Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/519

Rh Hospital, 1886," was laid by General Jackson. The box containing some of the customary deposits was consigned to its place, when the General, tapping the stone three times with a trowel, uttered impressively the words, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and of suffering humanity."

Miss Waldo, an accomplished artist from New York, painted the portrait of Simon Lara, and Mr. Balling that of General Grant. The latter was raffled twice, bringing several hundred dollars, each winner donating it to the hospital.

A lady from Texas suggested that to these two be added the portrait of General Robert E. Lee, which was promptly responded to by a Virginia lady living at the capital, who painted one and placed it in possession of the society—the three to adorn the walls of the hospital when completed.

Orrin Brothers contributed a grand benefit performance at their mammoth circus.

The following is the address of General Jackson delivered on the occasion:

Ladies and Gentlemen: That was a marvelous work of the pagan imagination which peopled the earth, the air, and the water with countless divinities; giving to every stream its naiad, to every grotto its nymph, to every intellectual taste and aspiration its grace or its muse, and to every home its household gods. Vainly, however, shall we seek through the pagan mythology for god or goddess of that pronounced by St. Paul to be greater than Faith, greater than Hope; although  had been a name more divinely melodious than  or  or. As the pagan heaven was but a reflex—its gods but echoes—of the breathing world, it is fair to conclude that the word when pronounced by the pagan tongue failed to express that passion in the human soul. It was not known to the Greek; else he had not erected his altar in Athens "To the Unknown God." Whence, then, came it?—this emotion, more potent than the thunderer Jove, hurling the bolts fabricated for him by the forger Vulcan? Whence came this power supreme, which is now restoring its lost law of gravitation to the moral universe? I know not! Indeed, indeed, I know not! unless it fell from heaven into the stable of Bethlehem, proclaiming by its fall, and by its first touch, in material form, of the earth, that the lowliest of spots may be glorified by birth the most divine; that the image of a common Father may be stamped most deeply upon the poorest of the poor;