RESPECT FOR AGE. THE Ovation tendered by the citizens of Salt Lake to the Old Folks, on June 28 and 29, was a glorious affair, cheering the souls of many hundreds of weary pilgrims and warming the hearts of thousands with one of the noblest of human sentiments-Respect for Age. This feeling is so indissolubly associated with self-respect, that such an expression of it as was witnessed on the occasion referred to, distinguishes the people who participated as upright and virtuous, and deserving the emulation and praise of the world. It is doubtful if such a gathering of aged people, comprising so many in the decline of life, was ever witnessed before. It would be difficult to assemble so large and harmonious a crowd of people in any other community. The entire affair was unique and characteristic of no people but those brought together and united by the principles of truth and universal brotherhood contained in the Gospel of Christ. Truly the hearts of the children are turned to their fathers in this blessed dispensation of the fulness of times. The arrangements for entertaining the eleven hundred old people, who had reached the age of seventy and upwards, were very satisfactory and complete, reflecting great credit upon the committee. On the morning of the first day a grand concert was given in the Tabernacle, in which the best musical talent of the City and several neighboring towns was engaged. Speeches by Presidents Taylor and Cannon and others were delivered, and flowers and refreshments were dis tributed to the veterans by troops of beautifully dressed little girls, members of the Primary Associations. In the afternoon a free matinee performance of "Queen's Evidence" at the Theatre, by the "Home Dramatic Club," interested the large audience of gray-haired men and women as so many children. On the second day a grand social picnic was given in Liberty Park. It is estimated that ten thousand persons assembled there. Tables were spread for the old people and presided over by the ladies of the Relief Society. The banquet was a most bounteous and enjoyable one. Greetings of friends and the renewal of friendships, after many years of separation, cheered the hearts of many and made the day a truly happy one. After the feast came sports and the distribution of prizes. Every worthy exploit or feat, from foot racing over the measured course, to the peacefully living together of a couple during the course of a long lifetime, was rewarded with a suitable prize. The exercises terminated, after all were satisfied, with the unanimous verdict that the ovation was unparalleled for genuine pleasure and the care and comfort which attended it. The citizens of all classes contributed to the success of the occasion, by their means and attention to the wants of the aged guests, who thronged the streets wearing badges, which were everywhere respectfully saluted and recognized as a passport to the hearts, habitations and hospitalities of the people. The committee managing this festive and unique gathering of aged people consisted of gentlemen well known in the community. Their names will ever be held in honorable remembrance for their efficiency, unselfishness and the purely humanitarian sentiments which actuated them. They are: Bishop Edward Hunter, George Goddard, C. R. Savage, Wm. Eddington, Wm. Naylor, John Kirkman, Wm. L. Binder. IN MEMORIAM. ON the Twenty-third of July, Grandfather Free, a veteran in the Church and honored ancestor of a large posterity, EDITORIAL. died, at his residence in Farmers' Ward. He was surrounded by loving relatives, who ministered to every want and eased the last hours of his mortal life, by deeds of kindness and attention which loving hearts alone could suggest. He passed peacefully away, not fearing death, for his hope beyond the veil had taken away the sting of death and robbed the grave of its victory. No man ever died with a purer, more unfaltering faith in the virtues of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He expected when he left this life to receive it again, and that his body, laid away in mortality, would soon rise again incorruptible and immortal. Among his last words he said: "The resurrection seems very near at hand to me." Absalom Pennington Free, the son of Andrew Free and Mary Pennington, was born in Burke County, North Carolina, March 22, 1798, having lived during the time of all the Presidents of the United States. He removed early in life to Kentucky, thence to St. Clair Co., Illinois, where, engaged in farming, he was prosperously located, when the Elders visited him, bearing the welcome tidings, of the Gospel as restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith. He gladly received the messengers of truth, and identifying himself with the Church, followed it through its trials in Missouri and Illinois. With his large family he accompanied