Gentlemen of the Jury:
The best human friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps, when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deceives him, the one that never proves ungrateful and treacherous is his dog.
A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground where the wintry wind blows and the snow drifts fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journeys through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying, to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when, the last scene of all comes and when death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside may the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.
[WILLIAM P. JOHNSTON]
William Preston Johnston, biographer and poet, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, January 5, 1831, the son of the famous Confederate general, Albert Sidney Johnston. He was graduated from Yale in 1852. During the Civil War young Johnston was on the staff of Jefferson Davis. After the war he was professor of history and literature in Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, for ten years. In 1880 he accepted the presidency of Louisiana State University, at Baton Rouge. Paul Tulane's magnificent gift in 1883 made Tulane University possible, and Johnston became its first president. This position he held until his death, which occurred at New Orleans, July 16, 1899. President Johnston's Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston (New York, 1878), is one of the most admirable biographies ever written by a Kentuckian. His graphic description of the battle of Shiloh, in which his famous father met death and the South defeat, is now accepted, even in the North, as the best account of that desperate conflict. Had General Johnston lived a day longer no one can even guess what it would have meant to the South and to the North. President Johnston was also the author of The Prototype of Hamlet (1890), in which his power as a Shakesperian scholar is well proved; and he published The Johnstons of Salisbury. He was a maker of charming verse, which may be read in his three collections, My Garden Walk (1894), Pictures of the Patriarchs (1896), and Seekers After God (Louisville, 1898), a book of sonnets. As a man, Johnston was a true type of the courtly Southern soldier and scholar.
Bibliography. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1888, v. iii); William Preston Johnston's Work for a New South, by A. D. Mayo (Washington, 1900); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1909, v. vii).
BATTLE OF SHILOH—SUNDAY MORNING