I congratulate you to-day, as one of the instructive and interesting features of this occasion, that these great thoroughfares dedicated to trade have closed their doors and covered up the insignias of commerce; that your great exchanges have closed and your citizens given themselves up to the observance of the celebration in which we are participating.

I believe that patriotism has been intensified in many hearts by what we have witnessed to-day. I believe that patriotism has been placed in a higher and holier fane in many hearts. The bunting with which you have covered your walls, these patriotic inscriptions, must go down and the wage and trade be resumed again. Here may I not ask you to carry those inscriptions that now hang on the walls into your homes, into the schools of your city, into all of your great institutions where children are gathered, and teach them that the eye of the young and the old should look upon that flag as one of the familiar glories of every American? Have we not learned that no stocks and bonds, nor land, is our country? It is a spiritual thought that is in our minds—it is the flag and what it stands for; it is the fireside and the home; it is the thoughts that are in our hearts, born of the inspiration which comes with the story of the flag, of martyrs to liberty. It is a graveyard into which a common country has gathered the unconscious deeds of those who died that the thing might live which we love and call our country, rather than anything that can be touched or seen.

Let me add a thought due to our country's future. Perhaps never have we been so well equipped for war upon land as now, and we have never seen the time when our people were more smitten with the love of peace. To elevate the morals of our people; to hold up the law as that sacred thing which, like the ark of God of old, may not be touched by irreverent hands, but frowns upon any attempt to dethrone its supremacy; to unite our people in all that makes home comfortable, as well as to give our energies in the direction of material advancement, this service may we render. And out of this great demonstration let us draw lessons to inspire us to consecrate ourselves anew to this love and service of our country.

15151-18

THE JOHNSTOWN DISASTER.

[Willard Hall, Washington, June 4, 1889.]

My fellow-citizens: Everyone here to-day is distressingly conscious of the circumstances which have convened this meeting. It would be wholly superfluous for me to attempt to set before you more impressively than the newspapers have already done the horrors attending the calamity which has fallen upon the city of Johnstown and the neighboring hamlets in a large section of Pennsylvania situated on the Susquehanna River. The grim pencil of Doré would be inadequate to portray the distress and horrors of this visitation. In such meetings as we have to-day here in the national capital, and other like gatherings that are taking place in all the cities of this land, we have the only relief to the distress and darkness of the picture. When such calamitous visitations fall upon any section of our country we can only put about the dark picture the golden border of love and charity. It is in such fires as this that the brotherhood of men is welded. And where more appropriately than here at the national capital can we give expression to that sympathy and brotherhood which is now so strongly appealed to by the distress of large bodies of our fellow-citizens?

I am glad to say that early this morning, from a city not long ago visited with pestilence, and not long ago appealing to the charity of the philanthropic people of the whole land for relief— the city of Jacksonville, Fla.-—there came the reflex, the ebb of that tide of charity which flowed toward them, in a telegram from the chairman of the relief association of that city authorizing me to draw upon them for $2,000 for the relief of the sufferers at Johnstown.

But this is no time for speech. While I talk men and women and children are suffering for the relief which we plan to give to-day.

A word or two of practical suggestion and I will place this meeting in the hands of those who have assembled here to give effect to our loving purposes. I have to-day had a dispatch from the governor of Pennsylvania advising me that communication has just been opened with Williamsport, on a branch of the Susquehanna River, and that the losses in that section have been appalling; that thousands of people there are hungry and homeless and penniless, and there is immediate urgency for food to relieve their necessities, and he advises me that any supplies of food that can be hastily gathered here should be sent direct to Williamsport, where they

will be distributed. I suggest, therefore-and the occasion is such that bells might be rung in your streets to call the attention of the thoughtless to this great exigency-that a committee should be appointed to speedily collect contributions of food in order that a train loaded with provisions might be dispatched to-night or in the early morning to these sufferers.

I suggest, secondly, that as many of these people have had the entire furniture of their houses swept away, and have now only a temporary shelter, that a committee be appointed to collect from your citizens such articles of clothing, especially bedclothing, as can be spared; and, now that the summer season is on, there can hardly be many households in Washington that can not spare a blanket or a coverlid for the relief of the suffering ones.

I suggest, thirdly, that, of your substantial business people, bankers, and others, there be appointed a committee, who shall collect money; for, after the first exigency has passed, there will be found in those communities very many who have lost their all, who will need aid in the reconstruction of their demolished homes and in furnishing them in order that they may be again inhabited.

Need I say, in conclusion, that as a temporary citizen of Washington it would give me great satisfaction if the national capital should so generously respond to this call of our distressed fellowcitizens as to be conspicuous among the cities of the land for its ample and generous answer.

