he
nature of a claim that he was a Catholic. It is well known that
his children have been reared by their mother, a devoted Catholic,
in her faith, and now cling to it. It is equally well known that
General Sherman and myself, as well as all my mother's children,
are, by inheritance, education, and connection, Christians, but
not Catholics, and this has been openly avowed, on all proper
occasions, by General Sherman; but he is too good a Christian, and
too humane a man, to deny to his children the consolation of their
religion. He was insensible at the time and apparently at the
verge of death, but if he had been well and in the full exercise
of his faculties, he would not have denied to them the consolation
of the prayers and religious observances for their father of any
class or denomination of Christian priests or preachers. Certainly,
if I had been present, I would, at the request of the family, have
assented to and reverently shared in an appeal to the Almighty for
the life here and hereafter of my brother, whether called a prayer
or extreme unction, and whether uttered by a priest or a preacher,
or any other good man who believed what he spoke and had an honest
faith in his creed.

"I hear that your reporter uttered a threat to obtain information
which I cannot believe you would for a moment tolerate. We all
need charity for our frailties, but I can feel none for anyone who
would wound those already in distress."

President Harrison announced General Sherman's death to both Houses
of Congress in the following words:

"_To the Senate and House of Representatives:_ The death of William
Tecumseh Sherman, which took place to-day at his residence in the
city of New York, at 1 o'clock and 50 minutes p. m., is an event
that will bring sorrow to the heart of every patriotic citizen.
No living American was so loved and venerated as he. To look upon
his face, to hear his name, was to have one's love of country
intensified. He served his country, not for fame, not out of a
sense of professional duty, but for love of the flag and of the
beneficent civil institutions of which it was the emblem. He was
an ideal soldier, and shared to the fullest the _esprit de corps_
of the army; but he cherished the civil institutions organized
under the constitution, and was a soldier only that these might be
perpetuated in undiminished usefulness and honor. He was in nothing
an imitator.

"A profound student of military scie