Here in Kansas, too, is a generation of young men and women who have in their veins the blood of heroes and patriots. In this audience are hundreds of young men and women whose baby eyes witnessed sad partings, when their fathers hurried away to join the company mustering in the village square. Here are matrons who were young wives, sweethearts or sisters then, and who, busy with household cares, heard the faint throbbing of the far-away drum, and days and weeks before a word was spoken, read in the troubled but resolute eyes of husbands, lovers, and brothers the thought that was busy in their brains—the thought of a stricken country, sadly needing men. They knew, these patient, loving women, what was coming, and in the silence of their rooms, in loneliness and bitter tears, they prayed that, if possible, the shadow of this great grief might be lifted from their home; and that those nearest and dearest to them might remain, to lighten their cares and brighten their daily life. But when at last the word was spoken, a race of self-sacrificing and heroic women stood side by side in patriotic devotion with a race of heroic men, and the whole world learned, as the long procession of weary months and years went by, that the men and women of ’76 had worthy successors in the men and women of ’61 and ’65. The “boys” of twenty-three years ago are men of mature age; the men of that day are growing old. The faded and tattered battle-flags they followed are preserved in the State-houses. The old sword or musket hanging over the mantel is rusty with age. Every year the ranks are thinning. Wounds and disease, the legacy of battle-field, march and bivouac, are doing their sure work. The glad picture they saw, looking forward through the lurid smoke and flame of battle, as the reward of all their toils and sacrifices—the picture of a mighty Nation, compact, prosperous, free, and respected by all the Nations of the earth—has been fully realized. There is no limit to the power, no measure to the wealth, of the redeemed and enfranchised Republic. Only the memories of a heroic struggle are left us. But until the last survivors of the Grand Army that marched and fought with Lyon, Blunt, McClellan, Rosecrans, Meade, Sheridan, Thomas, Sherman, and Grant, are finally mustered out, let them preserve their comradeship, and keep forever fresh and fair in their hearts the glorious recollections and still more glorious principles of the far-away days when they were soldiers of the Republic.