Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 126, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1912 — Page 2

s MEMORIAL DAY rolls around each year the thoughts of the veterans of the nation’s mightiest conflict revert to their comrades-in-arms —in the rankß of both the Grand Army of the living and of the dead—and to the stirring inI cidents they themselves witnessed. To them Memorial Day is a day of recollections so vivid that eternity alone can efface them; a day when their dreams

hark back to the old camp ground, the bugle's mil and the cannon’s roar. And, aB they fondle in memory the scenes through which they passed, they pdy tribute to the God of battles who K>ared them until their eyes could close on the hands of the Confederate gray and the Yankee blue clasped across the firing line In a Union indivisible. **l have never been able to forget an incident that Occurred on the battlefield of Antietam,” said General A. W. Greeley, U. S. A., when asked for his most vivid recollection of the Civil War. "And each Memorial Day, somehow, it presents itself with increased appeal. On my way back to the field surgeon's hospital for treatment —I had been wounded twice —i met one •of our doctors applying restoratives to a wounded Confederate. He was a mere boy, not a day over 15. I was but 18, and he also had been shot twice —so there were things in common between us. "But it was his courage, Ms unflinching, unyielding spirit that impressed me most. As he lay there, -horribly mangled, his eyeß were as steady and his manner as cool as though he were idly lounging in his own home. His fcerve was not broken; nor the fear of death on him. He seemed grateful for the attention, but not in the least humble. ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ he seemed to be tMnking, ‘but when I get well I'll be at you again.’ If there are many more like him in the southern army, I thought, we are certainly in for a long, hard struggle. I have wondered many times sfnce what became of him —whether he pulled through or died on the battlefield. I have sever been able to learn.” General Greely made two attempts before he was allowed to enlist. "You get out of here; we don’t want babies, we want men!” was the objection of enlisting officers. Finally he found one who passed him. He served throughout the entire war and was the first enlisted man in the Union army to attain the grade of a general in the regular army. “I recollect an extremely pathetic incident that occurred on board the U. S. S. Monongahela,” said Admiral C. D. Sigsbee, U. S. N., the hero of the battleship Maine, sunk in Havana harbor just before the outbreak of the Bpanish-Amerlcan war. "The Monongahela, cruising along the Texas coast, had rammed and sunk a Confederate ironclad down near the head of the passes in the Mississippi river and then steamed on to New Orleani Jor rer pairs. On board was a brother officer, lieutenant Roderick Prentice, to whom I was«particularly attached. He spoke to me frequently of a premonition of impending disaster that he simply could not shake off. In fact, it marred his joyous anticipations of meeting his young wife, hardly more than a bride, at New Orleans, whither she had hastened from the North when she learned his vessel was to touch that point Their devotion was idealistic: r “They saw each other but once there before the call of duty dragged them apart I f»»a been transferred to the Brooklyn at Mobile. After a successful passage of the forts my first inquiry was for the welfare of my old shipmates on the Monongahela and especially for Prentice. His premonition had come true. He had been standing in the gangway, which had been raised somewhat above the level of the deck, it seems, when a shot struck the hammock netting next to him and the flying fragments imbedded themselves in ,his leg. almost tearing It from his body. He died in a few hours. "At New Orleans we picked up a little boy named Isaac Aiken, a tiny fellow, of whom Prentice was especially fond. The lad was simply heart-broken as he sat by the berth of Ms dying friend. Prentice urged him not to cry and to brace up and be cheerful, insisting that he would soon be all right, though he well knew all the while that his end had comeBut the lad’s sorrow was notMng compared to that of the girl-wife. She fainted dead away when told the ghastly news and never afterward fully recovered.” "Another incident that I remember quite vividly,” continued Admiral Sigsbee, “happened at the assault on Fort Fisher. The man just ahead of me was killed and another on my left- A big, red-haired man, groaning horribly, suddenly clutched me.. ‘“Look!’ he exclaimed. ‘Lieutenant Bache is wounded!’ "•Why are you groaning?* I asked. ‘Are you hurtfv v.T : ' . •'“Yes.’ he answered slowly and without even a trace of concern for Mmself. T think Pm dying—-but look at poor Bache!* ' T "And he fell to earth, still calling for aid for bis wounded offieer. He died shortly after I left him, so I was told.” "Memorial Day to me suggests the flag,” said "Corp.” James Tanner, known to Grand Army men from coast to coast. "I have listened to many eloquent apostrophes to our national emblem, but never to eat that touched me more than that which MUDS from a hospital bed. In September.

