Emory

“ And look you, Jake, may be it will be as well for us to pay New York a visit in company to-morrow. This town is getting a little hot for us, and we want money—want it badly; and we can see Hen and his pal, and make Emory meet us there at the same time—kill two birds with one stone, you understand. ”

“ This is ever a proud day for Eminence College. Annually on these festive occasions do the hearts of the many thousands who have gone out from these classic halls turn to them again with longing. Memory, unfettered by space, walks again amid these lovely bowers and responds unconsciously to the greetings of other days. Though separated far, and mingling in the busy scenes of life, how their souls revel in these delights! These college associations are the golden links which bind many hearts in an unbroken chain. The chords so exquisitely touched in our hearts to-day will vibrate for an age. ”

“ The College is chartered and endowed by the State of Maryland, has graduated over three hundred young ladies, and trained and sent forth two hundred teachers. Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, conferred the degree of LL.D., on Professor Brooks in 1859, and in 1863 his name was presented, with others, for the presidency of Girard College. Though Major Smith, a Philadelphian of an influential family, was elected president, Professor Brooks received more votes than any of the other competitors. ”

“ With recollections of the Umpqua Academy fifty-five to sixty-four years ago, what a panorama of memory pictures come trooping up.
What a throng of faces young and fair, of forms youthful and strong, what a chorus of voices joyous in song, sport, laughter or screams of delight. ”

“ Life, in its freedom of come and go, by heaving sea and reeling deck, through the home of the trade-winds, back and forth between the ports, ceased there for him in Walter Merritt Emory’s office, while the calm-browed Miss Judson looked on and marvelled that a man’s flesh should roast and the man wince not from the roasting of it. ”

“ He had a beautiful daughter named Genevieve, who used to be rather wild, and furnished delectable gossip to Madison's staid matrons. She was not only beautiful, but vivacious, and when some young Hartford men camped out there, about six years ago, two of them—one a wealthy young fellow named Beach, and the other a rich gentleman whom we will call—Emory—fell in love with her. ”

“ Can a student in the university, with only the history training he has received in the earlier school, enter with proper comprehension upon the study of the Middle Ages, or the French Revolution, or the Reformation? Yet these are examples of the courses offered in the best universities by the best known and the best prepared teachers.
People often accomplish their objects without using the best methods. ”

“ With the roar of the cannon and rattling of musketry falling upon his ear, or with a fair vision of his dear childhood's home before his mind, and a prayer he lisped in days gone by at his mother's knee, his eyes close, his breath ceases, and the brave prisoner's life is ended. Horrid war has given another noble heart to death, and taken the sunshine from another happy home. ”

“ We freely offered up our lives and property in defence of principle and right and honor. A stern, conscientious sense of duty has influenced us to fight, bleed and suffer all these terrible years. The Yankees of New England first practiced and taught us the doctrine of secession, and then by force forbade us to apply it peaceably. The heroic men who fought, bled and died, are in prison or in exile for this principle, this inherent right, ought not and will not be known in history as traitors. ”

“ After four years of gallant resistance, heroic endurance and incredible suffering, we find ourselves broken in fortunes, crushed, ruined; yet, amid our misery and wretchedness, though sad and sick at heart, we have no blush of shame. We feel deep, unutterable regret at our failure, but no humiliation. ”

“ As I lay on my hard and narrow bunk, my mind wanders to home and mother, and the recollections of the good things she has prepared for me in the past comes welling up before me, and drives away sleep. ”

“ It can not be that earth is man's only abiding place. It can not be that our life is a bubble cast up by the ocean of eternity to float for a moment upon its surface, and then sink into nothingness and darkness forever. Else why is it that the high and glorious aspirations, which leap like angels from the temples of our hearts, are forever wandering abroad satisfied? Why is it that the rainbow and the cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass off and leave us to muse on their faded loveliness? ”

“ We never can be deaf to the call of humanity. We cannot be blind to the errors which have followed unfortunate counsels. We must deal with living issues and with present events as truth requires; but we can and we ought to fulfill the obligations of duty and speak the voice of judgment in the spirit of honest and manly friendship. For Russia was our truest friend in the hour of our supreme trial. ”

“ Many who were quite sick—some of the scurvy afflicted among them—hobbled slowly and painfully out of their wards, and the long, cold hall was soon crowded with the sick, the lame and the halt. Such a rigid course is senseless and cruel. It shows weakness, cowardice and malice. ”

“ We move about, or sit on our beds, silent, almost motionless, in the speechless agony of woe, in the mute eloquence, of unutterable despair. After four long weary years of battle and marches, of prayers and tears, of pain and sacrifice, of wounds and woe, of blood and death, such an ending of our hopes, such a shocking disappointment, is bitter, cruel, crushing. Few tears are shed; there is no time for weakness or sentiment. The grief is too deep, the agony too terrible to find vent through the ordinary channels of distress. Hope seems forever buried, and naturally too. ”

“ Major Brady was interviewed; but showed himself anything but a high-toned gentleman, falsified promises made, and did not repudiate the charge of harsh and unsoldierly conduct towards prisoners of war, nor remove the cause of complaint. His whole course is a reproach and scandal to himself and his Government. He brands us "Rebels," and treats us as if we were criminals of the lowest type. We should be proud of the noble name "Rebel." ”

“ Today our young doctor decided it was a genuine case of smallpox, and ordered his removal to the smallpox hospital. I never saw nor heard of poor Birkhead again. Deaths from smallpox, pneumonia, scurvy, fevers, dysentery, and various other diseases, are alarmingly frequent. There is honor and glory in death on the field of battle, amid the whistling of bullets, the shrieks of shells, the fierce roar of cannon, and the defiant shouts of the brave combatants, but the saddest, most solemn and painful of deaths is that within prison walls, far from home and loved ones. ”

