i I . ■■ iv . iri In /fyS li] \ - m I I y u | I' i- N <JZiJ ■ Gsr. O- O •J?OFtSU2D^'& DURING the latter part of the war, in 1564, and until its close, in ISOS, I was con nected with the armies under Gen. Sherman, usually desig nated the Army of the Ten nessee. the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Ohio, wrote Maj- Cien. O. O. Howard. The campaigns were exceedingly active. From Chat tanooga to Atlanta Sherman's soldiers were under fire every day, except the three just before crossing the Etowah, for 113 day.-,. There was not a day or night in which there were no soldiers Llain. The screeching shells burst over our heads while we were sleep ing, but, wonderful to toll, the sol diers had become so used to this con flict that they lost very little sleep in consequence of the fitful and random firing at night. In that period of llf! days there were "!!) sizable battles fought. In one at tack I made at Pickett's Mill I lost S!)0 killed and three times as many wounded within the space of 15 min utes. At night I sat among the wounded and realized something of the horrors of war. It seems to me to day as I think of it like a terrible nightmare, but it was a more terrible reality, which 1 will not attempt to de scribe. When I come to think of the "March to the Sea" and later the "March Through the Carolinas," what occurs to my memory first is the exceeding hardihood of the soldiers. They re covered quickly from their wounds, I mean from those that were not too severe, and there was scarcely any illness. Hut when Columbia was on fire an untold number perished in the flames. Still more perished from ac cidental explosion of confederals shells af Columbia and Cheraw. We like to turn away from the mangled corpses and distorted faces of the wounded thai cannot be described. I feel the same horror and depression in view of these things as I did at Gettysburg, where on both sides up ward of 50,000 men were placed liors de combat. For several days poor fel lows, union and confederate soldiers, waited in patience, unattended by sur geons. simply because there were not enough of them. Without further detail, imagine the joy that came over the armies of Sher man as they gathered about Raleigh, N. C., in 186G, and were told that Lee had surrendered and that Grant had sent Lee's soldiers home to begin life anew; that. Johnston had surrendered on the same terms as Lee and all that belonged to Slocum's, Seliofleld's and Howard's armies were to march on the morrow toward Washington, the capital (if the nation, soon to be mus tered out of service and then togo ■home. I remember the sudden depres sion at the news of Lincoln's death; but still this going home produced too great a joy to keep ever this catas trophe of their heavy loss very long before their minds. They marched habitually at 20 miles a day from Ralolgh to Richmond, and never seemed weary at the close of any day's march—the camp lire was bright, the old songs were sung over and over again ami the Comradeship knitted during the war would never cease—it was at. its best when the word "peace" filled all the air. I know that we were proud when we marched past the president of the United States in our last great re view; but, as I remember it, it.was a tearful pride even then. A regiment had gone out 1,000 strong; it had been recruited and re-recruited; it had been veteranized and added to in other ways; and now it was bringing home less than 300 of all the men who had gone out from that section of the country from which it had come. The joy of going home for the.".oo was great, but it was a tearful joy the in stant one thought of the 800 or more who could not go home, who never did go home, who wore buried somewhere in the broad land over which the :>OO bad marched, and too often with a headpiece marked "Unknown." After the war I stood In the large cemetery near Murfreesboro, Tenn., with Gen. R. H. Hayes (afterward president) and Mrs. Hayes. 