benefit of the disabled soldiers, and few
cities could boast of a nobler donation. I must also allude to the high
appreciation in which the Homes are held by foreign dignitaries.

Miss Emily Faithful, the fair amanuensis and confidential friend of Queen
Victoria, while visiting America in an official capacity, spent a day in
socially visiting and carefully inspecting the Soldiers' Home of
Milwaukee. Astonished and entertained she pronounced it the most
pleasurable day she had spent in this country.

The Grand Duke Alexis left upon its register the only autograph written in
person in a public place, bestowing upon the institution the most
extravagant encomiums, both himself and his suite of traveled and titled
gentlemen pronouncing it a wonder and a marvel!

The Reverend Doctor Smythe, of Dublin, Ireland, when in attendance upon
the Evangelical Alliance, visited the Soldiers' Home of Dayton, Ohio.
Examining its magnificent libraries, seventy thousand dollar chapel and
its hospital, the finest in the world, he was spell-bound. Going to its
music hall and listening to its band, inhaling the perfume of its
conservatories, visiting its grottoes, bowers and springs, rowing on its
lakes, seeing its aviaries with birds of all varieties of plumage and
song, and driving in its parks inhabited by buffalo, elk, antelope and
over five hundred deer; he exclaimed with evident fervor, "In the _Old
Country_, libraries, conservatories, bands and parks are for the nobility;
in the new world they are for the soldiery." And what nobler compliment
could he have paid to our country and its institutions?

CHAPTER XX.

"Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been;
A sound that makes us linger; yet farewell."

The summer being ended, we visited the friends of Mr. Arms in Wisconsin,
after which he went to Grinnell, Iowa, in pursuit of his usual avocation.
My own delicate health made it necessary for me to be again winging my way
southward. Going to Atlanta, Ga., and making that my headquarters, I
visited with marked success all the towns of importance on the various
railroad routes diverging from this centre. I then made Macon another
headquarters, after which I canvassed the greater part of the State.

The forests were filled with flowering shrubs and trailing vines, the
towering trees hung with the wild, weird drapery of the southern moss, and
the mocking birds sang their sweet songs from "early morn 'til dewy eve."
Thes