the employment they had given up to take a musket to save the union and government. Of course that crisis is now past, but a greater danger lurks—the next generation may conclude that the wise man stays at home, and leaves the fool to take the buffets and kicks of war. This danger can best be met by just such an organization as the Grand Army of the Republic, with its camp-fires of song and story, to irradiate the gloom of ordinary humdrum existence where an Auditor of the Treasury would measure a "life" as he would a bushel of spoiled oats.

All I mean by this paper is to encourage the men who "saved the Union " saved the Union" to be of good cheer; to meet often at camp-fires; sing their old songs; tell their stories with reasonable exaggerations, and always cultivate the comradeship begotten of war, the charity which blesses him who gives as well as him who receives, and a loyalty that ordains that the "penalty for treason is death."

RESPONSE OF GENERAL SHERMAN.

MR.

R. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: On your bill of fare you will see that General Sherman's name is written down for the toast to the army. I have heard that before. But I believe they generally concede to me the privilege of skirmishing around a good deal. You show the effect of it, too, when you are approaching a mass of timber and know some one is lying around there loose. Just burst a couple of shells in it and you will find out. I burst a couple of shells, too, and I found out. I don't intend to mar an occasion like this with anything but feelings of mutual respect and love. Sometimes it is well to stir up things-it increases the interest. Whether Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine, is the more beautiful city makes no difference, they both belong to us. And it is so with the Army of the

* Delivered at the 21st Annual Reunion of the Army of the Potomac, held at Portland, Me., July 3d and 4th, 1890.

Potomac and the armies of the West. I know Gen. Walker too well to find fault with him. He thought there were enough here to speak for the Western armies, and I merely availed myself of the opportunity to tell some anecdotes, some of which led to others.

I have attended a great many of these army meetings and talked more at them, perhaps, than I ought to have done. In my early days it was thought discreditable for an army officer to speak ten words in succession. The most you could get out of old officers was "Obey orders!" "Mind your own business!" But sometimes it is well, where you have anything to say, to say it in a frank, earnest manner. That is my object, and I hope never to give offence, and I hope I have not done so to-day at all. I myself have stood on yonder White Mountains when the wind was blowing a hundred miles an hour, with the house chained to the rocks and yet swaying like a ship at sea, and from its summit-six thousand feet they call it I could behold this city of Portland lying at its feet, a beautiful panorama, and ships sailing on the ocean beyond, all like a miniature

map. It was the clearest day, the sergeant told me, on that mountain that he had ever seen. That was two or three years ago. I have also looked for the mountain to-day, but I didn't see it, because it was raining, which is a normal condition here, I believe. The mayor says you will have a bright day to-morrow. He is sensible of the kindness of Providence for giving you an occasional pleasant day. It is the same way in Portland, Oregon. It sometimes drizzles there for five months without cessation, and then you have lovely weather and you forget about the drizzle. But there stands old Mt. Hood, and I know it will be there the next time I go out there, and I am going to look at it for two weeks. But whether it is a better town than this city is not for me to determine.

Now as to the army, gentlemen, that is a very old subject. It is written that brave men lived before Agamemnon. I don't know whether you know when Agamemnon lived. He was no acquaintance of mine. And there were armies before the days of Cæsar, well organized armies, too. Indeed, you who have read the Bible-I

don't think you read it much up here you remember the captains of tens, and of hundreds, and of thousands-that is organization, the very basis of all military tactics. The next thing is grand strategy—what is to be done? Common sense applied to the art of war. You have got to do something. What is that something? You have got to have it defined in your mind. You can't go around asking corporals and sergeants. You must make it out in your own mind and ascertain what you intend to do. Then the method by which it is to be done-tactics-comes in merely as a means to an end. You can't handle a hundred men loosely scattered. Forrest, the rebel general of cavalry, had only two commands in his tactics. I don't know whether he could read or not, but his tactics consisted in this, "scatter like the volunteers," and "huddle like the regulars."

Now the third great principle embraced in the art of war, and it has been an art, is now and ever will be, just as much as medicine, mechanics, or engineering, there must be one mind to direct the whole. In all civil governments the many gov