r, dear! how little that good man knew about war. If he had
known anything about war at all he ought to have known what any of my G.
A. R. comrades here to-night will tell you is true, that it is next to
a crime for an officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of
his men. "I, with my shining sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting
to my troops, 'Come on'!" I never did it. Do you suppose I would get in
front of my men to be shot in front by the enemy and in the back by my
own men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the officer in
actual battle is behind the line. How often, as a staff officer, I rode
down the line, when our men were suddenly called to the line of battle,
and the Rebel yells were coming out of the woods, and shouted: "Officers
to the rear! Officers to the rear!" Then every officer gets behind the
line of private soldiers, 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. And yet he shouted, "I, with my shining
sword--" In that house there sat the company of my soldiers who had
carried that boy across the Carolina rivers that he might not wet his
feet. Some of them had gone far out to get a pig or a chicken. Some of
them had gone to death under the shell-swept pines in the mountains of
Tennessee, yet in the good man's speech they were scarcely known. He did
refer to them, but only incidentally. The hero of the hour was this boy.
Did the nation owe him anything? No, nothing then and nothing now.
Why was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into that same human
error--that this boy was great because he was an officer and these were
only private soldiers.

Oh, I learned the lesson then that I will never forget so long as the
tongue of the bell of time continues to swing for me. Greatness consists
not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing
great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes
from the private ranks of life. To be great at all one must be great
here, now, in Philadelphia. He who can give to this city better streets
and better sidewalks, better schools and more colleges, more happiness
and more civilization, more of God, he will be great anywhere. Let every
man or woman here, if you never hear me again, remember this, that if
you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and what you
are, in Philadelphia, now. He that ca