the Saints under the leadership of President Young to Winter Quarters, and in 1848 to this valley, where he has since remained. During all these years he has been true and faithful, receiving ordinations to the various offices of the High Priesthood, and being endowed with all the blessings pertaining to the new and everlasting covenant. His admonitions to his children and their offspring have been given in the spirit of kindness and love, and confirmed by an example of fidelity to principles of temperance, virtue, truth and righteousness, such as is rarely met in the world. has often been said of Grandfather Free that he came as near living every principle which was made known to him as any man. All this we believe, and more than words can express, for as an hon It 315 ored patriarch, a faithful father, a wise counselor, a true brother, an unflinching friend and a consistent, honest man and Latter-day Saint, he was as nearly perfect and without guile or selfishness as men may hope to be in this world of temptation and sin. THE UTAH COMMISSION. ON June 16 the President sent the nominations for the Utah Commission to the Senate; they were referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and reported back favorably, when the Senate confirmed them. The names are as follows: Alexander Ramsey, of Minnesota; Algernon S. Paddock, of Nebraska; G. F. Godfrey, of Iowa; Ambrose B. Carleton, of Indiana; James R. Pettigrew, of Arkansas. Three of these are republicans and two are democrats. Mr. Ramsey, the chairman, is a staunch republican, who has been in public life for many years. He was born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, September 8, 1815; received his education in that State, at Lafayette College, and held several clerkships in the political and State organizations before 1844, when he was sent to Congress and served two terms. He was appointed by President Taylor, in 1849, Governor of Minnesota, then a Territory, being its first Governor; he held the office until 1853, and was Mayor of St. Paul in 1855. Mr. Ramsey took a leading part in procuring the admission of the Territory into the Union, and in 1859 was elected Governor of the State, being re-elected in 1861. At the expiration of his second term as Governor, he took his seat in the U. S. Senate, to which he had been elected in 1863. He occupied that position until 1875, and was soon after called to the Cabinet of President Hayes as Secretary of War. Mr. Paddock was born at Glen's Falls, in the State of New York; studied law and was admitted to the bar in his native town. He went to Nebraska in 1857; was appointed Secretary of the Territory in 1861, holding that office until the admission of the State into the Union in 1867. In 1875 he was elected a U. S. Senator. Like Senator Ramsey, he has had experience in engineering a Territory into the Union, which by some people is supposed to be a chief qualification for the office to which they are now appointed; it being supposed that the Administration is more in favor of creating out of our Territory a republican State with officers selected from the minority, than in uprooting polygamy. G. F. Godfrey, of Iowa, is a republican, about forty-two years of age. He entered the army as a Lieutenant, served during the war of the Rebellion, and was promoted to be Colonel of cavalry. At the close of the war, he engaged in the practice of law at Des Moines, Iowa, where for several years he held the office of Receiver of Public Moneys, and subsequently acted as Assistant District Attorney. Ambrose B. Carleton, of Terre Haute, Indiana, is a lawyer by profession, and a democrat in politics. He was formerly a law partner of Senator Voorhees, and at various times has been a member of the Indiana Legislature, a Circuit Judge and Professor of Law in the State University. He is about fifty-six years old, and is said to have a high reputation for legal ability and literary attainments. James R. Pettigrew, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, has been a member of the Legislature of that State, and was, until his appointment on the Commission, Journal Clerk of the U. S. Senate. He is a man of middle age, a lawyer by profession, and a democrat. These five gentlemen constitute the Utah Commission, with Hon. Arthur L. Thomas, Secretary of the Territory, as their Secretary. Congress has voted them a salary of five thousand dollars a year each, and made an appropriation of fifteen thou sand for their immediate expenses. What their duties are, the lawyers and politicians have not yet determined. As they have not yet arrived in Utah, and have as yet done nothing, it perhaps is wiser to await developments before commenting upon the labors before them or the methods to be pursued. GENERAL SKOBELEFF. THE life of General Skobeleff supplies a striking illustration of the doctrine of