With warmest regards to officers and members, and thanks for

Your invitation to be present at the Twenty

first Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland 17th and 18th inst. is received.

Accept my kindest thanks for the favor.

I am sorry to say that the demands upon my time are of such a nature that I shall not be able to be present. Feeling assured that the affair will be a glorious success, as I have had the pleasure of being in your city on similar occasions,

I am, very truly yours,

H. S. PROPHET.

FROM CAPTAIN O. P. NORRIS.

NORRIS STATION, F. & O. C. R. R., September 12, 1890.

COLONEL H. S. BUNKER,

Secretary of the Society of Invitation of the Army of the
Cumberland.

COMRADE, SIR:

Your beautiful card of invitation to attend the Twenty-first Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland was

received a few days ago.

Please accept my kindest regrets that I can

not attend and enjoy the fraternity of those heroes of that glorious Army of the Cumberland.

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of an invitation to attend the Twenty-first Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, at Toledo, Ohio, September 17th and 18th next. I had intended to be present at this meeting, but now find it will be impossible to do so. My duties at present will not permit of my absence for so long a time. The distance from here to Toledo is too great; will have to content myself with reading of the pleasant time I know you will have.

Very truly yours,

W. H. KELL,

First Lieutenant and Adjutant 22d Infantry.

FROM LIEUTENANT A. W. TOURGÉE.

MAYVILLE, N. Y., September 16, 1890.

To the Corresponding Secretary of the Society of the Army of the Cumber

land,

MY DEAR SIR:

I much regret that I am prevented at the last

moment from attending the Reunion to-morrow.

I was informed by public report, and also by a friend (I do not remember to have received any official notification), that I was named at the last Reunion as alternate orator with GENERAL THRUSTON. I desire to thank the members of the Society for the honor, and especially for the fact that it was alternative. I do not know of any thing more consoling than to have an able-bodied man stand between one and a task for which he feels himself peculiarly unfitted. I trust that it may a long time before the genial THRUSTON has any need for an alternate, and when that sad day shall come that his mantle will fall on worthier shoulders than mine.

be

To have belonged to the Army of the Cumberland is an honor which I prize highly, but I do not feel any of that overwhelming sense of responsibility for its movements or feel myself entitled to any such distinct and appreciable share of glory for its achievements as to have induced me properly to prepare to discuss its movements or sing its praises. Indeed, I do not think that any private or subaltern should be required to perform this duty while so many who outranked them in knowledge and achievement still remain alive. These obscure units of endeavor are well enough in war, and very useful on the skirmish line, but I have noticed that when it comes to "fighting our battles o'er again" one general is worth a whole division of the rank and file.

The private soldier or subaltern rarely wishes to "mend their licks," and could not if they would. All they can do is just to add to the number of the enemy they actually and personally destroyed.

Of course each one does this faithfully and I may say frequently. No doubt if they were separately polled, and the census of destruction made up from their reports, it would be found that in the battle of Chickamauga alone more of the enemy were killed than there ever were Confederates on the continent. But this is an easy task and does not require much time or great intelligent power. The general, on the contrary, has to fight over the whole campaign every time one of his opponents moves against his post-bellum positions, or makes a raid on his laurels, and rarely lives to see even the shortest war entirely fought out. Of course, they are the ones to galvanize the past and "polish up the handles of the big front door" of the temple of fame for our delectation.

Besides this, you know the folly of " talking of war to Hannibal” has long since passed into a proverb. What would I, a poor, frail, insignificant subaltern do discoursing of the achievements of men whose glory, we are told in the report of our very first Reunion, had even then "overtopped the stars, and which consequently must have been running out on nothing in the cold and sterile blackness that lies beyond the region of star-dust and crystalization ever since? It was a daily puzzle to me in those days when we marched to the music of the drum to guess where we were and why we were going. The first I generally found out by waiting long enough, but as to the latter I have learned that the longer one waits the less he is apt to know-unless, indeed, he has brushed his recollection up by frequent retracings of those slippery journeys up the blood-stained peaks of Fame, in company with those with whom he then kept step and touch of elbow. To those who for a score of years have retraced the grand itinerary of the Army of the Cumberland, marking each mile-post with a more or less veritable exploit, burying on every hill-top the spirit-bodies of a ghostly enemy, magnified by that curious glare that shines always behind us the phosphorescent light of self-achievement-to such the way and the why have no doubt grown plain and easy; but to one who, like myself, has only now and then been permitted to catch the scintillations which flash from the stories told so often that the point is always being kept bright by being rubbed against reality, of the vet

eran who was as important a factor in the struggle for the Union as a linch-pin is to a cart-wheel-for such au one to try to discourse of those times to men on whose brows is written the conscious fact, “quorum magna pars fui," is a refinement of torture which the laws of civilized warfare should sternly interdict.

I am not exactly able to declare that I would rather face the fire of a hostile battery than the critical glances of such a gathering of heroes. It would not be precisely true; and though I am not like the "first American," unable to tell a lie, yet I have made it a rule not to do so publicly-unless there is an apparent necessity for it. No such reason obtains in this case to induce me to make the very strenuous statement indicated. In fact, I am willing to admit that it is not even half true; but as a matter of sober earnest, I do declare that I would rather stand behind the best battery of Krupp guns ever cast until the breech-pins grew hot, than have to recount to the members of the Society any fragment of the story of the illustrious achievements of the Army of the Cumberland, which each of them knows better than I.

Thanking the Society for the honor conferred upon me, and congratulating them upon the kindly Providence which made their careful prevision vain, and trusting that the gathering years may sit lightly upon every frosted brow as the heroes of Yesterday go down to the grave which To-morrow shall heap high with unfading laurels, I remain,

Your grateful comrade,

ALBION W. TOURGÉE.