Fourth: Determine the mood which dominates each separate picture or detail, then see how these fit into each other, like the parts of a picture puzzle, perfecting the thought as a whole and making it a living, harmonious, mental or spiritual conception.

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE BUTTON

By John Mellen Thurston[6]

1. Sometimes in passing along the street I meet a man who, in the left lapel of his coat, wears a little, plain, modest, unassuming bronze button. 2. The coat is often old and rusty; the face above it seamed and furrowed by the toil and suffering of adverse years; perhaps beside it hangs an empty sleeve, and below it stumps a wooden peg. 3. But when I meet the man who wears that button I doff my hat and stand uncovered in his presence—yea! to me the very dust his weary foot has pressed is holy ground, for I know that man, in the dark hour of the nation’s peril, bared his breast to the hell of battle to keep the flag of our country in the Union sky.

4. Maybe at Donaldson he reached the inner trench; at Shiloh held the broken line; at Chattanooga climbed the flame-swept hill, or stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights. 5. He was not born or bred to soldier life. 6. His country’s summons called him from the plow, the forge, the bench, the loom, the mine, the store, the office, the college, the sanctuary. 7. He did not fight for greed of gold, to find adventure, or to win renown. 8. He loved the peace of quiet ways, and yet he broke the clasp of clinging arms, turned from the witching glance of tender eyes, left good-by kisses upon tiny lips to look death in the face on desperate fields.

9. And when the war was over he quietly took up the broken threads of love and life as best he could, a better citizen for having been so good a soldier.

10. What mighty men have worn this same bronze button! Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Logan, and an hundred more, whose names are written on the title-page of deathless fame. 11. Their glorious victories are known of men; the history of their country gives them voice; the white light of publicity illuminates them for every one. 12. But there are thousands who, in humbler way, no less deserve applause. 13. How many knightliest acts of chivalry were never seen beyond the line or heard of above the roar of battle.

14. God bless the men who wear the button! 15. They pinned the stars of Union in the azure of our flag with bayonets, and made atonement for a nation’s sin in blood. 16. They took the negro from the auction-block and at the altar of emancipation crowned him—citizen. 17. They supplemented “Yankee Doodle” with “Glory Hallelujah,” and Yorktown with Appomattox. 18. Their powder woke the morn of universal freedom and made the name “American” first in all the earth. 19. To us their memory is an inspiration, and to the future it is hope.—From an address at a banquet of the Michigan Club of Detroit, February 21, 1890.

(To find the designated mood of any sentence in the above selection refer to its corresponding number below.)