I feel, as I am calling for subscriptions, that I should say that on Saturday, on being first apprised of the need at Johnstown, I telegraphed to the mayor of that city my subscription. I do not care now or at any time to speak of anything that is so personal as this, but I felt it due to you, as I am placed here to-day to solicit and urge others to give, that I should say so much as that.

G. A. R. NATIONAL ENCAMPMENT.

[Boston, Mass., August 12, 1889.]

Mr. Chairman and Comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic: I had impressions both pleasurable and painful as I looked upon the great procession of veterans which swept through the streets of this historic capital to-day; pleasurable in the contemplation of so many faces of those who shared together the perils and glories of the great struggle for the Union; sensations of a mournful sort as I thought how seldom we should meet again. Not many times

more here. As I have stood in the great National Cemetery at Arlington and have seen those silent battalions of the dead, I have thought how swiftly the reaper is doing his work and how soon in the scattered cemeteries of the land the ashes of all the soldiers of the great war shall be gathered to honored graves. And yet I could not help but feel that in the sturdy tread of those battalions there was yet strength of heart and limb that would not be withheld if a present peril should confront the Nation that you love. And if Arlington is the death, we see to-day in the springing step of those magnificent battalions of the Sons of Veterans the resurrection. They are coming on to take our places; the Nation will not be defenseless when we are gone, but those who have read about the firesides of the veterans' homes, in which they have been born and reared, the lessons of patriotism and the stories of heroism will come fresh armed to any conflict that may confront us in the future.

And so to-night we may gather from this magnificent spectacle a fresh and strong sense of security for the permanency of our country and our free institutions. I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defense in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people. And so, as my furlough is almost done, and the train is already waiting that must bear me back to Washington, I can only express again the cordial, sincere, and fraternal interest which I feel this day in meeting you all. I can only hope that God will so order the years that are left to you that for you and those who are dear to you they may be ordered in all gentleness and sweetness, in all prosperity and success, and that, when at last the comrades who survive you shall wrap the flag of the Union about your body and bear it to the grave, you may die in peace and in the hope of a glorious resurrection.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS' MONUMENT.

[At Indianapolis, August 22, 1889.]

Mr. President and fellow-citizens: I did not expect to make any address on this occasion. It would have been pleasant, if I could have found leisure to make suitable preparation, to have accepted the invitation of the committee having these exercises in charge to deliver an oration. I would have felt it an honor to associate my

name with an occasion so great as this. Public duties, however, prevented the acceptance of the invitation, and I could only promise to be present with you to-day. It seemed to me most appropriate that I should take part with my fellow-citizens of Indiana in this great ceremony. There have been few occasions in the history of our State so full of interest, so magnificent, so inspiring, as that which we now witness. The suggestion that a monument should be builded to commemorate the valor and heroism of those soldiers of Indiana who gave their lives for the flag attracted my interest from the beginning. Five years ago last January, when the people assembled in the opera house yonder to unveil the statue which had been worthily set up to our great war governor, I ventured to express the hope that near by it, as a twin expression of one great sentiment, there might be builded a noble shaft, not to any man, not to bear on any of its majestic faces the name of a man, but a monument about which the sons of veterans, the mothers of our dead, the widows that are yet with us, might gather, and, pointing to the stately shaft, say: "There is his monument." The hope expressed that day is realized now.

I congratulate the people of Indiana that our legislature has generously met the expectations of our patriotic people. I congratulate the commission having this great work in charge that they have secured a design which will not suffer under the criticism of the best artists of the world. I congratulate you that a monument so costly as to show that we value that which it commemorates, so artistic as to express the sentiment which evoked it, is to stand in the capital of Indiana. Does anyone say there is wastefulness here? My countrymen, $200,000 has never passed, and never will pass, from the treasury of Indiana that will give a better return than the expenditure for the erection of this monument. As I have witnessed these ceremonies and listened to these patriotic hymns I have read in the faces of the men who stand about me that lifting up of the soul, that kindling of patriotic fire, that has made me realize that on such occasions the nation is laying deep and strong its future security.

But I beg

This is a monument by Indiana to Indiana soldiers. you to remember that they were only soldiers of Indiana until the enlistment oath was taken; that from that hour until they came back to the generous State that had sent them forth they were soldiers of the Union. So that it seemed to me not inappropriate that I should bring to you to-day the sympathy and cheer of the loyal people of all the States. No American citizen need avoid it. or pass it with unsympathetic eyes, for, my countrymen, it does not