A Dream-March to the Wilderness

NOT many years ago, at the close of an early day in May, — it was the anniversary of the Battle of the Wilderness,—a rather square-shouldered man, dressed in Scotch tweed, and wearing a low-crowned, fawn-colored hat, was walking a country road, which led by a venerable oak wood. He was spare; age had frosted his light moustache. In his youth a sword had hung at his side, for he had been a soldier, and during the famous war between the states, sometimes called the Great Rebellion, he had carried Grant’s first dispatch from the Wilderness. It was about noon on the second day of the bloody field when Grant, that charmingly low-voiced, softly blue-eyed hero who now sleeps in glory on the bank of the Hudson, himself handed his dispatch to the young officer, who mounted a spirited black horse, and accompanied by a squadron of cavalry set off for the nearest telegraph line, which was at Rappahannock Station, some twenty-odd miles away, where he arrived just after the sun had set. Returning, he left the Rappahannock at midnight and, preceding his escort, reached the Rapidan as the morning star was paling; and, boylike, on the willow-fringed river-bank he loitered for a moment to listen to a redbird that was singing. Soon the dull, quick boom of replying guns went grumbling by, and, leaving river and redbird, he rode back, through a lifting fog, to Grant on the battlefield.

And now, unconscious of time and rapt in the memories of the Wilderness, his channeled face was toward the west and the evening star hung low. The day was about done. The last prying crow had flown to his roost in the boughy hemlocks; belated bees, forgetful of the hour in their zealous diligence, were leaving the blooming lindens whose sweet odor, mingling with that of the wild grape, perfumed the dusking air, and the jeweling dew, on the tips of the fresh-blading corn and the saw-toothed margined leaf of the budding sweetbrier, was already gathering the light of the kindling stars into diamonds and pearls. Save the piping of frogs in a rushy swale on the hither side of the white thorn and boulder-strewn leaning pasture, which on the left hand bordered the roadside, all was very still. Moved by the pensive silence and by the heavens declaring aloft the glory of God, his thoughts had turned from a field of strife to a field immortal, when a mantled figure emerged from the growing darkness of the timber, and, in the full, mellow speech of the woods, accosted him, saying, ‘I am what I am, and beseech you to lead me back to my home once more.’

‘Where is your home?’ the soldier asked.

‘It lies on the banks of the Rappahannock and the Rapidan; from my doorstep within the sweep of a circle of eight miles lie the fields of Chancellorsville, Spottsylvania, and the Wilderness, where over fifty thousand men, most of them mere boys under twentyone, were killed or wounded.’

‘Yes, yes,’interrupted the veteran feelingly. ‘I knew them, I marched with them, and I saw many of them put in their last narrow beds.’

‘That battle region,’ continued the figure, ‘is my home, and my abidingplace was not far from where Stonewall Jackson fell and Longstreet was so severely wounded.’

‘ Why, I know those places well, and shall never forget Chancellorsville and that full moon coming up through the tree-tops crimsoned by the smoke which overhung the blood-drenched field just as Stonewall Jackson in the wooded darkness received by some mysterious fate his mortal wounds. Had he lived two hours longer, I do not know what would have become of our army and its cause.’

At the mention of Fate a change like the passage of a beam of light through a mirky wood spread over her grave face as her eyes suddenly gleamed with an inward light.

‘I was in the Battle of the Wilderness, too,’he continued familiarly,‘and can hear its volleys thundering now.'

Gazing with thoughtful scrutiny, she asked,‘And do you know where Longstreet was wounded in that battle on the Plank Road?'

‘I do, and the shot that took him down just on the verge of victory was equally mysterious. I have stood at the spot more than once, and at morning and evening have sat by the bank of Caton’s and Wilderness Runs listening to their murmur.’

Of all the battlefields the veteran had been on, and they were many, the Wilderness was the only one he had revisited, and once amid its solitudes, he would spend days as in a temple.

‘And you know those warrior runs, too!’ exclaimed the other, in a tone of subdued delight, and drew nearer — she had plucked a red trillium such as bloom in the Wilderness, and placed it in her breast.

‘ Indeed I do, and can go to the very place on the bank of one of them where during the battle I saw a boy who had bled to death, sitting at the foot of a gray beech tree, still holding some violets, which he had picked, in his ashy fingers.’

