it. Now and then I come across strange evidences
of this in turning over the leaves of the few weather-stained,
dogeared volumes which were the companions of my life in camp. The
title page of one bears witness to the fact that it was my companion
at Gettysburg, and in it I recently found some lines of Browning's
noble poem of 'Saul' marked and altered to express my sense of our
situation, and bearing date upon this very fifth of July. The poet
had described in them the fall of snow in the springtime from a
mountain, under which nestled a valley; the altering of a few words
made them well describe the approach of our army to Gettysburg.

"Fold on fold, all at once, we crowded thundrously down to your
feet;
And there fronts yon, stark black but alive yet, your army of old
With its rents, the successive bequeathing of conflicts untold.
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar
Of its head thrust twixt you and the tempest--all hail, here we
are."

And there we were, indeed, and then and there was enacted such a
celebration as I hope may never again be witnessed there or
elsewhere on another fourth of July. Even as I stand here before
you, through the lapse of years and the shifting experiences of the
recent past, visions and memories of those days rise thick and fast
before me. We did, indeed, crowd thundrously down to their feet. Of
the events of those three terrible days I may speak with feeling and
yet with modesty, for small, indeed, was the part which those with
whom I served were called upon to play. When those great bodies of
infantry drove together in the crash of battle, the clouds of
cavalry which had hitherto covered up their movements were swept
aside to the flanks. Our work for the time was done, nor had it been
an easy or a pleasant work. The road to Gettysburg had been paved
with our bodies and watered with our blood. Three weeks before, in
the middle days of June, I, a captain of cavalry, had taken the
field at the head of one hundred mounted men, the joy and pride of
my life. Through twenty days of almost incessant conflict the hand
of death had been heavy upon us, and now, upon the eve of
Gettysburg, thirty-four of the hundred only remained, and our
comrades were dead on the field of battle, or languishing in
hospitals, or prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Six brave young
fellows we had buried in one grave where they fell on the heights