To it they bow. In its
trenches they fall. In its awful prison they are incarcerated. On its
ghastly holocaust they burn.
Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and they could
come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering
putrefaction and beastliness! What heart could endure the groans of
agony!
Drunkenness: Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet
the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does
it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician
reeling into the sick-room; and the minister, with his tongue thick,
into the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very height of
reputation, fall, a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way to be
married to one of the fairest daughters of New England, and at the
very hour when the bride was decking herself for the altar; and did he
not die of delirium tremens, almost unattended, in a New York hotel?
Tamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand skulls, with which
to build a pyramid to his own honor.
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