n." I never did it. Do you suppose I would go ahead of
my men to be shot in the front by the enemy and in the back by my own
men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the officer is
behind the private soldier in actual fighting. How often, as a staff
officer, I rode down the line when the Rebel cry and yell was coming
out of the woods, sweeping along over the fields, and shouted,
"Officers to the rear! Officers to the rear!" and then every officer
goes behind the line of battle, and the higher the officer's rank,
the farther behind he goes. Not because he is any the less brave, but
because the laws of war require that to be done. If the general came
up on the front line and were killed you would lose your battle
anyhow, because he has the plan of the battle in his brain, and must
be kept in comparative safety. I, with my "shining sword flashing in
the sunlight." Ah! There sat in the hall that day men who had given
that boy their last hardtack, who had carried him on their backs
through deep rivers. But some were not there; they had gone down to
death for their country. The speaker mentioned them, but they were but
little noticed, and yet they had gone down to death for their country,
gone down for a cause they believed was right and still believe was
right, though I grant to the other side the same that I ask for
myself. Yet these men who had actually died for their country were
little noticed, and the hero of the hour was this boy. Why was he the
hero? Simply because that man fell into that same foolishness. This
boy was an officer, and those were only private soldiers. I learned
a lesson that I will never forget. Greatness consists not in holding
some office; greatness really consists in doing some great deed with
little means, in the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private
ranks of life; that is true greatness. He who can give to this people
better streets, better homes, better schools, better churches, more
religion, more of happiness, more of God, he that can be a blessing to
the community in which he lives to-night will be great anywhere, but
he who cannot be a blessing where he now lives will never be great
anywhere on the face of God's earth. "We live in deeds, not years, in
feeling, not in figures on a dial; in thoughts, not breaths; we should
count time by heart throbs, in the cause of right." Bailey says: "He
most lives who thinks most."

If you forget everything I have said to you, do not