Perhaps tradition has been too caustic or too facetious in its treatment of the unarmed soldiers who honored us with their comradeship--the chaplain, the surgeon and the Sutler. Of the army preacher, who filled his sacred office worthily as many did, let due and reverent acknowledgment be made, in grateful memory of benignant functions purely administered; "the gowned goslings, who were goslings before they were gowned," let us in mercy and in pity commit to the tenderness of eternal silence. The typical army doctor was skillful, devoted, brave and self-sacrificing; at the front amid the blaze and storm of battle; in the rear wrestling with festering wounds or wasting fevers and contagions; everywhere his welcome, hopeful features beamed in gracious blessing on us at our sorest need, and each of us who lives to-day can name the surgeon to whom that life is due. Even the Sutler, of whom we have been treating subjectively and perhaps too unceremoniously herein, when reduced to his objective individual status, has often supplied material for illustrating the highest grade of patriotic heroism. The Sutlership was an agency not devoid of utility, not without the noblest possibilities, by no means unworthy of honor. Let no poet of the war, sitting in the refreshment of the foliage of his phrases and sipping the coolness of the gases of his gall, dare ignore these patent, blatant truths of history. Or if he do, let him be doubly and trebly ware! It is certain that enough scattered, incontrovertible, granite bowlders of fact lie snugly imbedded in the conglomerate of fancy, to roll forward at the final round-up and everlastingly necropolize him. Where is the Sutler now? Vanished from our ken and beyond all cavil non-existent. History has few parallels to this absolute obliteration of a species. The bronzed old admiral emeritus is still extant, with tar on his heel and salt in his eyebrows. Generals in active service thread the German's mazes, agile as when in slim-waisted cadet days they paced flirtation walk, in all the pomp and circumstance of glorious gray. The retired list, infallible patent of longevity, lifts high its proud engrossment of venerable colonels and brigadiers, spattered at times with ill-flavored congressional epithets and blown about by every breeze of statesmanship, but yielding still its liberal monthly stipend; there too the Sutler's brief, broad, brambly service is unrecognized. The village boaster boasteth still his grand exploits as the sunset of life crowns a mystical bore. But no Sutler is here or there discerned.