Milton--who knew so well how to handle both the great instrument of
prose and the nobler instrument of verse--declared that next to the man
who furnished courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy he placed
the man who should enlist small bands of good authors to resist that
barbarism which invades the minds and the speech of men in methods and
habits of speaking and writing.

I thank you for having allowed me the honor of saying a word as to the
happiest of all callings and the most imperishable of all arts.

GENERAL SHERMAN

BY CARL SCHURZ

Gentlemen:--The adoption by the Chamber of Commerce of these resolutions
which I have the honor to second, is no mere perfunctory proceeding. We
have been called here by a genuine impulse of the heart. To us General
Sherman was not a great man like other great men, honored and revered at
a distance. We had the proud and happy privilege of calling him one of
us. Only a few months ago, at the annual meeting of this Chamber, we saw
the familiar face of our honorary member on this platform by the side of
our President. Only a few weeks ago he sat at our banquet table, as he
had often before, in the happiest mood of conviviality, and contributed
to the enjoyment of the night with his always unassuming and always
charming speech. And as he moved among us without the slightest pomp of
self-conscious historic dignity, only with the warm and simple geniality
of his nature, it would cost us sometimes an effort of the memory to
recollect that he was the renowned captain who had marshaled mighty
armies victoriously on many a battlefield, and whose name stood, and
will forever stand, in the very foremost rank of the saviors of this
Republic, and of the great soldiers of the world's history. Indeed, no
American could have forgotten this for a moment; but the affection of
those who were so happy as to come near to him, would sometimes struggle
to outrun their veneration and gratitude.

Death has at last conquered the hero of so many campaigns; our cities
and towns and villages are decked with flags at half-mast; the muffled
drum and the funeral cannon boom will resound over the land as his dead
body passes to the final resting-place; and the American people stand
mournfully gazing into the void left by the sudden disappearance of the
last of the greatest men brought forth by our war of regeneration--and
this last also finally become, save Abraham Lincoln alone, the most
widely b