REMINDXERS OF WAR IN MEMORIAL DAY

186$; I was lying in Fairfax Seminary Hospital in the suburbs of Alexandria, Va. I was part of the wreckage of the second battle of Bull Run. In the ward in which I lay and to the right of me was a comrade seriously wounded. He, too, was a son of Ireland. He was the life of the ward, and he smiled and joked and laughed, confident of his recovery. “One day the surgeon notified the visiting priest that he had better inform Pat that his time was short, I was lying so that I had a good view of his face when the priest broke the dread news to him. He choked in his throat in an effort to master himself, and then asked the good father to wheel his bed around so he could look out of the window. It seemed a strange request, but without hesitation the priest obeyed. And then, as Pat turned his gaze upon the world without hiß window, Tye became aware of the reason of his request—-he wished to se once more before he died the flag floating at the head of the Btaff outside! “ ‘Darlint,’. he breathed, fervently, there ye are ’an at th’ top! Plaze Qod, ye wave onchallenged from Maine to Mexico!’ “Then followed in a rush of words the things he had dreamed of it before he had ever seen it on its native soil. He had prayed that he and his loved ones might come under its beneficent folds to enjoy the perfect liberty, it promised. Now it was in peril and he was dying for it, unable even to raise bis weakened hand and salute it. He bade the glorious old banner goodrbye, and, turning to the priest said: “ *Father, ye’ll write to her ’nd. break ut gintly as ye kin? Sore will be her hear-rut whin she knows thut Pat will come back no more to her, ’nd th’ bhoys. Till her I charge her wit “me dying breat’’ to rear th’ bhoys so that whin manhood comes to thhim, and the flag should ivir nade thim, they will give thir loives aven unto death, as thir fayther gives his loife this days ’N now, fayther, to me soul;* salvation.’ “In the gray dawn of the following morning a commotion near my bed awoke me. Opening my eyes I saw them lift his lifeless form and carry it out of the ward.’’ “Did you ever hear of Tim Regan’s flag?" continued the old veteran, who paid as his price of duty to his country both legs. “No? Well, Tim Regan was a son of the Emerald Isle who had gone to war with the 9th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He, with many other Union soldiers, lay in Libby prison as that Fourth of July drew near. They chafed in spirit at the thought of passing the Fourth without even a sight of the flag. Tim conceived the idea of making one. He had a new white woolen shirt and the others bine ones. They pooled their slender amount of cash and persuaded an amiable guard to purchase for them some red and white woolen goods, on the pretext that they wanted to make them up into shirts. Out of this material they fashioned a flag, crude in construction, but —it represented Old Glory. “They gauged as well as they could the door of the loft of the prison and the probable height to which the patrolling guard might raise his vision. Then, the night of the 3rd, they clambered up among the rafters and stretched their crude flag in the apex of the loft The next day they gathered in a circle in the center of the chamber and sang patriotic songs throughout the day. The guards were a little curious as to the cause of the unusual .proceedings, but failed to discover the banner above them. That night they took it down, cut it into strips and divided It among themselves. Each thereafter wore a strip of that flag around his body next his skin, and as each was paroled he bore out'with him his fragment of the banner. “Regan had taken the precaution to ascertain the home address of each man. After , the war he corresponded with them or their surviving relatives, and Anally—it was a work of years’ duration —had every bit of the flag back again. Again he sewed it together. Again he stood at salute before it • Now he has gone to join his comrades in the great beyond, but the flag he made is securely guarded from dust and decay In a glass case

