There was nothing that imagination could conceive or energy perform that our Board of Trustees was not willing to do for us. Dan Brady, who has neglected his business for the past two years to look after the 69th, and all the rest of them, devoted themselves entirely to furthering our well-being and our glory. The only thing I have against Dan is that he makes me work as hard as himself, and bosses me around continually. At one of the dinners I said that if Dan Brady had taken up the same kind of a job that I had, he would be a bishop by now; but if he were my Bishop I’d be a Baptist or a Presbyterian; in some Church anyway, that doesn’t have Bishops. The part of our reception which I enjoyed most of all was the parade up Fifth Avenue. The whole regiment shared in it, including the extra battalion, seven hundred strong, of men who had been invalided home, and others of our wounded who had a place of honor on the grandstand. Archbishop Hayes, who had blessed us as we left the Armory, Mayor Hylan, men prominent in State and City, in Army and Navy affairs, united to pay their tribute of praise to the old regiment. And thousands and thousands of people on the stands cheered and cheered and cheered, so that for five miles the men walked through a din of applause, till the band playing the American and Irish airs could scarce be heard. It was a deserved tribute to a body of citizen soldiers who had played such a manful part in battle for the service of the Republic. The appreciation that the country pays to its war heroes is for the best interest of the State. I am not a militarist, nor keen for military glory. But as long as liberties must be defended, and oppression or aggression put down, there must always be honor paid to that spirit in men which makes them willing to die for a righteous cause. Next after reason and justice, it is the highest quality in citizens of a state. Our fathers in this republic, in their poverty and lowliness, founded many institutions, ecclesiastical, financial, charitable, which have grown stronger with the years. One of these institutions was a military organization, which they passed on to us with the flag of the fifty silver furls. To these we have added nine more in the latest war of our country. As it was borne up the Avenue flanked by that other banner whose stars of gold commemorated the six hundred and fifty dead heroes of the regiment, and surrounded by three thousand veterans, I felt that in the breasts of generous and devoted youths that gazed upon them there arose a determination that if, in their generation, the Republic ever needed defenders, they too would face the perils of battle in their country’s cause. Men pass away, but institutions survive. In time we shall all go to join our comrades who gave up their lives in France. But in our own generation, when the call came, we accepted the flag of our fathers; we have added to it new glory and renown—and we pass it on.