New York which will carry you to Puget's Sound, San Francisco, or Los Angeles in one week a trip which took us a whole year in 1846. In all this development, more like a dream of Aladdin than of reality, the little regular army has gone ahead, pointing out the way and encouraging the pioneers. I know of my own knowledge that the builders of the Union Pacific Railroad, the pioneer of them all, would have abandoned the enterprise in 1867-68, had it not been for the protection of the army of the United States.

Indeed the history of the old army is the history of the United States; and the spirit which animated it is illustrated by the example of Colonel James Miller of the 21st Infantry at the battle of Lundy's Lane, who when asked by General Scott if he would capture a certain battery answered, " I'll try, sir"; afterward when the desperate nature of the undertaking was pointed out to him, he answered, "It must be done, I 've got the order in my pocket"—and it was done.

The hardships and privations from the revolutionary war down to that with Mexico lay the foundation for the heroic virtues which prepared us for the herculean struggle of the civil war, and brought down to the memories of officers yet living, personal triumphs, one of which I will endeavor to paint.

During the years 1842-46, just before the Mexican war, Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, was garrisoned by four companies of the 3d Artillery, commanded by its colonel (Gates). I was one of the lieutenants, and Brevet Major Martin Burke was the senior captain who habitually commanded us on drill and parade. He had entered the service in 1820; had imbibed all the habits, prejudices, and thoughts of the olden time, resisted all innovations, and could not learn new inventions such as Scott's Tactics, or the percussion musket, but always contended there could be no better weapon than the old revolutionary firelock with flint and steel, and in spite of regulations clung to his old Steuben's Tactics. The Mexican war of 1846 came, which scattered us-Burke to Mexico, and me to California "around the Horn."

Early in 1850 I came back to New York bearing despatches to General Scott at his office in Tenth street; delivered them into his hands and received orders to report to his office daily till he was ready to send me on to Washington. Taylor and Scott were the heroes of the Mexican war; the former was already president, and Scott was the ideal of the soldier and gentleman, six feet five inches high, about sixty years old, fond of admiration and conscious of his fame. I on the contrary remained a lieutenant, feeling oppressed by the thought

that I had lived through a great war without having heard a hostile shot in anger. I reported daily and was ordered to dine with General Scott, and listened to his special grievances and to his estimates of the men who had composed the army which conquered peace with Mexico. On one occasion I ventured the expression, "Of all your great feats in war, General, the one that arrests my attention is, that you made a hero of Martin Burke." "Yes," he replied, " Martin Burke! Martin Burke! Every army should have one Martin Burke, but only one, sir. I recall me," he continued; "it was at Contreras that the enemy occupied the crest of a plateau to our left. I detached Riley with one brigade to march that night to the left rear of the enemy by a circuit, and Persifer Smith with another brigade to the right by another circuit to fall upon and dislodge this force: and then Major Burke was ordered to move straight forward with his battalion of artillery through. a cornfield, as a feint. Everything resulted as planned. The enemy was driven by the rear attacks down the face of the declivity to a road leading towards Churubusco, along which all the army followed, the result the next day being the battle of Churubusco-a victory to our arms. When at night the rolls were called all were present or accounted for except the artillery battalion of Martin Burke; and where was Martin Burke? Why, sir, he was back in that cornfield, and would be there to-day had I not sent orders for him to come forward."

During the great civil war this same Martin Burke was a colonel, commanding the island Fort Lafayette in the Narrows of New York harbor, a safe place for political prisoners, and there for years he fought gallantly against writs of habeas corpus and of contempt. No sheriff's officers were allowed to land, and he defied the powers of the great State of New York to rescue civil prisoners committed to his custody by Secretaries Stanton and Seward. To his last day he regarded the great writ of habeas corpus as a monster, and for years after the civil war would not risk his person in New York City for fear of writs of contempt which he believed were in pursuit of him. He died in this city on April 24, 1882. The last time I saw him was about 1878 at Fort Wool, on Bedloe's Island, where the majestic Statue of Liberty now stands, and where by permission he was quartered with a garrison of one old ordnance sergeant, to defy the minions of your State courts who dared to claim possession of any person committed to his safe keeping. I tried to persuade him that the civil war was over; that without fear of "habeas corpus" or "writ of contempt" he might land at the Battery, board at the Astor House or the Fifth Avenue Hotel; go to the theaters, and live out

his short remainder of life without fear and in absolute comfort; but he preferred the isolation of that island fort and the security of that little flag of the Union which he and his old sergeant could hoist to the morning sun, and take in at its setting, to demonstrate to the active, busy world outside that he still lived. Times had changed, but Martin Burke could not change. He was reared in the old school: the soldier should obey his superiors; defend his post to extremity; be firm, yea, stubborn in

[THE bust from which the accompanying portrait of General Sherman was taken was made by Augustus St. Gaudens during the winter of 1888-9 and was the last sculpture-portrait made. It was modeled entirely

upholding his government, civil and military, as Caleb Balderstone did the master of Ravenswood.