heredity. He was a soldier born of soldiers. Not only is his father a general of distinguished ability, but his grandfather rose by sheer force of fighting capacity from the ranks to first rank as a general in the Caucasus. From his youth upward Michael Dimitrievitch was a man of war. When only eighteen he took so energetic a part in some disturbances at the university that his attendance at the seat of learning was summarily dispensed with, but not before he had acquired a mastery of several languages and an omnivorous appetite for reading. There were few better read men in Europe than the general who made himself the idol of the Russian army before he was three and thirty. Wherever he went he carried his books with him, and read, for instance, the account of the massacre of Cabul in 1842 when sitting in his garden at Bokhara, not knowing but that the next day he might have to share the fate of Elphinstone. How he found time to read amid the exciting life he led is a mystery. After his dismissal from the university he was sent with a regiment of the Guards to assist in suppressing the Polish insurrection. That was in 1863, when he was eighteen. Skobeleff returned with his regiment to St. Petersburg, but soon sickened of the sybaritism which is in vogue with guardsmen elsewhere than in London. He could not stand the idle life of the "fine gentlemen of the Guard," and he left their society for the Staff College about the time the Prussians were winning the battle of Sadowa. After two years' diligent study he was sent off with a captain's commission to the Caucasuswhere his grandfather had gained his GENERAL SKOBELEFF. laurels the year before the Franco-Prussian war broke out. He was then a youngster of four and twenty. The first two or three years were passed in guerrilla war in the mountains-a service useful but uneventful. In 1873, when his upward career may properly be said to begin, he was transferred to Turkestan,and took part in the famous expedition to Khiva as lieutenant-colonel of a Cossack regiment. No sooner had the Khiva war been settled than the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and Skobeleff marched off to Bulgaria without a command. The story of his exploits in the Bulgarian campaign included all that was most exciting in the war which brought the Russian army within sight of the minarets of Stamboul. From the day when, "to show the stuff he was made of," he swam his horse across the Danube while General Dragomiroff was forcing the passage at Simnitza, to the time when he could with difficulty be restrained from marching into Constantinople as soon as the British fleet entered the Sea of Marmora, he was the most prominent actor in the drama. He became the legendary hero of the campaign, and in the minds of the common people he almost monopolized its glories. He was always in the forefront of the hottest battles; four horses were shot under him in ten days, but he was only wounded once, and after being in constant expectation of death for months he returned home safe and sound. His white uniform was to his soldiers like the white plume of Henri Quatre at the battle of Ivry. "I have heard the soldiers speak of him," says Lieutenant Greene, "as a general under whom they would rather fight and die than fight and live under another." They had often to die-sometimes fifty per cent. of his command perished, but he spared no exertion to minister to their wants and to supply their needs. His division was the best fed and the best clothed and best armed in the army. He was always with them in the most exposed positions in the fight, sleeping with them in the trenches and looking after all their necessities in the camp. In short says 317 Lieutenant Greene, "he succeeded so thoroughly in making himself one with his division that his men responded to his thoughts as readily as the muscles obey the will. I doubt if a more thoroughly ideal relation between a general and his men has existed since the days of Cromwell." His custom of wearing white, as if to court the bullets of his enemies, his reckless personal bravery, and the strange custom of his of always "going into battle in his cleanest uniform and fresh underclothing covered with perfume, and wearing a diamond-hilted sword, in order that, as he said, he might die with his best clothes on," gained him the reputation of a wild dare-devil, which somewhat obscured his real capacity as a general. In reality they only showed how thoroughly he had divined that secret of power which lies in fascinating the imagination as well as of appealing to the reason of men. When he was sent to take Goek Tepe and subdue the Tekkes many shook their heads, and predicted that his impetuosity would be his ruin. So far from that being the case he displayed the utmost caution, acted with the greatest deliberation; refused to move from July to