‘Oh, what a memory! Give me your hand, you are just the one to take me back to my home.’

‘But how did you happen to leave it?’ inquired the soldier, now looking into the warm deep eye of the figure, with amiable but frank curiosity.

‘It came about in this wise. Not long ago I was put into a narrative of the Battle of the Wilderness, which was borne along lines of thundering traffic, out into the wide busy world, and finally to firesides leagues on leagues apart. I am the Spirit of the Wilderness of that narrative, and while it is true that here and there from an ancient book on a library shelf I heard low notes of welcome, and while more than one gray-haired old soldier with trembling hand held the story and read it with delight, even with tears sometimes trickling from his spectacled eyes, yet in the faces of most readers, I saw a look of strange wonder, a vague indefiniteness as to who and what I was, while invariably, when the narrative fell into the hands of students of the Art of War, their brows bristled as they read, claiming that I diverted their attention from the march of events: and not infrequently I’d hear one say, “D——n his sentiment!”

‘Scorned and furtively gazed at, nowhere understood or admitted to close fellowship, my heart grew heavy and I fled through fields and woods. It was not so in the early days,’ mused the Spirit; ‘my forefathers and brethren were at home by every rustic fireside, on every ship that sailed for Troy, in every palace of Babylon; and wheresoever a shepherd slept among his flock in the fields of Judaea, there too they were welcome. I wonder what has happened to change mankind and cause them to scan me with such cold, strange eyes.’

Just then a radiant Being, whose abiding-place is in the self-sown grove of Literature, laid its hand tenderly on the veteran’s shoulder and said, ‘Let me answer that question. It is because, in these latter days, all that fertile area of man’s brain, the habitation and playground of his primitive senses of truth and beauty, senses which cheered and inspired him to joy, awe, and reverence by transmuting his thoughts and emotions, creation’s sounds and the sky’s morning and evening empire of color into living symbols, therewith inspiring prophets to clothe their Bible in splendor, and poets to sweep the strings of mighty harps,—all that area with its natural indigenous crops of poetry, religion, and literature has been blighted by the blasting fumes of sordid commercialism and desolate materialism. Alas! that playground of man’s spiritual nature, from a daisied meadow with star-reflecting streams, surrounded by green wooded mountains, has been turned into a waste of drifting sands, and instead of those religiously joyful beings, Poetry and the creative spirit who danced, sang, and piped, what have we? Altruism, Pragmatism, Atheism, and a bleak disbelief in Immortality.’

Then, turning impatiently and with a sweep of her hand, she exclaimed, ‘Think of it, ye oaks, hickories, chestnuts, and beeches, whose acorns and nuts are just forming! Ye hawthorns and old orchards in bloom! Think of it, violets,—yellow, white, dog-tooth, and blue; anemones and houstonias in open woodland and pasture, and ye, too, happy brooks and runs, whose gurgling waters have just fallen from rainbowed clouds in the sky! Think of it! No immortality!’ And with one accord, the oaks, the neighboring forests, blooming orchards,and blading plants all shouted in derision, and then broke into hosannas in praise to God for life beyond the grave. And they had barely ended when the stars and winds, cataracts and waves on the long, sandy beaches, took up the triumphant song.

As the last note of Nature’s worshipful anthem died away, the radiant Being vanished, and the Wilderness-Spirit whispered to the veteran, ‘What is Pragmatism and Altruism?’

Now, it was a peculiarity of the soldier’s mind that whatsoever was philosophic, whatsoever he could not visualize, irritated him, and he blurted out, ‘I don’t know and don’t care a d——n! All I know is that in my youth I was taught that God created the heavens and the earth and hung the stars in the sky to light it by night, and that the first true gentleman who ever lived died on Calvary, and however it may be now with the people of this generation, religion was a reality to my forefathers. I loved to hear them in their congregations singing old hymns, and on my way back from Sunday School I loved to roam the fields and hear the meadow-lark singing too; and when the shadows were lengthening and evening’s pensive twilight was coming on, and my heart naturally beating low, I was cheered to hear the thrush pouring out his musical notes, his heart apparently growing lighter with the approach of night while mine was growing heavier. And there was a hill in the pasture of the old home farm where the sheep would lie down to rest, and I never saw them reposing there in the moonlight that I did not think of that night when the angel’s song of Peace and Goodwill toward men was first heard on the earth. Oh, I wish I were a boy again, the moon rising over that hill; could roam those fields — they were like companions to me — and hear the wind in the old home woods once more,’ — his voice falling as usual into a low cadence when his feelings were deep.

