"General Smith--Did I see General Smith rise?" (A voice: "He's gone out for a moment.") "Well, never mind; it's all the same. General Smith moves the appointment of a committee on Resolutions, and it will consist of (taking a list from his right vest pocket) General So-and-So. (Looks blank.) That's not the committee, either. This list I just read is another committee, and it will be moved later. Here's the right one. (Reads it.) You see, gentlemen, we get our young staff officers who have nothing else to do to fix up these things in advance." A voice: "Move to adjourn." The Chair: "Oh, no use putting that motion. We must fix these preliminaries first. I have three more committees prepared here." And so on for an hour longer. But no one ever resented the old warrior's genial "bossism." Sherman's last "interview" with a newspaper reporter occurred at his New York home less than a fortnight before his death. When the reporter entered the General was seated at a square table in the middle of the room, and in a despairing sort of way was trying to find out from a directory where Dr. John Hall's church is situated. He wore a very extraordinary pair of spectacles--each lens like a jeweler's magnifying glass. When he had got the information he wanted, he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, shook hands and asked what was wanted. "By the way," he said, suddenly, "I have seen you before." "Yes; at the Garfield memorial exercises in Cleveland." "I remember now," General Sherman continued; "sit down. What can I do for you? I have very little time; I am going to a wedding at 12 o'clock." He was asked to talk about Lincoln and old war-times. "No, no," he said, shaking his head; "I have said all I have to say and written all I have to write on that subject and all others. I shall not write any more nor talk for publication." [Illustration: THE ROAD FROM McPHERSONVILLE--Sherman and Staff Passing Through Water and Mire.] Then he stood up and walked slowly about the room. After a bit he pointed to a shelf of the book-case, where the bulky volumes of the Nicolay-Hay memoirs stood. "There," he remarked, "in those ten volumes you'll find all the Lincoln literature you want; I have made many speeches on Lincoln, but I don't remember where they are now--I don't remember." Sherman's first family bereavement was the death of his son Willie, from typhoid fever, at Memphis, October 3, 1863. The boy had shown great fondness for military life, and had been playfully adopted as a sergeant by the battalion that formed his father's headquarters guard. He always turned out at drills and guard-mountings with a zeal that both amused and delighted the general, and he was a great favorite with all the soldiers who knew him. When he died, the battalion gave him a military funeral, and the heart broken father thereupon wrote to its commanding officer, Captain C. C. Smith, as follows: