all the
people united in making of the day a solemn patriotic festival. Mr.
Morton preached the funeral sermon.

"Oh, talk about the country," sobbed Grace, when he asked her if there
was anything in particular she would like him to speak of.

"For pity's sake don't let me feel sorry now that I gave him up for the
Union. Don't leave me now to think it would have been better if I had
not let him go."

So he preached of the country, as ministers sometimes did preach in
those days, making it very plain that in a righteous cause men did well
to die for their native land and their women did well to give them up.
Expounding the lofty wisdom of self-sacrifice, he showed how truly it
was said that "whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever
will lose his life... shall find it," and how none make such rich profit
out of their lives as the heroes who seem to throw them away.

They had come, he told the assembled people, to mourn no misadventure,
no misfortune; this dead soldier was not pitiable. He was no victim of a
tear-compelling fate. No broken shaft typified his career. He was rather
one who had done well for himself, a wise young merchant of his blood,
who having seen a way to barter his life at incredible advantage, at
no less a rate indeed than a man's for a nation's, had not let slip so
great an opportunity.

So he went on, still likening the life of a man to the wares of a
shopkeeper, worth to him only what they can be sold for and a loss if
overkept, till those who listened began to grow ill at ease in presence
of that flag-draped coffin, and were vaguely troubled because they still
lived.

Then he spoke of those who had been bereaved. This soldier, he said,
like his comrades, had staked for his country not only his own life but
the earthly happiness of others also, having been fully empowered by
them to do so. Some had staked with their own lives the happiness of
parents, some that of wives and children, others maybe the hopes of
maidens pledged to them. In offering up their lives to their country
they had laid with them upon the altar these other lives which were
bound up with theirs, and the same fire of sacrifice had consumed them
both. A few days before, in the storm of battle, those who had gone
forth had fulfilled their share of the joint sacrifice. In a thousand
homes, with tears and the anguish of breaking hearts, those who had
sent them forth were that day fulfilling theirs. Let them now