It is said that at Florence there is a circular hall, faced with separate mirrors. In the center is a statue of exquisite beauty. Each of these mirrors reflects the image of the statue at different angles, and consequently exhibits some particular point more prominently and accurately than any of the others. Artists study the statue through these mirrors, and thus can estimate the beauty of each separate part, and form a better judgment of the perfection of the whole. Let me show you, gentle reader, how you will get the truest conception of yourself. If you please, stand for a moment in this hall. In each mirror you will see yourself in the most impressionable period in your life. There is a reflection at the moment your destiny beckoned you, when you were in the act of getting hold of yourself and without ceremony began your career, seeming to yourself to be like Saul, who "went to seek his father's asses and found a kingdom."
As in water face answers to face so, in one angle of a mirror you recognize a first-rate likeness of yourself as you sat for the first time under your own vine and fig tree, remembering this long after as though you had seen a great sight. Like St. John you turned to see the voice that spake to you. Its last cadence may die in the air but it leaves an impression that will never fade.
Casting a Reflection Means Nothing Bad
These looking-glasses show your figure, life-sized, standing on a corner. Emergency met you. It really proved a providential interposition, and now these fortunate interventions mark the period in your life more than the days and months and years, and they were accompanied by an interior guidance, more distinctly discerned now, than it was felt at the time. There is none so homely but loves a looking-glass; however little or much a man is favored in looks he notices reflections made of himself, particularly if question is raised touching his appearance as viewed by his critics. In his autobiography Mr. Seward records that no matter what care and diligence we exercise and whatever be a man's ability or inclination, the mysterious factor is a vital force in the world and has to be reckoned with. Judicial preferment was the aim of his ambition. He meant to be a lawyer, and he wished to be a judge. His early bias in this direction was caused by his observation of the deference paid to his father as a justice of the peace.
"One day," said President Lincoln, "an emigrant stopped at my store, and asked me to buy a barrel of odds and ends, of little value, for which he had no room in his wagon. I found in it a two-volume copy of Blackstone's Commentaries. I devoured them. I never read anything which so interested and thrilled me. Soon after I began the study of law, and that is how I came to be a lawyer."
The Glory of Supremacy
Old soldiers cannot be made to keep their seats as an excursion train pulls into Gettysburg. "There is where I was wounded. There is where we met the charge." It is touching to witness the comraderie, their sympathy. As they from the car windows come into sight of their struggles and victories they cannot avoid exclaiming "There we made our stand. There we advanced."
"There a man with forty-eight wounds was left for dead, and yet revived and lived beyond all expectations." One thing would be Spangler Springs from which, one night both sides drank. There the First Maryland, a Confederate regiment, clashed with the Second Maryland and two brothers, named Clark, were brought face to face, one being in each regiment and hence on each side of the fight. The Bloody Angle is a sort of Holy of Holies. You stand and read from an open book "The High Water Mark." Up to this point of ground, thus indicated, things seemed outwardly to be going one way. Turning points in history have a location on the earth. On a spot so exactly known as to bear the legend, cut in stone, "High Water Mark," the fortunes of war so abruptly turn that General Lee himself said, "This is the beginning of the end." Napoleon wanted Hougoumont, for as Hugo says, "This bit of earth, could he have taken it, would perhaps have given him the earth." On a piece of very common ground near Luz Jacob received an uninvited angel visitation. The stone on which he rested his head was only one of thousands. But with the morning what a change! It came like a beautiful vision
"That loves to come at night,
To make you wonder in the morn,
What made the earth so bright."
His pillow became a pillar and he said, "This is the gate of heaven. The heart sanctifies the place." Like any boy, egged on by curiosity I have stood just inside the door and seen the Israelites shuffling about with their hats on and the Rabbi reading the evening service, all being in motion, in imitation probably of the forty years' travel to Canaan. The command of a prophet to the people was distinctly "Take off thy shoes for this is holy ground." There was no command to take off the hat. They were to respect their contact with the location. It is the spot set apart by the deep experience that becomes hallowed. If a struggle, be it physical or moral, is victorious the place is consecrated by it forever.