‘ Do you wonder then how I long for my old home in the Wilderness?’ asked the Spirit earnestly. ‘Lo! there rising through the woods is the full moon’; and gazing at it she observed, ’That is just how it looked at Chancellorsville a moment before Stonewall fell.’

‘So it does exactly!' responded the veteran.

‘And I know,’ continued the Spirit, ‘how its beams are falling on the Lacy farm, among the half-grown pines on the knoll where Grant had his headquarters, and athwart the Widow Tapp’s old field where Lee had his. Are you aware,’ she continued, ‘that this anniversary, the 6th of May, never comes round that Duty and Glory, bearing wreaths in their hands for the dead of both armies, do not appear in the Wilderness, that its streams do not murmur the livelong night, and the old breastworks behind which stood the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac — your own old gallant army—do not call to each other in friendly tones. Often have I heard them as I sat at my leafy door, and then one trumpet after another blows where some splendid boy fell; and invariably, as their last notes die away, the wind rises and breathes a solemn requiem. Oh, what a home I had!’

The old soldier, catching the glint of a falling tear, thrust his arm impulsively through that of the spirit. ‘Come on, by thunder!’ he exclaimed, ‘let us go back to the Wilderness!’

And off they set.

Now from time to time, as in all time, bells speak to bells, mountain peaks to mountain peaks, lakes to lakes, and land to sea; and above all on May nights, when Spring is strewing her flowers over the fields and through the woods, when there is mist in the valleys and clouds are gilded by the moon.

So, the news was communicated by spire and bell to the soldiers on the monuments from Maine to Minnesota that the old Army of the Potomac was forming to go back to the Wilderness. And soon they began to gather, and at every lane and cross-road our little company came to, there stood a colorbearer and soldiers who fell in, swelling the procession. Great was the joy of every run and brook they crossed, of every hill and field they passed; the lone trees in them, as well as the woods, all waving their green banners. And wheresoever they swung by a farm from which a soldier had volunteered, the cocks in the barns crowed valiantly. On they went, climbing a long hill in the moonlight, past stone walls old and blotched with lichens on either side of the narrow mountain-road, past gray weather-worn boulders, from the top of which many a sparrow and lark had sung a sweet song and among which small herds of young cattle were sleeping in peace, on and on until they came to a lonely house in whose dooryard stood a tottering hoary oak. A boy with yellow hair and pink cheeks, an only son from this house, was the first to spring to the old soldier’s side. This boy it was who had gone forth when his captain in the Wilderness seized the colors and amid a terrible fire had planted them ahead of all the battle line, crying out, ‘Who will stand by me?’ Captain and boy never came home. The once kingly tree, now in the childish dotage of old age, lifted its bleaching crown as the colors passed and with trembling voice said, ‘If you pass the grave where our gallant Tom lies, tell him that we wish he would come home.’

While the column was crossing the Hudson the guns of old Revolutionary Fort Putnam boomed a salute. And, wheresoever in the Highlands the men of Massachusetts, Virginia, and the rest of the original Thirteen Colonies had camped under Washington, Wayne, and Heath, beacon fires on the hills were burning.

The line of march soon led by the gates of a vast temple whose walls and dome were of beaten gold. Avarice sat brooding on its gates, which were of massive brass; and notwithstanding it was night, a conclave of middle-aged men with hard, cold faces and sharp little eyes were mounting the gilded steps, and passing between the fluted columns of solid bullion into the temple of Mammon.

The spires of Philadelphia were all on the look-out, for they had heard the cheering at Princeton, and as soon as they caught sight of the oncoming column the Liberty Bell began to peal.

And lo! when they reached Washington, Columbia came down from the dome of the Capitol and led them up Pennsylvania Avenue, the torch of the country’s destiny burning brightly in her hand; and as they passed the White House there stood Lincoln once more waving them a ‘God bless you’ on their way, the pathos of his sad face lighting as he looked at them steadfastly, perhaps listening to a voice repeating the lyric of his first inaugural.

