MR. CHAIRMAN, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before this audience with more than ordinary distrust and solicitude. Keenly sensible, at all times, of my deficiencies as a speaker, this consciousness is intensified by the reflection that I am to speak, to-day, of one who is enshrined in the hearts of the American people as no other man, except Washington or Lincoln, ever was; of one whose fame, like the sunlight, flooded all the world, and whose example will warm patriotic hearts and stimulate noble ambitions until the end of recorded time. And how can I describe, as all men knew him, the great soldier who was to-day borne to his last resting-place with a great Nation as his sorrowful mourners, and the funeral bells of the civilized world tolling the universal sympathy of the brotherhood of men? How can I fittingly testify the tender affection, the reverent respect in which the loyal people of Kansas held Ulysses S. Grant? How can I give expression to the feeling of bereavement which shadows every home and hearth in this great Commonwealth, where live a hundred thousand men who, during the dark days of the civil war, gladly and proudly hailed him as their commander, and made him heir to the honor and glory their valor and patriotism, directed by his consummate ability, had won for the Nation? The North, at the outbreak of the civil war, was like a blind giant. Its strength was at once revealed. Never before, in any age or country, had there been such a magnificent uprising as was that following the attack on Sumter. From country fields and city workshops, from schools, offices, and marts of commerce, a great host—the very blossom and flower of the youth and manhood of the land—swarmed to the recruiting stations, eager to dare and suffer all things for the cause of the Republic. But leaders were lacking. Engrossed in business, and devoting all its energies to the arts and industries of peace, the loyal North had drawn many of its trained soldiers into civil pursuits, where they had been swallowed up in the rush and clangor of commerce. The South had kept many of its brightest intellects in the army, where such men as Albert Sidney Johnson, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and many others equally brilliant, held high positions. These men at once cast their lot against the Nation that had educated them. And the Republic, thus deserted by the soldiers it had trained, groped blindly through many months of sore disaster, waiting for the leaders who were to direct its heroic armies to final victory.