Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/297

 I Unveiling of the Howitzer Monument. 291

ommand, just because they never spared themselves! To be first i rank was to be first in danger and side by side in every hardship. It was on the extreme right at Fredericksburg when Stuart and 'elham, from the force of habit, were leading artillery in what fairly eemed a cavalry charge, that the gallant Utz was torn from his horse and from his life by the shell to which he opposed his invinci- ble breast. This day is his memorial service. And how tenderly, when the pitiless rain had ceased, we bent over the still form of Randolph Fairfax the offering of our grand old ally in every fight, the Rockbridge artillery how tenderly we bent over that marble sleep and gazed for the last time on the fair, bright brow of the beautiful boy. How we watched through all that winter, while one, not of the Howitzers, but in authority over us, was sinking, and the very light of learning itself seemed to flicker in the socket as the life of Lewis Coleman put on its spiritual body. It was in the first clench of that long death grip which lasted from the Wilderness to Appomattox that as John Thompson Brown rode to the front of his batteries to secure an advance position, a bullet from the brown brush which hid the enemy's sharpshooters laid him in the dust. The beat of one of the warmest hearts, making a man's breast like a woman's, there ceased, and the bright outlook of a life all aflame with generous and manly hopes had fallen quenched. The sword presented to him by those Howitzers who, under his orders, had fired the first, and over his memory did afterwards fire the last shot in the war, clung to him as he fell. He fell with a harness of honor on him, worthy his father's son.

A FACE WITH A LASTING BRIGHTNESS.

If I wanted a picture of the intrepid calm which knows how to face unmoved a crashing world, there could be found no truer face for it than that of David Watson a countenance which only seemed to light up in the rage of battle, but which kindled with a lasting brightness in the bloody angle at Spotsylvania Courthouse. And if I sought as a companion piece that bright, joyous valor which meets danger, not as simple duty, but clasps her as bride, whose descent into danger is like the sea-bird's toss upon the waves, I would draw it from Ned McCarthy, down to the hour when his bright day sank with the setting sun, in the fires of Cold Harbor. Peer of any whom I have named, firm with the firmest, cool with the coolest, brave with the bravest, patient, heroic, and magnanimous was Henry Jones.