roperty of the State. On July 4, 1850, the place was formally
dedicated by Major-General Winfield Scott, dedicatory address
delivered by John J. Monell, an ode by Mary E. Monell, and an oration
by Hon. John W. Edmunds. The centennial of the disbanding of the army
was observed here October 18, 1883. After the noonday procession
of 10,000 men in line, three miles in length, with governors and
representative people from almost every State, 150,000 people, "ten
acres" square, gathered in the historic grounds. Senator Bayard, of
Delaware, was chairman of the day. Hon. William M. Evarts was the
orator, and modestly speaking in the third person, Wallace Bruce,
author of this handbook, was the poet. No one there gathered can ever
forget that afternoon of glorious sunlight or the noble pageant. The
great mountains, which had so frequently been the bulwark of liberty
and a place of refuge for our fathers, were all aglow with beauty, as
if, like Horeb's bush, they too would open their lips in praise and
thanksgiving. One of the closing sentences of Senator Evarts' address
is unsurpassed in modern or ancient eloquence: "These rolling years
have shown growth, forever growth, and strength, increasing strength,
and wealth and numbers ever expanding, while intelligence, freedom,
art, culture and religion have pervaded and ennobled all this material
greatness. Wide, however, as is our land and vast our population
to-day, these are not the limits to the name, the fame, the power of
the life and character of Washington. If it could be imagined that
this nation, rent by disastrous feuds, broken in its unity, should
ever present the miserable spectacle of the undefiled garments of his
fame parted among his countrymen, while for the seamless vesture
of his virtue they cast lots--if this unutterable shame, if this
immeasurable crime, should overtake this land and this people, be sure
that no spot in the wide world is inhospitable to his glory, and
no people in it but rejoices in the influence of his power and his
virtue." In his lofty sentences the old heroes seemed to pass again
in review before us, and the daily life of that heroic band, when
Congress sat inactive and careless of its needs until the camp rose in
mutiny, happily checked, however, by the great commander in a single
sentence. It will be remembered that Washington began to read his
manuscript without glasses, but was compelled to stop, and, as he
adjusted them to his eyes, he sa