COMRADES OF THE GRAND ARMY, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The growing popularity of Memorial Day, and the increasing interest in the beautiful ceremonies of its observance, are among the most happy and hopeful indications of American sentiment. All the good or evil of to-day is but the result of yesterday’s teaching. Our greatest historian, speaking of the men who mustered on the village green at Lexington, “and fired the shot heard round the world,” declares that “the light that led them on was combined of rays from the whole history of the world; from the traditions of the Hebrews in the gray of the world’s morning; from the heroes and sages of Republican Greece and Rome; from the example of Him who died on the cross for the life of humanity; from the religious creed which proclaimed the divine presence in man, and on this truth, as in a life-boat, floated the liberties of nations over the dark flood of the Middle Ages; from the customs of the Germans transmitted out of their forests to the councils of Saxon-England; and from the cloud of witnesses of all the ages to the reality and rightfulness of human freedom.” This is the lesson of Memorial Day. It is yesterday teaching to-day. It brings the peaceful present, reverently uncovered, to the grass-grown grave of the war-worn past. It teaches the living to honor the memory of those who cheerfully died for a good cause. It tells the children that, in a war for human freedom, the level of a soldier is the pinnacle of glory. And so long as heroism is thus revered and patriotism honored; so long as men and women teach their children to honor and to emulate the example of the heroes and patriots who, a quarter of a century ago, rallied around the flag of their imperiled country with such unparalleled enthusiasm, fought for it, suffered for it, died for it, lifted it into the very heavens, stainless and triumphant, and made all men free before the Constitution and the laws—so long as this is the lesson and the inspiration of the rising generations of Americans, there need be no fear that the dead have died in vain, or that the Republic they loved will perish from the earth. In speaking to you to-day, I shall talk of some heroes and martyrs who were my comrades and my friends. They were not “born to fame.” None of them were known beyond the narrow limits of the neighborhoods in which they lived, or of the regiment they glorified by the simple manhood of their lives. Country boys, some of them, they had grown up from infancy, surrounded by calm and gracious scenes and sounds; town boys, others, they had dreamed only of business or professional pursuits, and of those triumphs and successes which, in civil life, insure a quiet and prosperous old age.