He is gone, like nearly all of his type, but we realize that new boys are born as good as those in the past; they grow up into stout manhood and will take our places and be none the worse for the old traditions of courage, manhood, and fidelity passed down to them legitimately by the "old army" which you have so kindly remembered in this festive hour.

William Tecumseh Sherman.

from life in about eighteen sittings of two hours each. The sculptor avoided purposely the use of photographs in order to get a clear personal impression of his subject.— EDITOR.]

R. W. Gilder.

G

THE BRIDGE AT NEUBRÜCKE.

OING to Switzerland was one of the bravest things we ever did. The hundreds of thousands who yearly crowd the playgrounds of Europe go innocently for amusement or rest, or, if they are English, because it is the correct thing. They do not know that their arrival is an intrusion, their departure a blessing, and they themselves but impudent or ridiculous Americans, cockneys, and Cook's tourists, to be sneered at as they deserve by the some five hundred Englishmen for whom alone the Alps were created. But we knew this only too well when we started for Zermatt,- the very holy of holies of the Alpine Club,- and this is why I think our bravery as great as that of any of the heroes immortalized in the "Alpine Journal."

We arrived one rainy August day at Visp, a town you reach by railway, going up the Rhone in a train the speed of which is rivaled only by that of the slow-plodding mule of the country.

At the station three gorgeous porters in goldlaced caps invited us in fluent English to ride for nothing to their hotels. But we had sent our baggage, as we had been advised, to the post-office, where we at once went. The bag which we wished to post to Zermatt seemed to us very heavy, but scythes and barrels and bundles of old iron, labeled and addressed, were lying on the floor, and we supposed it

must be all right, though the postmistress, as soon as we had paid our money, turned away without giving us stamps or receipt, and had nothing more to do with us. We need not have worried, for the Swiss post-office takes anything and everything that the express companies at home would carry; and if one does not bother about his baggage, it is as certain to turn up at his journey's end as it would be to disappear in England, if one ventured to let it take care of itself.

We got off the next morning about seven, for, though the rain had stopped, it looked as if it might begin again at any minute. From Visp to St. Nicholas, half-way up the valley, there was only a bridle-path on the mountainside, though probably by this time the railroad on which we saw men working has been opened. We passed through Neubrücke, a tiny village which, with its high-pointed, onearched bridge spanning the deep river-bed, might have been the composition of an old landscape-painter; and later, an hour and a half from Visp, we lingered for a while at Stalden, which was crowded with tourists, and like a great German beer-garden; and at last reached St. Nicholas in the rain.

The talk at lunch was all about Zermatt and the difficulty of getting rooms at its hotels now

A

THE CHURCH AT STALDEN.

that the Queen of Italy was staying there. That she was at Zermatt was not news to us. Before we left London there had been much about her and her Alpine climbing in the English papers, which indeed had encouraged us to come. What she could do we thought most certainly we could too. As several English families who had telegraphed for rooms had been answered that there were none, almost every one decided to pass the night in St. Nicholas. This made us hope that there might be more chance for us, especially as the inn kept filling with people coming down the valley; so, without telegraphing, we left as soon as we had lunched.

From here there was a carriage-road the rest of the way, and the gold-laced porter ordered out one of the two-seated wagons-the native chars-drawn up in front of the hotel, and brought a ladder by which we mounted into it. For driver we had a delightfully picturesque little fellow, with gold rings twinkling in his ears, and with a broad-brimmed felt hat into which a feather was stuck. The afternoon was indescribably dreary. The rain poured in torrents, the clouds fell lower and lower, and the farther we went the colder it seemed to grow, for even here, it must be remembered, we were as high as the top of Mount Washington or of Snowdon. At Randa, a village by the way, of which all that I remember, indeed all that I saw, was the hotel, we waited an interminable half-hour while the mule and his driver had something to eat. Another carriage drove up behind us, and we knew that if it got to Zermatt first there would be one chance the less for us. For relief we turned to our Baedeker. But our view, between the steady drops of rain, was bounded by an horizon apparently about twenty-five feet off in the clouds, and a few yards of mist and streaming rain were all we had to look at for the rest of the afternoon.

We had been driving for an eternity, it seemed to us,-in reality for about five hours,when a slight descent brought us to a level stretch. "It is Zermatt," our driver said, and he took off his blanket, emptied the water from the brim of his hat, and jumped into the carriage. A few black masses developed into chalets; one or two large, gray, shadow-like forms became hotels, with dreary tourists looking out of the windows; and then an enormous pile began to shape itself into a huge barrack with windows and a long porch, and " Hotel Mont Cervin" painted in big letters on its face. A group of men in broad-brimmed hats, hands in their pockets, pipes in their mouths, were lounging at the door as we drove up. Madame the manager came running out.