at the Stephenson Post, G. A. R., at Roxbury, Mass.’ “Never so long as I live shall I forget that dreadful day when I lay wounded on the battlefield, from sunrise until the shades of night, had closed down on the dead and the dying,” said Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota. "It was in the siege of Port Hudson, La., when on June 14, 1863, an unsuccessful attempt was made by Banks’ army to capture the place by storm and my regiment led one of the charging columns. Just as the sun waß peeping over the hills we sallied forth in battle array. The ‘Charge’ was given and we tore across the Open ground straight at the enemy’s breastworks. When within eight or ten rods of the intrenchments I fell to earth with a bullet in my thigh. My comrades were driven back—no man could long stand against that avalanche of leaden death that poured out of the fortifications —and I was left with only the dying and the dead to keep me company. Then began my long vigil in the.ghastly inferno. The cries of the wounded —the merciless sun —the torment of it all—and the thirst, the maddening thirst! Only those who have lain thus can appreciate its terror. In the same battle were two other soldiers — one under the stars and bars, the other under the Stars and Stripes—who now hold positions of unusual trust and prominence under the same flag. The former was no less a personage than Chief Justice White, of the United States Supreme Court, serving then as - aid to General-Gax4n«y commander of—the— Confederate forces within Port Hudson during the siege. The latter was Senator Francis E. Warren of Wyoming. At the time, of course, no one of the three men knew of the existence of the others, and indeed it was not until the past few months thy became aware of the facts. Senator Warren, who enlisted when but 17 years of age, was awarded a medal of honor for conspicuous gallantry in the en-y gagement “When I look back on the Civil War; as I frequently do, and especially on Memorial Day,” he said as he sat in his rooms in the Senate office building, “one fact stands out with increasing clarity as the years roll by, and that is that the great struggle was waged principally by boys. The rank and file of the Union army was made up of mere lads, and -in the Confederate forces they were even younger. They were tried as perhaps no other generation of American youth has ever been tried. The horrors, the struggles, the hardships they faced, made men of them. Nearly all of our presidents since then, and a great portion of our public men throughout the nation, including the Congress of the United States, have been those who served as officers or enlisted men in those two armies of striplings.’’ War-time recollections crowd so thick and fast on Gen. Isaac R. Sherwood, representatime from the Ninth district of Ohio, that to single out one of them is but to omit others of equal import. He participated in 45 battles, and there is not a soldier now living who was under fire a greater number of days than he. Six times he was complimented in general orders for gallantry on the field of battle. Today he is the only Union veteran on the Democratic side of the House. But, more remarkable than aU else, he Is the only man who entered the Union army as a private and emerged from the war a brigadier general. “I suppose,” said General Sherwood, “the , fight at Franklin, Tenn., November SO, 1864, is as vividly impressed on my mind as any; maybe because, considering the size of the forces engaged, !t was one of the most desperate engagements of the entire war. The ConfedeAte loss, was 40 per cent in ,a five-hour battle, and a larger number of (heir generals were killed or wounded than at Chickamauga of Gettysburg, where their forces were twice as strong. My regiment, the One Hundred and Eleventh Ohio, of which I was colonel, lost more men in that battle than any other regiment on the Union side. “My horse was shot from under me three times in the engagement. My fell ■ -'l -.fer

1864. During the first day’s fighting we made a change and captured six 20-pound guns, and on the second 3,000 Confederate soldiers and three stands of colors. Immediately after the battle I secured one of these flags and sent It home by express. I believe I am the only private citizen In the country today who has in his possession a captured Confederate banner.” battle. These are the veterans of the Span-Ish-American war. Ex-SeUator Charles Dick, of OMo, recalls a rather unusual incident In this, our most recent conflict. "My regiment arrived at Santiago, Cuba, just one week before its surrender, being sent there to reinforce General Shatter,” said he. “We, as a regiment, were eager to he sent on to Porto Rico, but the authorities insisted on our undergoing a ten-day quarantine for yellow fever. They camped us on top of a high hill so that we were isolated. At the expiration of the time sqjt, the doctors-dis-covered 210 cases ottthe dread disease among * us. This, of course, shattered all hopes of our ever going anywhere except home, when the sick ones recovered.”

The Soldier Dead

Hallowed by a supreme sanctity are the graves of the soldier dead. So it was in the days of the ancient races, and so it will be when the last war has been fought and the battle-flags are forever furled. Those who flag and their country, who have endured the hardships of camp and march, or who have fallen in the red carnage of battle, have a peculiar claim upon the gratitude and affection of succeeding generations. In no land has this claim been more freely recognized than in out own; and no people was ever before so generous in its tributes to Its fallen heroes, or In its treatment of those who came home from its wars. When returning springtime brings the flowers, in all their feloquent beauty and symbolism, we celebrate a Memorial day wMch is characteristic of the spirit of the republic. It is now an even half-century since the beginning of the stupendous conflict for the preservation of the Union, and the anniversary la bringing home with renewed emphasis the sacrifices and the significance of those dark dhys. Happily, it brings also a greater appreciation of the complete reunion of the severed sections, and of the peace and prosperity which bless the land. - y. —— Before General Logan wroteithe order, in 1868, which was the beginning the popular and official dedication of May 30 to the patriot dead, a tender impulse of womanhood in the stricken south had begun the beautiful custom of strewing with blossoms the passionless mounds above those who bad fallen in the' passion of battle. The usage and the associations of years have consecrated the day above our other holidays. Upon it there gleams a glory 'which lightens the past, and which showß us that the blood and the tears were not shed in vain, and that the fruition of the sacrifice justifies the seed which was sown.

The Heroes.

Bring laurel and myrtle oak and bay, • And wreaths of roses, white and gold, And drape their graves on this holy day With the flag they loved In the days of old; For the red Is red of the blood they gave. The white Is the smoke of the belching gun, And the blue is the blue of the sky they clave To gain the stars In the crownj they won.