1 remem ber how Mrs. Hayes, who was an ex ceedingly handsome woman, looked up into the faces of the general and myself as her large, dark, speaking eyes were flooded with tears, when she said: "Just, look there, that plot of ground is covered with headstones marked 'Unknown.' Unknown, un known," she repeated, "and yet he gave his life that his country might live!" it was a touching picture, but every time I think of it I say to myself: "Really, that 'unknown' soldier, ap parently unknown, recorded unknown, was not. really unknown. Somebody knew him. His comrades knew him. A mother, a sister, a wife anil children, if he had them, knew him. There is a better record somewhere than that in the soldiers' cemetery." Our faith is so strong that we all believe in the resurrection and in the future life and have a great satisfaction in feeling that no sacrifices and particularly not that of life itself for duty, for what one sincerely Ix lieves to be duty, has ever been or ever will be made in vain. The saddest pictures of all, to my mind, are those connected with a los ing battle like that of Fredericksburg, and still more that of Chancellorsville. At Fredericksburg the army of Burn side went straight forward to its own destruction. The lines of Lee, half en circling Hurnside's points of attack, were complete. It was like a trap into which an animal deliberately puts his feet. We sprang the trap, and it is a wonder that Lee had not dealt with Hurnside's army as the sturdy Thomas dealt with Hood's at Nashville. I can see in my mind's eye those immense plateaus in front of the Marve Heights and other confederate intrenchments and barricades covered with the dead and dying. The plateaus were fairly blue, as they were dotted with the wearers of our uniform. Gen. Couch was standing by my side in the steeple of a church, near the elose of that battle, where we together were taking a fresh reconnoissance, when 1 noticed that his voice trembled as he spoke to me. He said: "Oh, Gen. Howard, look there! Look there! See the ground covered with the boys in blue, and all to no purpose." After we had returned, all of us who could return, to the other shore of the Rappahannock, the depression of the soldiers was greater than at any other time during the war. We could hardly speak to each other. Now, after years, we can recognize the fact that our grief was balanced by the joy of the confederates over a great victory, and yet not a decisive one, gained by them. At a moderate calculation there were sent into eternity more than a million of men, who left home in the prime of health and in strength; more than a million of souls by the terrible conflict. For one, I am glad, indeed, that there is an effort on foot to set tle difficulties without bloodshed. Of course, the waste of human life is not all of it. There is in every war a waste of possession, a destruction of proper ty and a degradation of character hard to avoid at the best. I know that there are some things worse than death. I know that the union of our states was worth all that it cost, and 1 know that, humanly speaking, it was necessary that we should be purged as by lire; but is it not wise now to do all that we can to hold up to the world the blessings of a great peace; even the peace that passeth understanding, which never must exclude any of the noblest qualities of a womanly woman or a manly man? A soul full of memorial greetings to all our sorrowing comrades of the civil war CAMERON COUNTY PRESS, THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1908 THE MOTHER'S LAMENT. My son, and only one, was kittle And now. throughout the fair and slain, blessed land, And he was all the world, and On love-ordained and sweet Me more, to mc; morial day, I gave him at my country's sacred We go, a flower-laden, faithful band, fane. To spread on hero graves the bloom When Sherman marched his legions of May. to the sea. But for my soldier-hoy that solace is In danger's threat'ningcloud,at coun- r.ot mine; try's call. Within a southern vale, afar, he He left my sida, and parting said to sleeps, me: And in my heart Is twined the myrtle "If in the battle, mother, I should vine, fall. For him, and there rosemary droops My country and her God will care and weeps, for tlice." VM VTXUSJIM aaas 1 AT A PATRIOT'S I GRAVE » Memorial Day Spjsch P FA By DORA OUPHANT COE. h « 8* Sv.'SVf/i'i.-.'ii'>.■?■%<. .'St. I'JI'I. -'TII ;r ';iV GRANDMOTHER ADAM SON iiail reached into the depths of her rose-sprigged bandbox, but. just as her fingers touched the stiff ruching in the front of her best bonnet her attention was arrested by a ring at the front, door. As though suddenly petrified in her stooping position, grandmother waited while Susan Ann, her daughter, creaked through the passage way lead ing from the kitchen. At the first words of greeting grand mother straightened with a snap like a jack-knife, and an angry color flamed on her cheeks. "Why, Marthy Pollen, what lovely roses! Did you ever see the flowers so handsome as they are this year? Come right in. It's dreadful hot, ain't it? Seems like I never knowed It to warm up as early as it has this season, but. then, it's been awful fine for the flowers. 