“ He is our uncomplaining, dignified, heroic, vicarious sufferer. How dull and leaden must be the heavy hours in his weary, weary prison cell. May a Gracious God sustain and comfort him in his wretchedness and misery.
On the 26th my last, fond hope was completely crushed. General Kirby Smith surrendered his forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department to General Canby at Baton Rouge. My very last hope has gone. What shall I do? If the alternative of banishment from the country was offered, I would unhesitatingly accept it. But it is the hated oath of allegiance or perpetual imprisonment. ”

“ There was a ravine to our left, and the Third Alabama skirmishers having fallen back, the Yankees had got in my rear, and at same time closed upon me in front. If I had not gone to Myers when he fell I might have escaped capture, but I was mortified and humiliated by the necessity of yielding myself a prisoner. Certain death was the only alternative. ”

“ She is paying the appalling cost of grievous mistakes ; but enormous as that cost is, it will still be cheap if, through these bitter experi- ences and this new awakening, the great empire shall be put upon the higher pathway of wiser counsels and liberal advancement. The history of Russia is a varied story. It is illuminated with the progressive measures of the great Emancipator. It is darkened with the shadows of Kishinev and the Finnish oppression. The far-reaching reforms which are now dawning on the nation give promise of a new and more hopeful era. ”

“ In an equally low, subdued tone, that gallant officer answered, "Yes, but keep it to yourself; do not let your men know it." "Then who succeeds to the command of the division?" I asked. "General Battle," said he, and rode on to the next brigade. The dreaded news of Major-General Rodes' sudden death, at such a critical moment, distressed and grieved me beyond expression. There was no better officer in the entire army than he; very few as brave, skillful and thoroughly trained. ”

“ The native Virginians of Winchester and the Valley are as true as steel, and the ladies—God bless and protect them!—are as heroic and self-denying as were the noble Spartan mothers. Indeed, they are the equals of the highest, truest heroines of the grandest days of the greatest countries. ”

“ The only newspaper we are permitted to buy or receive is the "Philadelphia Inquirer," a very bitter, boastful and malignant sheet, full of falsehoods about the Southern people and Confederate armies. Its price to our Yankee guards is five cents, to the sick and penniless prisoners is ten cents. A young "galvanized" man—i.e., one ready to take the oath when allowed—named C., who claims to be from both Alabama and Kentucky, is one of the nurses in our ward. ”

“ His house being within little more than ten miles from Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that University, who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge that he was not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air ”

“ Superior power has incarcerated these men in a loathsome prison, indignities and insults are daily heaped upon them, and they have no ability to resent them. Starvation sometimes almost drives them to reluctant submission, but the whole Yankee Government, with its immense army of more than a million men, cannot shake their confidence in the truth and justice of their cause, nor crush their resolute, undaunted spirits. ”

“ It is very hard, bitter, indeed, to endure this cruel, crushing confinement, while our comrades need our aid so greatly. Still I realize the fact that while painful and harrowing to one's feelings to be pent up within despised prison walls during such trying times, it is no disgrace to be a prisoner of war, if not captured under dishonorable circumstances. ”

“ None but a base and cowardly despotism would force a man to swear against his own conscience, to do something he can only do through perjury. To swear under such circumstances is to suppress the noblest impulses of the heart. Is it not cruel and contemptible to take advantage of our misfortunes, of our dire extremity, and offer us the oath so repeatedly and insultingly, especially when it is well known we would never take it except under compulsion? ”

“ Our martyred Savior was called seditious, and I may be pardoned if I rejoice that I am a Rebel, a Rebel against tyranny and oppression. I have as my Rebel comrades the best, brightest and bravest of my native South, men whose names are garnered up in her heart, whose valor sheds unfailing lustre upon her arms, and whose fame is among the jewels of her crown, and over the hero dust of many of whom her most precious tears have been shed. ”

“ The joy and gladness they evince when we enter their city serves to encourage and inspire us, and the sorrow and pain we see in their fair countenances, and often hear them express, with trembling lips and streaming eyes, as we leave them to endure the cruel and cowardly insults and petty persecutions of Sheridan's hirelings, fill our hearts with indescribable regret. ”

“ Additional insults in different ways are the only change, and keep us in a constant state of excitement and indignation. The very confusion and turmoil is monotony. Private Sam Brewer, of my company, also wrote me from Elmira, New York, where he is confined as a prisoner of war. ”

“ April 2d and 3d—The appalling news of the evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg has reached us, and the Yankee papers are frantic in their exultant rejoicings. We have feared and rather expected this dreaded event, for General Lee's excessive losses from battle, by death and wounds, prisoners, disease and desertion, with no reinforcements whatever, taught us that the evacuation of the gallant Confederate capital was inevitable. ”

“ He was ordered to surrender, but drawing his pistol and firing in their faces, he exclaimed: "We are flanked, boys, but let's die in our tracks," and continued to fire until he was literally riddled by bullets, and surrendered up his pure, brave young spirit to the God who gave it. ”

“ Almost every name held in honor is that of a Rebel: Rebels give names to our universities and colleges, to our charitible institutions, to our counties, cities and streets. The greatest and noblest of our dead, the purest and most honored of our living, bear the grand old names of Rebels. No efforts of Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Beast Butler, Provost Marshal Brady and others of that ilk, brought into dishonorable notoriety by the accidents of war can make the noble title "Rebel" odious. ”