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I have none of the angelic qualities of your first orator; they belong only to the higher order that pervades the sanctum of the university. I have not the eloquent utterances that Henderson wells up from his deep chest, inhaled from the broad prairies of Iowa. I cannot pension you with honeyed words as can the holy Palmer, returned to us from his pilgrimage to Washington. I cannot find the burning words that Father Reilly finds, when he rakes those Celtic fires, banked up for seven hundred years in dear old Ireland.

I can but point you to the battle-scarred veterans who have survived both surgery and the war; these living monuments speak for me to commemorate the army surgeon.

Twenty-five years ago, the soldiers of the Army of the Tennessee bore a message from the North, to which the South was compelled to listen. It was carried to every Southern home: the messenger was the bullet and its errand was death.

To-night we meet around this hospitable board, with friendly feelings for all, and with enmity to none; but we do well to remember that the links which now unite so closely this Union, were welded together in the red glare of war; and we do well to remember that there are hundreds belonging to the Army of the Tennessee who are not with us. for the reason that they have made the sacrifice—a greater can no man make, than to offer up his life for his country.

They lie at Donelson and at Champion Hills and at Atlanta, and upon twenty other battle-fields of the war.

"They have slept their last sleep,

They have fought their last battle;

No sound shall awake them, to glory again."

The volunteer who, inspired by motives of the purest patriotism, had given up the promises which peace, with its bright hopes and pleasant paths, had to offer, to take the musket and to submit to the stern discipline of arms, was surely entitled to good angels to minister to him when sick, to care for him when wounded, and to lift him up when weighed down and exhausted by the march.

Those unplumed, wingless angels in disguise were the army

surgeons.

They shared with the staff and line all the vicissitudes of war; they bivouaced with them in the field and joined in the chorus of

their war songs, and many of them yielded up their lives on the altar of liberty and Union.

The office of these men was to preserve life, and not to take it; some were distinguished members of the profession who had left responsible positions to follow the flag with patriotic fervor. And there were younger men who proposed to carve out, as it were, a reputation from such materials and opportunities as war might determine.

The idea of affording experience to young surgeons was not altogether agreeable to those who officiated at the same time as object lessons and teachers, and it has been suggested that the desperate fighting of a new regiment was in part, at least, due to the fact that they dreaded rather the inexperienced knives in the rear than the bayonets in the front,

When undermined by the hardships in the field, or by the exposures in the camp, the soldier lay upon his bed of fever, tossing from side to side in vain to find an easier couch for his worn and emaciated form, where the spirit had been willing but the flesh too weak. He yearns for his home and for the familiar faces of his father's house. He mutters in his sleep, and like Falstaff in his fever, “a babbled of green fields." In feverish dreams he marches homeward toward the North, and

"As when the weary traveler gains

The height of some commanding hill,
His heart revives as o'er the plains

He sees his home, though distant still."

That home nestled in the cool shades of the oaks and surrounded by the sweet smelling clover. In dreams he quenches his feverish thirst at the cool mossy spring; and well again, he tells his father and his mother and the brothers and the sisters gathered round with many votive offerings in their hands, how the company behaved at Vicksburg, and how the regiment sailed in at Missionary Ridge.

He wakes with the tramp of changing sentinels, and his eyes rest listlessly upon a train of army wagons, and upon the dark brown trunks of the ever present pines of Georgia.

Hope the charmer, who of her fair train lingers last, has gone, and he turns his face away with a sigh of despair, feeling not only doomed, but damned.

Who whispers in his ear words which bring back the cold to

the pale cheeks and the sparkle to the dim eyes? "I have a fur、 lough for you in my pocket-you shall see your dear mother and your home again. You shall see the North; that land of promise; a land flowing with milk and honey; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass; a land of orchards and of vineyards. You shall see again the sun rising out of Lake Erie, shaking the water from his chariot wheels to run his daily course over the beautiful peninsula to sink at eventide like a shield of burnished gold into the deep waters of Lake Michigan. You shall see again the green hills and valleys of Ohio, and the leafy walnuts and far-reaching corn-fields of Indiana. You shall see again the lakes and wheat farms of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. You shall see again the flowery, rolling prairies of Illinois, and Kansas and Missouri.

You shall rest in the shade of the green oak and the spreading elm, and breath the air that comes honey laden breezily over the red clover-fields of the North.

Yes, there is a balm in Gilead-and these are the physicians who will heal you;-and you will come back to us in health and strength, and armed in the righteousness of the cause will go out again to meet the enemy on the front."

Whose hand traced the cabalistic phrase: "To preserve life or to prevent permanent disability," which turned aside the bayonets of the provost guard and speeded the poor sick soldier onward to his home? Whose pen was mightier than his sword? The army surgeon's.

When halting on the march, when the dull leaden wintry clouds of Tennessee poured down their cold, drizzly, interminable rain, which dropping from the pine leaves sought the neck and chilled the very marrow of the spine. When patriotic fires were almost quenched; when no one could divine how long the weary march would last. When brigade staffs seemed stupid, and even aid-decamps knew absolutely nothing; who, suddenly inspired by a happy thought, reached back under the mysterious folds of his rubber poncho and drawing forth a black bottle, labeled,

66

Spiritus Frumenti" handed it to those around him, saying, "Gentlemen, you need a tonic-leave me some?"

surgeon.

The army

And now when two and twenty years have passed since the last bivouac; now, when breech-loaders, Gatling guns and tor

pedoes have made war more dangerous than interesting; when high joint commissions are preferred to military strategy, when arbitration takes the place of shooting, and hanging is meted out to anarchists, who, at these annual festivals and reunions, with the quartermasters and commissaries and brevet-brigadier-Generals. and other survivors of the war, describes battles with such bloodcurdling effect, and details escapes from shot and shell which makes you feel goose-fleshy all over, like the army surgeon?

General Sherman:-The programme calls for more speeches, but I think you have had enough and with your consent I will ask the band to play "Auld Lang Syne." during the giving of which we will all go home except the bummers, and they can stay as long as they choose. They remained.

HONORARY MEMBERS.

ADMIRAL D. D. PORTER, U. S. NAVY,

Washington, D. C.

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