de of the great questions of
the day did they stand? A full or even partial answer to these queries
would possess for him an incalculable value.

So, sitting here to-night, in my little library, with wife and children
near, and by God's great kindness all in life and health, I look
forward one, two, five hundred years, and see in each succeeding
century, and possibly in each generation, so long as the name shall
last, a wonder-eyed boy, curious youth, or inquisitive old man,
exploring closets and libraries for things of the old time, stumbling
finally on this volume, which has, by the charity of the State
Librarian, still been preserved; he discovers, with quickening pulse,
that it bears his own name, and that it was written for him by one whose
body has for centuries been dust. Dull and uninteresting as it may be to
others, for him it will possess an inexpressible charm. It is his own
blood speaking to him from the shadowy and almost forgotten past. The
message may be poorly written, the matter in the main may be worthless,
and the greater events recorded may be dwarfed by more recent and
important ones, but the volume is nevertheless of absorbing interest to
him, for by it he is enabled to look into the face and heart of one of
his own kin, who lived when the Nation was young. In leaving this
unpretentious record, therefore, I seek to do simply what I would have
had my fathers do for me.

Kinsmen of the coming centuries, I bid you hail and godspeed!

COLUMBUS, _December_ 16, 1878.

* * * * *

The Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry served under two separate terms of
enlistment--the one for three months, and the other for three years.

The regiment was organized April 21, 1861, and on April 27th it was
mustered into the United States service, with the following field
officers: Isaac H. Marrow, Colonel; John Beatty, Lieutenant Colonel, and
J. Warren Keifer, Major.

The writer's record begins with the day on which his regiment entered
Virginia, June 22, 1861, and ends on January 1, 1864. He does not
undertake to present a history of the organizations with which he was
connected, nor does he attempt to describe the operations of armies. His
record consists merely of matters which came under his own observation,
and of camp gossip, rumors, trifling incidents, idle speculations, and
the numberless items, small and great, which, in one way and another,
enter into and affect the life of a sold