‘We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’

‘Better angels of our nature!’ Clay of Westminster! State papers of the world, match that lyric close if you can!

When they reached the Potomac, the river was glad to see its old namesake again, and all up and down its banks, from Cumberland to the Chesapeake, there was great joy as the news was borne by the rippling current that the old Army of the Potomac was crossing into Virginia on its way to the Wilderness in the spirit of Goodwill and Peace.

That night the army bivouacked on the green sward of Mt. Vernon. Sweet was the sleep of all, for the sanctified, country-loving sod whispered to every one of them that he was welcome.

The fires kindled on the hearth of the venerable mansion, the windows gleamed, and ready dressed in his uniform, Washington sat with rapt pleasure looking into a softly blazing fire, beholding the realization of the hopes of departed days.

Now the boom of old Fort Putnam’s guns and the peal of the Liberty Bell had barely passed on their way over the Southland, when the bell of St. Michael in Charleston began to ring and guns to boom from Cowpen’s, King’s Mountain, and Yorktown. And as they ceased, the voice of the Confederate soldier, standing aloft on his column overlooking Richmond, was heard calling the Army of Northern Virginia to attention, and in a little while that old army with the Stars and Bars flying was on its way to the Wilderness. And if the fields and woods of the Northland had greeted the procession of its brave and true with proud exultation, the greetings of the Southland for its valiant sons was even keener, prouder, and warmer. And the reason why, it is easy to see: for where there is pity a kind of tear gathers in the eye which the heart sends up of its choicest dew, and the result was, as their friends cheered them again and again, tears of love and pride dripped down the cheeks of old and young. The liveoaks with their swinging moss, cypress and pine, the cotton-fields and every blooming laurel decking the cloud-capped hills of Carolina and Tennessee waved, and waved proudly. Yes, and there was music in the channels of the Alabama, Ocmulgee, and Altamaha, that rejoicing music of lofty strain which the streams of a land devoted to an enlightened, righteous democracy bear on to the sea. Has the Ganges, the Tiber, the Danube, the Nile, or the Rhine, a song like that of the James, the Hudson, the Charles, the Alabama, the Oregon, and the mighty Mississippi?

So, when the Army of Northern Virginia approached Richmond the kingly James broke into a strain that pierced the sky, for its heart, like that of the Blue Ridge, the peaks of Otter and the Shenandoah, had been with it from beginning to end.

Under the escort of the Richmond Blues the procession traversed the proud citadel of the Confederacy. It is believed that never, never, in all history did any army receive such a welcome. From the time it appeared filing down the heights of Manchester till the last color disappeared on the Brooke Pike, the people thronged the streets; aged fathers and mothers, pale and too weak to stand alone, who had lived through the war, were supported lovingly on either side at their doorways, and babies were waked and taken from their cradles and held high in their mothers’ arms so that they might have it to say in their old age that they saw the Army of Northern Virginia as it marched through Richmond on its way to the Wilderness. All the bells rang, St. Paul’s leading, and there was many a suppressed sob as the tears fell.

As the line passed the White House, uncovered between two of the columns of the porch stood Jefferson Davis. His spare face was unclouded. With character so spotless, integrity so incorruptible, courage so resolute, conviction in the justice of the cause he led so strong, he seemed, as his eyes lay kindly on the marching veterans, to be listening in faith for the final and favorable verdict of the future. The charm of his personality, a rare blending of dignity with well-bred deference, was still about him. Of course, all the flags were dipped, including the stars and stripes borne by the Blues, for each star and each bar on it remembered him as an old friend, one who at Buena Vista, as colonel of the First Mississippi, by his courage and blood (for he was severely wounded there) brought it victory. The sight of the old flag dipping to him brought his heart into his mouth and with moistened eyes he bowed low and whispered, ‘ God bless you!'

As they marched by the old camping-grounds, each begged them for the sake of bygone days to halt; but the veterans wanted to sleep once more on the scene of the five-days’ warfare at Spottsylvania, whose match in desperate assaults wars not met with elsewhere. So by the old battlefields, and over the South Anna and the North Anna, they marched on. Both of these rivers were singing, and long after they crossed them, heading northward, they could still hear them, as the south wind breathed through the newdy-leafed woods and over the freshly-ploughed fields.

