I am called on to say a word to the memory of our dear departed comrades. Would that I had command of language to do justice to our dead heroes. Father Time has fearfully thinned our ranks, and few of us can point to the comrade who was his file leader and marched shoulder to shoulder with us nearly 50 years ago, and the death roll since the Mexican War has been frightful among the distinguished men of that army who have been called to their final account. I mention a few, Scott, Taylor, Pillow, Quitman, Twiggs, Duncan, Pierce, Kearney, Hancock, Shields. The last named general, and the last surviving general of that war, was a welcome guest at my house a few years ago when stricken with a fatal sickness when far away from his Western home and kindred. I well remember the gallant Lieutenant Ralph Bell of the South Carolina Regiment, mentioned by comrade McKay, and who, while wounded, led the forlorn hope at Chapultepec. He accompanied me to California in 1849, and his eyes I closed in death at Sacramento City the following year, and whose placid countenance looks down upon me here to-night. These are sad memories, and the tongue can but feebly express the feelings of the heart at this time; our own bent forms and fast becoming hoary locks admonish us that it will not be long before we too are called to tread the same path, and no matter what our former condition in life, there is no distinction then. The dead, how beautiful is the memory of the dead, what a holy thing it is in the human heart, what a chastening influence it has upon human life, how it subdues all the harshness that grows up within us in the daily intercourse with the world, how it melts our hardness and softens our pride, kindles our deepest love, and waking our brightest aspirations in the camp and by the wayside, in solitude or among our comrades, think sadly and speak lovingly of the dead. It occurred to the compiler of this pamphlet that it would not be out of place to mention the name of Colonel Murphy’s son, Ignatius, a well-known journalist and editorial writer, who wrote the life of Colonel Hungerford (a book of nearly 400 pages). This gallant soldier recently died in Rome, Italy, at the home of his daughter, the Countess Telfener, at the Villa Ada, attaining the ripe age of seventy-five years. He passed peacefully away, surrounded by his affectionate wife, his daughter, the Countess, and his numerous grandchildren. Ignatius Ingoldsby Murphy deserves more than a mere honourable mention in connection with the corn propaganda. When his father commenced his missionary labors, in 1887, he was flooded with correspondence from all parts of Europe. This son, who was a third year naval cadet at Annapolis, resigned, and came over to Europe to assist his father, for which his knowledge of European languages eminently qualified him. [Illustration: IGNATIUS INGOLDSBY MURPHY CADET 1st CLASS, UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY, ANNAPOLIS, MD., U.S.A.]