Music wooes, and leads the human race ever onward, and there are two
columns that follow her. One is the happy column, ringing with laughter
and song. Its line of march is strewn with roses; it is hedged on either
side by happy homes and smiling faces. The other is the column of
sorrow, moaning with suffering and distress. I saw an aged mother with
her white locks and wrinkled face, swoon at the Governor's feet; I saw
old men tottering on the staff, with broken hearts and tear stained
faces, and heard them plead for their wayward boys. I saw a wife and
seven children, clad in rags, and bare-footed, in mid-winter, fall upon
their knees around him who held the pardoning power. I saw a little
girl climb upon the Governor's knee, and put her arms around his neck;
I heard her ask him if he had little girls; then I saw her sob upon his
bosom as though her little heart would break, and heard her plead for
mercy for her poor, miserable, wretched, convict father. I saw want,
and woe, and poverty, and trouble, and distress, and suffering, and
agony, and anguish, march in solemn procession before the Gubernatorial
door; and I said: "Let the critics frown and rail, let this heartless
world condemn, but he who hath power and doth not temper justice with
mercy, will cry in vain himself for mercy on that great day when the two
columns shall meet! For, thank God, the stream of happy humanity that
rolls on like a gleaming river, and the stream of the suffering and
distressed and ruined of this earth, both empty into the same great
ocean of eternity and mingle like the waters, and there is a God who
shall judge the merciful and the unmerciful!"