Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear
    The bolts of death around him rattle,
  Hath shed as sacred blood as ere
    Was poured upon the field of battle.”

When elbows touch, ten thousand feet keep step together, martial music fills the air, the shout of battle is on, bayonets glitter in the sunlight, the flag flutters in the breeze, and the general commands, men will shout and rush into battle who without these stimulating influences would be going the other way.  I remember when a boy how whistling kept up my courage in the dark.  It is told of General Zeb Vance of the Confederate army, that while leading his forces across a field into an engagement he met a rabbit going the other way.  As the hare dodged around the command, General Vance lifting his hat said:  “Go it, Mollie; go it, Mollie Cotton-tail; if I didn’t have a reputation to sustain I would be right there with you.”

For Christine Bradley, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Governor of Kentucky, to stand on the dock at Newport News, against the customs of centuries and facing the jeers of prejudice, baptize the battleship Kentucky with water, required as blood-born bravery as coursed the veins of the ensign who cut the wires in Cardenas Bay, or the lieutenant who sunk the Merrimac in the entrance to Santiago Harbor.  Because she dared to violate a long-established custom by refusing to use what had blighted the hopes of many daughters, sent to drunkards’ graves so many sons, and buried crafts and crews in watery graves, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union presented her with a handsome silver service.  I was chosen to make the presentation speech, which I closed by saying:  “Heaven bless Christine Bradley, who by her example said: 

  I christen thee Kentucky,
    With water from the spring,
  Which enriched the blood of Lincoln,
    Whose praise the sailors sing.

  I christen thee Kentucky,
    With prayers of woman true,
  That wine, the curse of sailors,
    May never curse your crew.

  I christen thee Kentucky,
    And may this christening be,
  A lesson of safety ever
    To sailors on the sea.”

Now if public sentiment has made such a mistake in the allotment of virtues, why may it not have made a greater mistake in the allotment of spheres?  It has been well said:  “God made woman a free moral agent, capable of the highest development of brain, heart and conscience; with these are interwoven interests that involve issues for time and eternity, and God expects of woman the best she can do in whatever field she is best fitted for the accomplishment of results for the world’s good.”  If a young woman is fitted to preside over a home, and some young man desires to crown her queen of that realm, she can find no higher calling in this world.  There is nothing on this earth more like heaven than a happy home.  I can give to a young woman no better wish than that the future may find her presiding over a home made beautiful by her character and culture, and safe through her influence.