and have a skillful penman copy on that the inscription beneath. The Table was set upon its legs, for the first time in a good many years, the tracing linen was tightly and smoothly stretched over the top and tacked down at the sides and a penman carefully copied the inscription beneath. The legs were now folded up and the Table, with its white cover, was placed in position before the photographic instrument, and in due course of time the operator presented me with what you see above.

I find that the value of a relic increases very much with age, and so it has been with my Table. From a mere personal relic of the Appomattox surrender, it has, after the lapse of twenty years and more, assumed something of an historic interest and is therefore entitled to a "history," for, barring accidents, it will last long after the owners of the names upon it have passed away. Already two have gone, Griffin and Pendleton. One has been a foreign minister of the United States, another a United States senator, and the remaining two are still in the army.

Less important things than my Table, I find, are sometimes regarded as relics. During the past summer (1885) I was in the city of Seattle, on the sound, in Washington Territory, when a card, one day, was brought to my room with a pencil memorandum on it, to say that the owner had been an orderly at my headquarters, twenty-fourth corps, and would like to see me if at leisure. Cap

tain A. O. Benjamine, of the steamer Rustler, plying on the sound, was introduced.

I am fond of talking to old soldiers and of listening to their personal reminiscences of the war; there is a pathos about it, a curious glistening of the eye, with just a suspicion of moisture, which is very attractive. This one, being seated, soon commenced, and recalled many incidents at Appomattox Court House, and then suddenly burst out with: "Why, general, I was the orderly who put up your table in the room for the officers to sign the surrender on." Here was a reminiscence worth having! A man on the western border of the continent recounting to me incidents in which we were both personal participants more than twenty years before, thousands of miles away in the east! Captain Benjamine went on to say that he had also taken it down again and carried it to the clerk for the inscription to be put on, and had packed it up when we were preparing to leave for Richmond. When it was unpacked there, he said that an old piece of canvas, which had been wrapped around the Table to protect it against rubbing, had been thrown aside and that he had picked it up and put it in his knapsack, determined to preserve a relic of the surrender; and with that peculiar glistening of the eye, he said: "General, I have got that old piece of canvas at home yet!"""

JOHN GIBBON.

I.

WILLIAM A. HOWARD, who departed from this life in the early days of 1880, was one of the ablest and most useful of all public men who have been honored by Michigan and gave honor to their state in return. He was thrown into public life at a time when only the bravest and truest could safely be put on guard; at a time when the fierce lightnings of civil war were playing all about the national sky, and the mutterings of that thunder which in a few years broke over Sumter, were already heard. The compromise measures upon which Mr. Clay and such as he had staked so much, and that were to be the solid rock for all time, had proved themselves but the quicksands of an uncertain policy, and were slipping away beneath the nation's feet. The fugitive slave law that Presiident Pierce was so earnest to enforce, was bringing to a point of bitterness, heretofore unfelt, the opposition to slavery in the north; while the outrages in Kansas were filling the world with some vague understanding, at least of what the south purposed, and slavery really meant. It was a time of gloom and fear; when the brave were girding themselves to meet all that was to come, and the weak were suggesting new evasions and new

methods of postponement or escape. It was a time when states like Michigan, peopled by free and fearless men who believed that a flag meant more than a piece of bunting, and the Union more than a temporary compact of independent states, were waking up to the need there was for a new fiber of courage and faith at the national capital. It was in this view of the situation that the choice of William A. Howard as one of the representatives of Michigan in the national congress, meant more than the elevation of one man over the shoulders of others. There was work to do, and how well it was done these pages will endeavor to briefly tell.

Mr. Howard was descended from a New England family that bequeathed to him those strong and sturdy qualities of resolution and self-direction by which he was able to accomplish so much in life, and through which he was of service to his country in more than one critical hour. His father, Daniel Howard, was a native of Bridgewater, Plymouth county, Massachusetts, but afterwards became a resident of Vermont. The son, William Alanson Howard, was born in Hinesburgh, Chittenden county, of the last named state, on

April 8, 1813. His early days were full of toil and touched by the privations incident to a country not long settled, where it was the lot of the great majority to be poor, and toil was the common part of all. As a youth he was by no means strong, and not able to bear the burdens and strain of the heavy out-door work of the farm. Understanding this he turned his attention toward some occupation that would be less laborious and better suited to his strength. When but fourteen years of age he set out to meet the world on his own responsibility, traveling by the slow methods of the day from Hinesburgh, Vermont, to Albion, New York, where. he gave himself to the learning of the cabinetmaker's trade. He remained there four years, mastering the business thoroughly, but not gaining the strength and robustness he had desired. But the time had been of profit to him, as it had developed in his soul a thirst for knowledge, and led him to believe that he had powers far beyond the demands of the occupation to which, by circumstances, he had been pledged. When nineteen years of age he began attendance at an academy in Wyoming, in his strongly-formed resolution to acquire an education. He remained there for three years, and in 1835 went to Middlebury college, Vermont, from which he graduated in 1839. Every dollar paid for his education came through his own exertions, put forth amid discouragements that would have daunted one cast in a less heroic mold. Ill health attended him a great portion of the time, and there were months in

which he was unable to sit up for a whole day at a time. But he studied and kept up with his classes; he labored as he could, and paid his way. It was a long and difficult service of seven years that he gave, like Jacob of old, for the thing dearest to his heart, but he won in the end and faced the world with an educational equipment that fitted him for even that high career that lay before him in the unknown future.

During the winter following his graduation Mr. Howard taught school in Genesee county, New York, and in the spring was strongly advised to try the climate of Michigan for the benefit of his health. He turned his face westward, and on April 12, 1840, reached Detroit. The extent of his entire material possessions on first setting foot in the state in which he was to achieve such success and by which he was to be so highly honored, was just seventy-two dollars that he had saved from his winter of school teaching. It was never a part of his nature to be idle, and we soon find him employed as a tutor of mathematics in a branch of the Michigan State university, at the same time giving such time as he could to the reading of law in the office of Witherell & Buel. He was admitted to the bar in 1842, and from that time forward until 1854 was engaged in the active practice of his profession. He became a partner of one of his preceptors, Alexander W. Buel, under the firm name of Buel & Howard. He was also a member of the firm of Howard & Toms; Howard, Bishop & Holbrook, and Jerome, Howard & Swift.