In uncommon splendor the sun went down, and out from her sky-ceiled chamber, twilight never came forth with softer grace, or with a sweeter face under her veil; and never did the evening star seem more reluctant to sink to her bed in the west, as the column in gray marched on in the spirit of Goodwill and Peace. At last lone trees, fields, and distant views, all faded away, and darkness came from the deep, heavy woods which lined the roadside, and stood at their branching overarched doorways; gentleness and perfect safety had replaced the terror in the face of Night. Millions of stars were out.

When within a mile or so of Spottsylvania all the battle-torn banners began to flutter on their staffs, and their bearers could not understand it. But when they drew to their destination, then the reason dawned on them, for there were the old fields robed in glory to welcome them; the flags, you see, had felt the proud beating of their hearts. Spottsylvania’s reception was royal, all her peerage, her court of heroic deeds, were there in state and pomp, and on every staff as they passed her she hung a wreath of laurel. After the camp-fires were lit, the oaks from the ‘Bloody Angle’ came out and joined their fellow veterans around the camp-fires, not boastful yet proud of their maimed limbs, their scars, and the bullets still in their breasts. Sweet, peaceful, and refreshing was sleep!

Meanwhile the Army of the Potomac had reached the Rapidan and was bivouacking on its northern bank, the river alone between it and the Wilderness. The moon never moved upward with greater majesty, nor were the stars arrayed in finer apparel, than on that night. How could it have been otherwise? For are not brave hearts, filled with the spirit of peace and goodwill, the true coming down of Heaven to dwell among men? And naturally enough then every luminary of the firmament brightened.

The Rapidan listened with rapture while the old Army of the Potomac sang its songs; and after the voices all died down, and with hands under their cheeks, as in their childhood, the veterans fell asleep, the night wind gathered the perfume of jessamine, azalea, linden, violet, and wild grape to fill the air, and then breathed lullabies through the willows and the æolian-throated pines. To show how through Nature’s vast concourse of stars, winds, plains, mountains, and seas the heart’s high beats are conveyed, it is said that during that night a square-rigged ship from New Orleans, loaded with cotton, spoke a barque in mid-Atlantic loaded with spars from the coast of Maine; both had every bit of bunting aflying and, as they passed, yards, masts, and sails cheered for the respective armies, and then for the common country’s glory.

The Wilderness, fully informed of the old armies’ approach, and desirous that their reception should be suitable, called in conference the neighboring battlefields of Todd’s Tavern, Mine Run, Spottsylvania, and Chancellorsville. Having assembled on a knoll crowned with open venerable trees, it was suggested that by reason of their common memories the Pike, Brock, and Plank roads, Caton’s and Wilderness runs, the Widow Tapp’s fields and the Chewning farm should be invited to the conference also. (The old Plank Road, owing to its infirmities, was the last to reach the meeting-place, and the Pike, on account of its years and consequent shortness of breath, had to sit down twice to rest before completing the journey.)

All having gathered at last, and as they were on the point of taking up the matter in hand, the little chapel constructed since the war, which stands on the side of the Pike near where Grant’s headquarters once were, modestly drew near. She had been overlooked, but gladly they welcomed her to a place amongst them, for there is not an oak or a pine, green-alleyed vista, murmuring stream, or old entrenchment, within sound of her voice, that does not love her, and that does not join in worship on quiet Sunday evenings, as the last pealing stroke of her bell dies away.

After full discussion it was decided that when the heads of the two armies bore in sight, the Southern, up the Brock Road from Spottsylvania, the Northern, up the Germanna Road from the Rapidan, a delegation of the best oaks — more than one of them carried bullets, shrapnel, and pieces of shell — should meet them and escort each to its former respective position; that meanwhile the azaleas, dogwood, and blooming laurel should line the roadsides, and that here and there canteens of cool fresh water should be hung on pendant boughs. Provision was also made that, on gaining their camps, piles of dry fagots should be ready for the camp-fires, and that wheresoever a horse or mule should be tied, there at his feet should lie a ration of glittering corn and a sheaf of bearded oats. The little chapel volunteered to supply a soft pillow for every head, and a far traveling wind, which had halted, attracted by the assemblage, suggested that as sleep was closing their eyes the runs should softly sing of home and peace.

