sufferings? What painter has put them on canvas? What sculptor has yet chiseled in enduring marble the majesty,

the greatness, the goodness, the unselfishness, the devotion, the faith and the beauty of her service to her country?

Poet, historian, painter, sculptor-all will find here almost untouched, their richest and most inexhaustible treasure-house. Which of her many-sided traits, which of her many tragic situations, will seize first the imagination of that future artist or appeal strongest to the inspiration of the poet who is to write the South's great epic? Or, when the historian comes to write of her, where shall his story begin and where end? When shall her figure rise most grand and luminous before their eyes; what service of hers, what act shall they, most admiring, seek to perpetuate, each in his own undying art?

Was it her unspeakable sacrifice in the beginning when she first buckled on her loved ones the armour of that holy war and sent them away from home to fight for their country; or later her uncomplaining endurance of untold privation and loneliness and desolation at home while her defenders were facing the enemy and driving back the invader; or her divine fortitude, when father, husband, son, brother or lover fell on the distant battlefield and came back to her no more forever; or when she moved like an angel through the hospitals or in the rear of the firing-line, ministering to our wounded soldiers and soothing their last hours with her gentle words and soft deft hands; or when in the darkest hours of our blessed cause when the brave heroes in front were being crushed by overwhelming numbers, her faith, kindled by heavenly fires, kept alive the waning hopes and drooping courage of our naked, starving and shattered

armies; or when at the end all save honor was lost, she met with her smiles the ragged remnant of the returning soldiers and pledged them her eternal faith and sympathy, and began at once her work of strewing flowers over the graves and building monuments to commemorate the deathless deeds of the dead; or when, as today, the fairest, gentlest and most beautiful of all the Southland, meet in these annual reunions to greet, to cheer and show honor to these battle-scarred veterans whose eyes are growing dimmer, and whose steps more faltering each passing year, but whose voice and presence were never more gracious to these loyal and loving ladies than now? We do not know. But this we do know; when in the fullness of time the chivalry and genius of the South shall be prepared worthily to perform this holy trust and give to the world some fit and enduring memorial of woman's greatness and glory in that war, no matter which of her virtues shall be selected as the crowning piece of that immortal structure, it will be pleasing in the sight of God and an inspiration to womankind forever.

God bless the cause of the Confederacy, for it was freedom's holy cause. God bless and protect the remnant of the Confederate veterans still left with us; and Confederate women-the mothers and daughters of the Confederacy.-Boykin Wright.

[Extract from an address delivered at the Confederate reunion in Augusta, November 10, 1903.]

"HOLY WOMAN, THINE THE OFFICE!"

Profound emotion must needs find expression. In the scope of national life, no less than in the bounds of individual experience, the strong swift currents of sentiment and of feeling, the grand moral and spiritual essences that make up the character and mark the identity of individuals and of States, must inevitably find an outlet. Within the memory of the present generation, eleven heroic States stood fast by the altar of liberty, every lip set in defiance, every muscle corded in desperate resistance to invasion and oppression. How much of the weal or woe of human kind hung trembling in the balance of that perilous season! The very air seemed freighted with the importance, the dignity, the solemn grandeur of the occasion. Every pulse beat fast with the sentiment that animated the breast of patriotism. Children caught the infection of arms at their play. Cheery courage sang out sweetly in the lullabies of mothers to their babes. Firmness and devotion shone in the eyes, and dispelled their subtle influence in the touch wherever women walked amid the groans of the wounded or bent in angel-ministry over the rude couches of the dying. Heroism as marvelous as that which flamed in the man's heart of the girl, Cloelia, hung a new beauty in the cheek of wife and maiden whilst she devoted a husband or lover to the Confederacy, and bade him, blushing with pride and affection, "God-speed to the wars!" Valor as impetuous as that which rushed under the lilies of France to the death grapple at Lodi—irresistible as that which nerved the breast of Horatius, as

single-handed he fought off the enemies of Rome on the Sublician bridge, whilst the timbers were being destroyed behind him; deathless as that which steeled his heart when, the last beams destroyed and Rome saved, he cast his body into the rushing waters, exclaiming, "Father Tiber, receive me, I pray thee, and bear up my soul!" Valor, even like this, gleamed in the countenance of the soldier of the States, whilst he fought, and lingered there as he fell, firmly set in the stiff face, as it were, sealed there by the finger of the Deity.

What wonder that the flow of the current was so broad, so impetuous and strong! What wonder that from Maryland to Texas, wherever opposing armies sprang to the shock, the noblest blood of the States rained down like water into the field of Mars! What wonder that, after a few short months of preparation, the young Confederacy stood out in the beams of the sun disciplined in the skill of a veteran and armed in the strength of a giant! The South fought upon her own soil, for her own institutions, and in the full blaze of memories as glorious as were ever emblazoned in the pages of the historian or trumpeted in the harp of the bard. Standing in the midst of an extensive territory teeming with every fruit that dewdrop can refresh or sunbeam embellish; possessed of an atmosphere fragrant with the breath of every flower; with scenery as variant, products as luxuriant, sky as fair, as anywhere nature treads in her most generous mood; with a past as sacred as any where genius has toiled or grandeur reposedEvery rock some holy memory! Every oak custodian of some treasured charter! Every hillside Westminster of some illustrious dust! And yet, alas! was it treason