ll marching onward in my mission of my love for freedom and keeping
close and quick step to the music of the Great Republic, I rose again in
soul, heart and pride, as I stood on the deck of the Olympia, fronting
Manila and the Spanish navy, and heard the great

ADMIRAL GEORGE DEWEY

say: "When you are ready, fire, Gridley!"

In an hour the royal navy of Spain was at the bottom of the sea, and over
the citadel of Manila waved the Stars and Stripes, a hope and a blessing to
the Philippine Islands.

I stood on the turrets of Morro Castle, Havana, as the devilish Weyler
sailed away from the beautiful "Queen of the Antilles," and wondered that
the cruel, infernal, tyrannical wretch was not ignominiously slaughtered by
some of the victims of his starvation reign. A rattlesnake-cobra-tarantula
human deformity!

It is not the plutocracy of wealth, or the aristocracy of learning, but the
democracy of the heart that makes the world better and greater.

Selfishness, cupidity and greed lead to tyranny, and tyranny finally
destroys itself.

Down with the villains who would enslave the people!

_Dose them, quick, with leaden pills--
Only cure for tyrant ills!_

And on the heights of San Juan I beheld the American troops, white and
black, shoot the cruel Spaniard into defeat, and last, but not least, I
stood on the prow of the Oregon and beheld the most destructive naval
engagement of the century.

"Santiago was a captains' fight," and, as Admiral Schley said: "There is
glory enough for all."

Schley, Sampson, Cook, Clarke, Evans, Taylor and Wainwright shall be
remembered down the ages with Paul Jones, Decatur, Porter and Farragut; and
with them the great Arctic hero, Admiral George W. Melville.

The monarchy of Spain that once ruled the western world has been swept off
the seas, and does not own an inch of land on the American Continent.

I personally participated, with my soldier comrades, in the inauguration
ceremonies of the lofty Lincoln, the glorious Garfield and the magnanimous
McKinley, and heard their burning words of patriotism delivered from the
east front of the National Capitol.

And again it was my melancholy duty to march with the Grand Army of the
Republic in the funeral train that took their assassinated remains to lie
in state under the dome of the Capitol for the last view of the people upon
the calm countenance of these illustrious Americans.

The greatest characters of earth vanish away a