In accordance with this programme, never were armies escorted with more dignity, and never were roadsides dressed with more beauty. For, as well as the dogwood, laurel, and azaleas, every blooming bush and wild flower of the woods came out to welcome them, every waxen, yellow cowslip, open-eyed houstonia, the spring beauties with their faintly pink-streaked petals, the spiritual white-clothed distant aerial wind-flower, the downy-stemmed liverwort, violets, white, yellow, and blue, all stood there facing one another, the road between, in childish expectancy and glee, the tall standing back to give place to the small. And as brigade after brigade came by, they and the trees over them would break into exulting cheers. Now you would hear them along the Germanna Road, up which marched the old Army of the Potomac—God bless it! how the name always stirs my heart; now the woods along the Pike would take them up; and then you would hear them far away to the southwest, beyond New Hope Church, responding, — it was through them that the gallant Longstreet had marched; — and as the Army of Northern Virginia came up the Brock Road and filed into the Plank for the Widow Tapp field and the Chewning farm, wild, even tumultuous, was the acclamation of the Wilderness. In fact, as the two armies went into their camps, the voice of the timbered battle-fought region rose with such mighty force that every fellow ancient wood of our land, from farthest shore to shore, took up the cheers, and rejoicing waves rolled thundering in from the level, moonlit seas.

It is needless to say, seeing in what fellowship and kindness the armies had come together on one of their deadliest fields, that the heart of the reunited country was beating loud; and that, as always when the heart of man or nation flushes the brain with tides of feeling, Art, Poetry, and Religion, those mighty creative spirits, through her gifted sons, got ready to embody the glory of the land in immortal speech; or to add that, beholding their sincerity, Nature walked by their side and spoke, and heaven-lit was the vision of our country’s majesty as she moved peacefully, brave, just, merciful, and clothed in righteousness, among the nations of the world.

But who are those envoys that, with banners, are traveling hithenvard through the fields of moon and stars? Silence stands at the border of her kingdom, and her attendants are there, the carrying winds. Oh, with what a depth of acquaintance and meaning she meets them, and with what looks they answer the cheers of the Wilderness! The envoys and their winged retinue have gone into camp on a beach where lofty headland on headland appears. What new country is that? Wait a while; God is pouring his spirit out as he had promised to do on all men, and the literature of our land will at last tell you what country it is, and you will hear echoes from the cliffs of the mind.

It seems that Fame too had come to witness the reunion, and the good angel of our country went to her side and said, ‘Why not throw the doors of your temple open and let them enter as friends?’ Her trumpet sounds, the armies rouse and take up the march again. Abreast they mount the steps and pass through the high, wide doors. Ushers with suspended trumpets — oh, how they have sounded on many a field since the Christian Era began!—seated the Army of the Potomac on one side, the Army of Northern Virginia on the other; their colors, mingling, were planted around the chancel. The galleries were crowded, crowded with the true, gentle, gifted, heroic of the past, — Fame’s sweethearts, — all looking down with fresh, noble unselfconscious interest. There was the Centurion, the Good Samaritan, Sidney, Sir Richard Grenville.

Noble, very noble was that company, waiting the arrival of Grant and Lee, who presently appeared marching up the aisle, led on by stern Duty, that master soldier, ‘with sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit,’ attended on either hand by Victory and Law. The vast assembly rose and stood till they were seated. Then an invisible choir somewhere aloft in the mighty dome began to sing: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God’; the heads of all bowed in reverential silence. The song ended, History brought forward her Chronicle and read a glowing chapter; the wind of the Wilderness carried it forth; and then followed a great hush as if a voice from the firmament had pronounced a benediction. The two armies rose, and to the exulting music of the fields, rivers, mountains, and lakes of our loving land, marched away into the darkening past.

And as they vanished, the Future drew her curtain, and lo! appeared a vast multitude attentive to a figure with a radiant face — it may have been Poetry — who was addressing them with inspired lips, her uplifted hand pointing from time to time toward a dawn-tinted beacon peak. On inquiry, the soaring mountain-top was found to be the glory of the generation whose armies had the magnanimity, the greatness of soul, after a bitter war of four years, to meet as friends, to bury and forget all wrongs, and with stout but humble hearts, to take up the task of their country’s destiny.