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[Page 147]
(5)
Twelve months ago this was indeed a place of war; and out a few miles yonder, on the ridges, twisted the blood stained line of conflict where all the terrors of battle existed with the intensity of concentration
There in the lurid and angery furnace of a hellish struggle for supremacy, village after village was hammered into dust and swept to the ground
And the ground itself riddled and churned so that even the worm found life to be a state of fear, and knew no state of sanctuary.
The vaultings of dark old cellars were pierced till daylight entered in like a guilty spirit to find that Death had already crept down there where wounded men in his strangling grip were brave unto the end.
Old burial grounds were torn up and broken of their peace. Graves were turned upside down like sods Tombs shattered of their massive stones And skulls of the ancient dead which Peace had laid to rest, were cast up with bones in the sunny beams of [indecipherable] Heaven, and smoke of battle; to been [indecipherable] amongst the spalls of broken monuments where fragments of gilt inscriptions shone and glittered like the tawdry jewels of Vanity.