Queer Paradox,

“They say a laboring man cannot choose a job but must take what he can get” “Well, Isn’t that stf?” "Yes, and It’s odd, because as a matter of fact he can always take bis pick.” •'

The Other Part.

"He always kept an eye on the stage.” ' “Did he get a part t* fit him?” 1 “He did. He got the book -

killed him passed first through my leg and then through the saddle before reaching him. I could not get another mount,. so I fought the rest of the' battle on foot. As it afterward turned out, this was fortunate for me, for every mounted officer on both sides was either killed or wounded. When the battle closed there was not a mounted officer on either line. "I have in my home one reminder of the Civil War that, should all else fall, would compel recollection of that mighty struggle. It is a Confederate flag captured in the two-day fight at Nashville in December

WHEN MUIR REJOICED

NATURALIST WRITEB ABOUT A “NOBLE EARTHQUAKE." Impressive Description of Bhocks In Yosemite Valley Which Gave Birth to a Now Mountain Avalanche Talus While He Looked. "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquakeJ” exclaimed John Muir, when he was awakened at half-past; two o’clock of a moonlit morning ini tip Yosemite valley. Por years he bad believed that the many great avalanche taluses leaning against the walls of the valley at Intervals of mile or two, had been caused by an. ‘ earthquake at least three centuries before, and here was his chance torn ake some observations. Never be- . fore had he enjoyed a storm of this sort, but the strange, thrilling motionj could not be mistaken, and so he rani out of his cabin, both glad and frightened as he made his exclamation. “The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded on another so closely,” he writes in the Century, "that I had to balance myself carefully In walking, as If on the deck of a ship among waves, and it seemed impossible that the high- cliffs of the; valley could escape being shattered. In particular I feared that the sheerfronted Sentinel rock, towering above my cabin, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back, of a large yellow pine, hoping that It might protect me from at least the smaller outbonndlng boulders.” V The most impressive part of his description Is of the sounds. "It was a calm, moonlight night,” he says, "and ho sound was heard for the first minute or so save low, muffled, bubbling underground rumblings, and the whispering and rustling of the agitated trees, as if Nature were holding her breath. Then suddenly out of the strange silence and strange motion there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle rock, on the south wall about half a mile up the valley, gave way, and I saw it falling in'thousands of the great boulders I had so long been studying, pouring to the valley floor in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime spectacle—an arc of glowing, passionate fire, fifteen hundred feet span, as true in form and as serene in beauty as a rainbow in the midst of the stupendous rock storm. The sound wgs so tremendously deep and broad and earnest that the whole earth, like a living creature, seemed at laat to have found voice, and to he calling to her sister planets. In trying to tell something of the size of this awful sound, it seems to me that if all the thunder of all the storms I had ever heard were condensed into one roar, it would not equal the rock roar at .the birth of a mountain talus. Think, then, of the roar that arose to heaven at the simultaneous birth of the ancient canyon taluses throughout the length and breadth of the range!” The Indians and many of the white men left the valley in terror of this earthquake, the final rumblings of which were not over for two months, but Muir remained to study Its effects. Among other things, he kept a bucket of water on his cabin table to learn what he could of the movements.

Pedigree Was Pine, But

‘ Though nepotism has been known to get good railroad jobs for young men, there is one passenger official in Kansas City with whom family connections do not go very **r. A few days ago the official in question was in quest of an additional man for his office. A friend, learninf of his desire, took occasion to write a letter indorsing a young man of his acquaintance. The letter contained some glowing testimonials of some of the things accomplished by the young man’s ancestors and relatives. But it didn’t get very far with the passenger official, when sent the following laconic deply to the young man’s Indorser: "Judging from your letter, the young man you recommend must have n; good pedigree. However, I merely desire a clerk now, but if I conclude to start a stock farm later,. I, will tot . you know and will be glad to give the young man a chance.”-—Kansas City Journal.

Planting the Popples.

When the daffodils are in flower the garden begins to regain the at* tractions'which it lost in whiter, and the tasks which the spring imposes are entered on with zest. Among the most important is the sowing of annuals. Two very common mistakes should be avoided. One is sowing too thickly and the other sowing too deeply. An annual such as a Shirley poppy, when well grown, wfil ofcopy a square foot of ground at least, yet in that space dozens, if not scores, of seeds are often sown. The result is a tremendous waste, not only of seeds, but also of plants, for all that do grow must be spoilt, unless they are thinned quickly and severely.

Paradoxical Display.

Mias Mary Garden, at a dinner at Sherry’s in New York, said of a beautiful girl who was yearing one of the ultra-decollete dinner gowns of the 1912 season: * "When you see a pretty girt In such a low cut gown as that you have a remarkable paradox before you— the paradox of a person who displays simultaneously very had taste sad very good torn.”