Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/39

Rh knowledge of him left me no need to be told that his views and feelings involved in the war were intense. And there he was. breaking bread with a red handed rebel in his gray uniform, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Was he not put to it to keep mastery of himself?

Happy for man that he is double sighted; that there is within him a quality allied to conscience, call it charity that enables him to choose on which side to look. The venerable Doctor saw before him only" his old student, recalled only the old days, and their dear memories. If there was anything be- tween his heart and his country's laws, there was nothing be- tween his heart and his Saviour's sweet charity.

And here I must relate an incident of those old days not wholly irrelevant and inopportune. I graduated in 1850. I had the honor to be the valedictorian of my class. In preparing my address I took notice of the great excitement then prevailing on account of the discussion in Congress of the bill to admit California as a State into the Union. Great sectional feeling was aroused through this long protracted discussion in the Senate. One senator dared use the word "disunion" with a threat. The very word sent a thrill of horror over the land. I recall my own feeling of horror. In my address to my class- mates I alluded to this sectional feeling, deprecating it, and exclaimed. "Who knowns, unless patriotism should triumph over sectional feeling but what we, classmates, might in some future day meet. in hostile battle array."

Dr. Baugher, as president of the college, had revision of our graduating speeches, and he struck this part out of my address. ]ut alas! it was a prophetic conjecture; and members of our class met in after years, not only in battle array, but on the fields over which, in teaching botany. Prof. Jacobs had led us in our study of the wild flowers that adorned those fields.

Many other incidents occurred on this day deeply interesting to me. but they might not interest others. I returned to the hospital, but not before leaving my measure and order with a tailor for a suit of gray, which was subsequently delivered to me.

It was a queer episode a peace episode in the midst of war. This experience of mine taught me that the hates and prejudices engendered by the war w r ere national, not individual ; that indi-