Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 41.djvu/17

 Rh Washington with him fighting in the shadow of the scaffold. Then and later through the obligations of their large plantations trained to command, they had also enjoyed what is needful for the highest human development—the discipline of leisure. Living largely in the country they had developed great physical vigor and were wise enough not to waste it; but when the call came, it blazed up in a flame that startled the civilized world. Constantly courting honor they loved and won that bridge, and in dignity, in intrinsic worth esteemed her higher than life itself. The "sacred honor" of which one of her sons wrote, and which our fathers pledged in a holy cause, was to them a sacred honor indeed. To impeach their veracity or their honesty was the greatest insult that could be offered to the people of the South. So sensitive were they to a slur on honor that they long clung to their barbarous ancestral custom of the duel, and in the name of honor stained their civilization with the blood of murder. An undiluted son of the South and passionately attached to her people, I abhor their sinful remedy while fully sympathizing with their splendid appreciation of veracity and honesty. In the old South, by the inexorable decree of public sentiment, a liar or a thief was an outcast, a pariah.

What homes they had! Will the world ever again see such homes? Their wives were mothers, and all the more gladly their acknowledged queens because they were mothers. With hallowing influence bright eyes of children looked into the faces of their parents, and like the songs of angels was the music of their childish laughter. They suffered the little children to come into their homes and forbade them not, and very near to them came the kingdom of God. And so, thank God, it is to this day. Our wives are still mothers, and happy mothers. To look into the paled face of a young wife and mother on whose welcoming bosom her babe has just been laid, to see the growing wonder shining in her eyes, to watch the trembling halo that glorifies her head as into this sacred experience she passes—the great high altar toward which from girlhood her steps had been unconsciously inclined, yea, the very holy of holies where on a highly favored heart surge the tides of the glory of the Lord—