“DEAR BYERS:--I was glad to receive your letter of the 1st inst. It indicates a purpose to join in the throng now publishing articles about the war. Last year Rice, of the N. A. Review, offered me $1,000 for an article on Grant, which I declined and he obtained that of March for nothing. I hate controversy, but could not escape this with F----, who is an army officer, retired, and usually very accurate, but his denial to furnish me the source of his extract from one of my private letters led up to my reply in the March number. If you have read from the magazine itself, all right, but if you have only seen the newspaper extracts, I would like to have you get the Review itself and read the whole. The Century Magazine is also a very respectable vehicle for war stories and has tempted me with high offers in money, but I have resolved to keep out of the newspapers and magazines as far as they will let me, confining myself to the memoirs revised, which will be issued by the Appletons by May next. I have gone over all the proof and will now stand by it. The first and last chapters are new--as well as the index, maps and illustrations. “We are all very well here and I shall regret to give up my own home here for a hotel in New York, but I shall never consent to housekeeping in New York. “My best love to Mrs. Byers and the children. “Truly your friend, W. T. SHERMAN.” At the General’s invitation I went to St. Louis, and for a time was a guest in his home as I had been before in Washington. A few notes of the great commander’s life at this time may not be amiss here. General Sherman was now a retired officer. After a great life on the military stage, he had himself rung down the curtain. He was living in a comfortable, brown, two-story brick house, at 912 Garrison Avenue. His simple little office, where he spent most of his time, was down in the basement, just as it had been in Washington. The same little sign bearing the simple words: “_Office of General Sherman_” was on one of the basement windows. In this room, on shelves and in cases, were all the records of his life--his memoranda of the war, military maps, correspondence. There were letters on file in that little room from eminent men all over the country. A magazine editor once offered $40,000 for permission to go down into that basement and pick out the letters he would like to print in his magazine. The editor even offered a thousand dollars for one certain, single letter there. It was never printed till its importance was gone. One evening he came down into the basement where I was sitting, and taking his keys out of his pocket threw them on the table beside me, saying: “There, I trust you with everything; unlock everything; use what you want.” The complete confidence thus placed in me, I recall with pride and affection. I recall, too, the responsibility I felt.