We entered Gettysburg at nightfall, passing the house where General Meade had his headquarters. The sky was overcast in the early part of the evening and now the rain began to fall. It was too dark to make out the flag as it rose and fell over the little house. But as we peered through the uncertain light, a flash of lightning revealed the banner, which at once spoke an emblematic language too powerful for words. Darkness swallowed it up again; but we knew that for those stars gleaming on their field of blue, and for the purification of its white stripes that had been blackened by slavery, these charming ridges about us had been washed in the blood of thousands of our fair land. We had to detour on account of the repair of sewers. Red lanterns warned the traveler of danger, but it seemed as if they spoke not of the dangers of the present but of those graver dangers that once had been. We spent the night at the Eagle Hotel. The rain continued to fall and by its soothing patter on the leaves and roof above us we were ushered into the land of dreams. The next morning we met the father of Lieutenant Ira Ellsworth Lady who was one of the first of Pennsylvania's loyal sons from Adams county to offer the supreme sacrifice in the World War. The Post of the American Legion at Arendtsville is named in his honor. Alas! How poor, how futile are words to express the nobleness of those young men, the fairest and purest our land could offer. In cases like this there is not much to be said. As we picked up the hat that dropped from trembling hands unnoticed to the floor, we thought what a sad Christmas the year 1918 brought to this home. Then we thought, too, how in the last moments of his earthly sojourn Lieut. Lady had wandered back to the lovely hills and the old homestead with its dear remembered faces in his native county. Our first meeting was in the Evacuation Hospital at Glorenx; almost within the shadows of the frowning citadel of Verdun. How well we remember the first day of his arrival in Ward E! The litter bearers came and went on their ceaseless journeys, bringing new patients still under the influence of ether or transferring others who were sent by ambulance to base hospitals. It was during those terrible days of the Meuse- Argonne drive, while the air overhead hummed with those cruel messengers of fate--coming from no one knew where--that the litter bearers slowly and carefully lowered a patient to the newly-made cot we had just prepared. Looking at the diagnosis card that we found, we learned that the patient, Lieut. Ira Ellsworth Lady, had had an amputation of his limb above the knee, and that he also had been gassed.