'Pears like the roses and layloeks and pinies has just tried theirselves to see who could do tlie most bloomin'. Now, that's a pretty idee, ain't it, Mrs. Rayburn, that lay lock wreath?" "Yes; layloeks was Dick's favorite flower, and he set this bush out his sel, and 1 thought I'd make a wreath to hang on the cross on his tombstun." The expression on Grandmother Adamson's face would have made a good study. From a blaze of anger it passed through all the stages of horrified scorn to a stony determina tion. The development of the conversa tion beyond the paper-covered board walls collected her nebulous chaotic emotions into a stern resolve. Susan Ann was stout, and she had grieved all the morning over the long walk to the graveyard. As she sank ponderously into a chair, she la mented: "I get heavier on my feet every day I live, and the heat to-day is just awful on me. If mother hadn't had her heart so set on it, I wouldn't try togo to the cemetery. I just know I'll be sick." "Couldn't she walk up with us?" Mrs. Rayburn "asked. "We'll not walk fast." "Oh, mother's as spry on her feet as yon be. I hadn't thought of her goin' with any one else, but I don't see why she couldn't. It'd be a real help. She ain't got nothin' to carry, for she took a big basket of flowers up thfs morning, before breakfast. She's just thai wrapped up in Decora tion day I couldn't disappoint her about goin'. She's gettin' ready now. I'll go and see if it'll be all right." But grandmother, with what was al most one movement, had stooped for ward and slipped off her congress gait ers, at the same time taking from lt3 box her bonnet. She slipped a hand through the round handle of a little basket and scurried down, the passage way and out through the back door. On the step she derived just long enough to put on her shoes; then, with her best bonnet carried more careless ly than ever before in its dozen years of use, she hurried out through the back gate. The cemetery was being made bright with flowers when grandmother passed through the iron gateway, and her face hardened as she recognized some of the stooping figures and the graves over which they bent. At a brilliantly-decked mound she stopped and, kneeling, said: "I hate to do it, Jeremiah, but I know you'd want me to.l won't take them to any one else, though, Jere miah, though I know you'd say fur me to, if you was here. Hut dearie, I've keered fur these things ever sence they was buds, jest as tender as if they'd a b'en babies, and jest so's you could have them to-day, and I jest can't see any one else have 'em. Mow would you like to look over these posies and see that laylock wreath a-hangin' on old Dick Rayburn's tomb stun? You fought, bled and died al most fur nothin', Jeremiah, when that old copperhead gits jest as many flow ers as you do." Grandmother had turned up the skirt of her black alpaca dress and, into the receptacle thus formed, had yut every flower that had lain on Jeremiah's grave. She carried them all over to a far corner of the ceme tery and buried them under a pile of last year's leaves. Then she went back to the bare mound. Soon the faraway notes of "Cover Them Over with Beautiful Flowers," told that the procession was coming. Grandmother heard, but she did not once lift her eyes. She sat directly upon the middle of the grave, her skirts spread as far as they would over the flowerless mound, and she was knitting as calmly as if she were seated on a little splint-bottomed chair in her own room. She paid no attention to the astonished group that stopped before her. "Ahem!" coughed the master of ceremonies. Henry Rlake. Grandmother looked up. "Howdedo, Henry." Then, looking down again, "one, two, three, widen; one, two, three, turn." "We've come to decorate Comrade Adamson's grave," hesitated the puz zled Blake. "Comrade Adamson's grave don't need no decoratin'—five, six, narrow; one, two —" "You hain't forgot it's Decoration day, have you?" questioned the man. "If I have, I've been the only one that has." A flourish of her needle indicated the flower-decked mounds. "But Comrade Adamson was a hero, and he —" "Because ho was a hero is why I don't want him .decorated. That's the only way to distinguish him from them as ain't heroes." With a little sweep of her skirts, grandmother rose to her feet. "It's jest because Jeremiah was a hero that his grave ain't goin' to bo strewed with flowers jest like the ones "ISMFAWT A 6 SZZTTOJSM/: HW /VOZFOBS? where the babies and copperheads lies. The babies might a-growed up to be heroes, if they'd had a chanst, but they didn't, and they's three hun dred am! sixty-four and a quarter oth er days in the year to decorate their graves in. it's almost a insult to — to— "Well, this day don't mean nothin' no more. It used to be set apart that we might honor the nation's dead, but the day, like me and some of the others here, has outlived our useful ness and our time. Let it be Decora tion day, if you want to, but don't call it Memorial day any more. It's just a holiday for the young folks to have bail games and picnics, and the older folks to put flowers on the graves of their dead. "Jest look through them trees. Can you tell wheh is the graves of soldiers who fought, bled, and died for this beautiful country? If this day was what it was named fur, there wouldn't be a flower in this hull graveyard ex ceptin' on a soldier's grave. I reckon it's little enough we do, even when we set aside a whole day out of a year to them as give their hull lives, and mighty promisln' lives some of 'em was, too. "Take your flowers. Put 'em on any grave you happen to see. It don't matter. This is jest Decoration day. There ain't no Memorial day no more." —Los Angeles Times. Memorial Day. No pages of a nation's history are more interesting to its people than those which record the brave deeds of its soldiery and no nation on the face of the earth has established so beau tiful a custom as that which is con templated by Memorial day, the strew ing of spring flowers over the graves of her departed soldiers. May the full meaning of the day come to us with all its solemnity and all its beauty, and with the patriotic lesson it presents. Sides With England. The ameer of Afghanistan says that the British government is within its rights in building strategic railways In that country. Yea Head ths Ifer Fellow's Ad I* You are reading this one. pi . j' That should convince you | , 112: that advertising in those | j[ columns is a profitable prop- 8 ; j csition; that it will bring | 1 t business to your store. | £ The fact that the other | j fellow advertises is prob- g I it ably the reason he is get- 1 | | ting more business than is | j | falling to you. Would it I 8 I not be well to give the M 9 I other fellow a chance ¥0 Head Your Ad la T'uese Columns ; Your Stationery !s your silent representative. If you sell fine goods that are up to-date In style and of superior quality it ought to be reflected in your printing. We produce the kind that you need and will not feel ashamed to have represent you. That is the only kind it pays to send out. Send your or ders to this office. The Buyers' Guide The firms whoso names are repr#- sented iu our advertising columns are worthy or the confidence of every person in the community who has money to spend. The fact that they advertise stamps them as enterpris ing, progressive men of business, a credit to our town, and deserving of support. Our advertising columns comprise a Buyers' Guide to fair dealing, good goods, honest prices. V / G.SCHMIDT'S, 1 — —— HRADQUARTERS FOR P® FRESH BREAD, S Mntlfl IS 1* FANCY cakes, WM (j U P WiCIi ICECREAM, rj Kin 1 _,Z^oP d H2fy, * • " CONFECTIONERY Daily Delivery. Allorders given prompt and skillful attention. Don't Use a Scarecrow To Drive Away ths frr er /« YOU can drive him out /Hi A rVi J ' quickly if you use the mail ' 11 order houses' own weapon —advertising. Mail order , tVu T irv concerns are spending / vfl''W'kff v thousands of dollars every \III jfaW week in order to get trade U fr° m the home merchants. ' j,i lj i' y° u think for a minute 'l I) l ' ie y wou ld keep it up if !y they didn't get the busi ness? Don't take it for g rante d t^at every one within a radius of 25 miles knows what you have to sell, and what your prices are. Nine times out of ten your prices are lower, but the customer is influenced by the up-to-date adver tising of the mail order house. Every article you advertise should be described and priced. You must tell your story in an inter esting way, and when you want to reach the buyers of this com munity use the columns of this paper. A HOST TOUCHING APPEAL —\ falls short of its desired effect ff ad- S3 I dressed to a small crowd of interested \ J listeners. Mr. Business Man, are 1 you wasting your ammunition on the 1 small crowd that would trade with I vou anyway, or do you want to reach Tl\ ihose who are not particularly inter- j ested in your business? If you do, 6 largest and most intelligent I audience in your commun f /^j" r V , V ity, the readers of this rv—3o" paper. They have count jT v> \ ' ess wants. Your ads will nA rcac * arK ' the y w '" become your custom "U i - ers. Try it and j The Place to Buy Clieup S 18 AT 112 ) J. F. 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Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers