Xviii.
Baker's body was brought across the
Potomac the evening he fell.
It rested all day, and then by ambulance
[
369]
was conveyed to
Washington, and carried through the same hospitable doorway of his friend
Colonel Webb, from whose steps we had parted with him as he mounted his horse and gave us his warm, earnest hand only two mornings before!
Oh, how radiant was his face!
how athletic and symmetrical his form!
how unsullied his ambition!
how pure his devotion to God and country!
‘God spare
his life, at least!’
we said, as we saw him disappear around the corner!
This prayer Heaven could not grant.
The following day, when the last preparations for the tomb had been made, we went to gaze once more, and for the last time, on what of earth remained in the form which so lately enshrined the noble spirit.
Then mournfully the parting bugle bade
Its farewell o'er the grave.
California claimed her hero and statesman, and his ashes now repose on the calm shore of that ocean which washes the western base of the empire for whose glory he lived and died.
His body lies in Lone Mountain Cemetery, near the city of
San Francisco, and over it should have risen one of the most superb monuments which the genius of Art has erected to human greatness.
1
In the closing paragraph of the last speech of
Colonel
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370]
Baker in the Senate, provoked by the insulting words of the
Catiline whom for a few days longer Heaven had condemned our patience to tolerate as a Senator of the
United States, the
California Senator, rising in his place, said,—
There will be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection.
There will be some privation.
There will be some loss of luxury.
There will be somewhat more need of labor to procure the necessaries of life.
When that is said, all is said.
If we have the country,—the whole country,—the Union, the Constitution, free government, with these will return all the blessings of well-ordered civilization.
The path of the country will be a career of greatness and of glory such as our fathers, in the olden time, foresaw in the dim visions of years yet to come; and such as would have been ours to-day, had it not been for the treason for which the Senator too often seeks to apologize.