December, until he made all his preparations: and after he had carried, on camels to the trenches, no fewer than one million five hundred and seventy-five thousand rounds of ammunition, to say nothing of several thousands of heavy shot and shell, he laid siege to Gok Tepe and captured that hitherto impregnable stronghold. He had ten thousand troops against forty thousand Asiatics, and he achieved the conquest of the Akhal Tekke country with a loss of nine hundred and thirty-seven men. Only once in that campaign did Skobeleff display his usual recklessness. After the fortress had fallen he was riding through the country with his escort when he met several Tekkes. He asked who they were. They answered: "Friendly Tekkes." "How can I believe your word?" he asked again, "Tekkes never lie," was their confident response. "Well," replied Skobeleff, "if that is the case, I will send my escort home and will return accompanied by you." He was as good as his word, and his trust in the word of the nomads was not misplaced. General Skobeleff was a Russian of the Russians. His life had but one serious cloud, due to an alliance with one who was as cosmopolitan as he was Muscovite. The careless, impetuous and unguarded speech he made in Paris, respecting the Eastern question, showed that he was singularly undiplomatic, effusive and enthusiastic. In fact, his speeches in public have ever indicated this. Five years ago he used to horrify the English war correspondents in Bulgaria by discussing plans for the invasion of India, being entirely unconcerned as to the effect of his utterances upon the most interested opposers to such a project in the world. He fully shared the national resentment against the interference of the congress of Berlin. The remarkable advancement of Skobeleff, in military prowess and in the hearts of his countrymen, led his greatest admirers to expect everything of him in the future. One of these wrote, a short time before his death, as follows: "He has a great career before him. It is not often that such enthusiasm is linked to a stupendous military genius. If he should live twenty years more, he will be commander-in-chief in the next war about the Eastern question, and history will then speak of him as one of the five great soldiers of the century, side by side with Napoleon, Wellington, Grant and Moltke." These brilliant expectations, however, were destined to disappointment. The hero of whom so much was hoped fell a prey to the universal enemy, Death, on the sixth of July, dying suddenly of heart disease, at the Hotel Dassou, Moscow. His untimely departure caused the profoundest grief and disappointment among all classes of Russians. The Czar wrote to the General's sister, as follows: "I am terribly overcome and grieved by the sudden death of your brother. It is an irreparable loss to the army. All will weep for him. It is a sad loss to the country." While the body was lying in state in the church at Moscow, surging crowds paraded the streets, exhibiting the ut most sorrow. The following brief description of the first requiem services, held on July 10th, before the removal of the body to the family burying place, was cabled over the globe: "Crowds have been to see Skobeleff's body at the church to which it was transferred on Saturday evening. The visitors were deeply affected and many eyes were wet. The little church was fragrant with flowers and wreaths. Among the most remarkable tributes was that of the Academie d'Etat, the major being over eighteen feet in circumference, and decorated with ribbons of honor of St. George, with the following: "Skobeleff, the Hero." Archimandrite Athanasius officiated, assisted by numerous priests. The Prince Dolgouriki, Minister of War, and Counts Adelberg and Barenoff, and all old comrades of Plevna,were present. At eleven o'clock, the mass of requiem was celebrated. Skobeleff's family was represented by General Tchernieff and Prince Belosseley, who received each fresh arrival. Troops lined the road to Rizan. A surging crowd of one hundred thousand people filled the streets. The roads were covered with human forms. At noon, Grand Dukes Nicholas and Alexis arrived from St. Petersburg, and were driven to the church, cheered by the people all the way. On reaching the building, Archimandrite said a few words and uncovered the body of the hero. It was placed on a bier and borne in solemn procession to Rizan, followed by the Grand Dukes, all the generals, the Moscow military band, and Prince Dolgoriki and staff. Prayers were again said in the presence of an enormous crowd, and the body being placed in a car reserved for it, the train started for Rizan. W. J. For affection, or the faintest imitation of it, a man should feel obliged to his very dog. But for the gross assistance of patronage or purse, let him pause before accepting them from any one.-Carlyle. |