I was given charge of making out the papers for the soldiers discharged from the Hospital. I frequently urged the Doctor to order me to my regiment, but he refused, saying I could never serve as an enlisted man since receiving my wound. Being convinced there was no hope of ever being permitted to join my regiment, I made out my own discharge paper and placed it in a package I submitted to the Doctor for his signature. After he had signed all of the papers, I took mine out of the package and showed it to him. He endorsed it, "Able to serve as an officer, but not as an enlisted man." I will stop my story here, only adding that after returning home I re-enlisted as a private in Company B. 21st Michigan Infantry, then with the Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant before I left the State to join that regiment. By chance, that commission was dated on January 26, 1864, my twenty-second birthday. Such memories as these are among the most precious products of my life. The gains of life are various. Some objects we pursue disappear as we grasp them. We are children, chasing with excited delight beautiful bubbles floating free in air. We touch them and they vanish. Some objects are as enduring as the eternal truth of God. We pursue them with the stern courage of men upborne by the strength of a moral conviction. Though, in the hour of trial and triumph, a crown of thorns be pressed upon our brow, the memory of a right act, courageously done, will enrich the soul forever. The memory of such actions is the richest endowment and the most sacred acquisition of the loyal volunteer. How little all that can be given him as a reward for his services must ever be in comparison with that which he has by right of his own achievement. Ask him now how he values his memory of that day when, with his regiment, he first left home for the scenes of war. Can the picture ever fade? Streets thronged with the populace and decorated with the flag he was to defend! Can he ever forget the holy inspiration of the silent cheer from his speechless father, mother, sister or lover as he passed them? Ask him how he values his memory of a thousand incidents of army life that are never recorded by a single line on the page of history, but which revealed comrade to comrade, knotted life to life, and gave opportunity for the expression of nobility by noble men.