LIEUTENANT COCHRAN :

In the next volume of the Reports. I was in hopes that this meeting would begin by saying, "Go on, go on."

Cries of "No," "No!"

LIEUTENANT COCHRAN :

If there is any thing I like in a meeting of this kind, it is frankness, and I see that we have invoked it at the very beginning. So I will take leave to print the remarks that I had intended to make on this occasion.

I want to say, on introducing the gentleman who is to respond to the first toast, that COLONEL DUFFIELD until day before yesterday had expected to be here and promised to be here, as was the case with every other person on this programme who. is not here, but he was. necessarily detained, and so advised us, and in our extremity we have called upon an old comrade whom we have not seen for years, but whom we are delighted on this occasion to see. We don't know why he has wandered away up here from the Gulf, or some such place, but it is due to him to explain his short notice.

I give the toast, "OUR COUNTRY," and call upon COLONEL WICKERSHAM, of Mobile, Alabama.

COLONEL WICKERSHAM :

Mr. President-When the martyred president, MR. LINCOLN, was en route to the national capital, he stopped over at Lancaster City, Pennsylvania, and was there called upon, very much in the same manner that I have been, to make a speech to his admirers there assembled. I remember as distinctly as if it were yesterday the response that he made: "Fellow-citizens of Lancaster, I am satisfied you only call upon me because I am taller than almost any body else." And I am satisfied that the selection of your Local Committee was made

upon similar considerations. Yesterday, shortly before the announcement or information was conveyed to me of this selection, the brilliant and accomplished President of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland announced also that I had been appointed a member of the Memorial Committee. You will understand, those of you who are not members of our Society, that one of the functions of that Committee is to prepare the statement that goes into history about those of our members who happen to die; and I was selected, as I had been privately informed, because I am the youngest member, surviving, of the Army of the Cumberland, and apparently in good health.

From that time to the present, ladies and gentlemen, I have been besieged by those whom I know well, and whom I knew dearly in the army, and by those with whom I had only a slight acquaintance, with the request-as it was evident that I would survive every other member of the Army of the Cumberland-"Here is a little manuscript of our services, which we would be glad to have printed."

I have a large amount of manuscript now, and from a cursory examination, I find that the gentlemen of the Society who have handed me their biographical statements of their military services— which of course will be printed precisely as stated-were the men who, in some great emergency, in connection with some slight assistance, saved this glorious country.

I take it, before I shall get through, that there will be more heroes and more great men belonging to the Army of the Cumberland than have hitherto been recognized in the history of this country.

Now, having been thus occupied-a grateful task, I assure youI met all with the assurance that these different manuscripts, which I have in my pocket, and which I will deposit in my trunk, shall be faithfully published, and you will know that we young fellows will come to mourn a great many of these gentlemen with a statement of their services that has been prepared by themselves, and therefore

true.

I am greatly embarrassed by having so large a subject submitted for my comment; and then, on the other hand, warned by the hour of the evening, I shall not wish to trespass upon the patience of this

very large and fine looking assembly; but I have here now a subject, a mere cursory glance of which would require me till to-morrow morning, and has already required a famous historian to write some twelve or fifteen volumes. The reward of your patience, long and forbearing as it may be, reminds me of a little incident that occurred to a man who was traveling over some railroads projected by these far-sighted gentlemen whom I am allowed to meet. He didn't get along very well in his eastern residence, and concluded to go west. His party consisted of himself, his dearly beloved wife, several babies, and his still more dearly beloved mother-in-law, who accompanied the daughter and children and son-in-law on the expedition to see that it was properly carried out.

Away out here on some of the western railroads, where it is said to be cold, they encountered a great storm, and such was its severity and length that they found themselves embedded in a portion of the road where they could get neither forward nor backward, and the storm continued so long that they were unable, even by half rations, to make their provisions last till the road could be opened. Finally it was concluded that the best thing to do, in order to save the many, was to sacrifice the few; and they resolved, Christians as they were, to resort to a species of cannibalism, that the lives of the young members might be prolonged. Straws were drawn, and this hopeful and beloved son-in-law was intrusted with the straws, and strange to tell, when the unlucky straw was drawn it was drawn by the dear good mother-in-law, and she was sacrificed; and the son-in-law received for his pains very little more than you will be able to get out of me in this toast, on this vast subject ;- -as he was only able to get, when this good mother-in-law was sacrificed, a portion of the wish-bone and a still less portion of the neck.

If any thing could inspire a lover of his country with its greatness and its glory, it would be the charms of the delightful song that was so beautifully rendered by our friends constituting the choir. I remember in 1861, and still later, on every festive occasion, when any thing suggested the power and glory and greatness and, magnitude of this great country, increasing in its power as the years roll on, there

was never any thing that lifted my soul so much in response to patriotism as the song, "My Country, 't is of Thee."

In every other land, ladies and gentlemen, to become conspicuous, great, and honorable, men must be descendants; in America, they can become great and powerful and be ancestors. Their opportunities are found in the primitive forests; they are found beneath your soil; they are found, through the genius of Edison and his colaborers, in that mysterious and incomprehensible fluid, whose force and whose utility no magician can foretell.

America! Our country! The United States, with its flag with several stars now added; a government of 62,000,000 to 64,000,000 of people, interlaced and bound together with muscles of iron, connecting every brain center with electric nerves, recording and articulating the beautiful sentiments that portray its glory and its power through the wonderful and mysterious telephone, recording, if you will, these musical strains that lift the soul in harmony and in love for the nation's flag, the strains of "My Country, 't is of Thee!"

Do you ask the youngest of this Society, the humblest of this Society, do you ask the farthest south of this Society, to come here in order to warm your hearts and render more genial your souls for the American flag? Do you ask a son of grand old patriotic Pennsylvania to come back here after an absence of fifteen or twenty years, and make it necessary, by his voice in this hall, in beautiful Toledo, in great Ohio, close to the borders of loyal, courageous, and heroic Michigan, to portray to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the United States of America is larger, braver, freer, richer, than any other nation that is blessed by the golden light of the sunshine?

Shall we bring here the olive and the magnolia and wreath them with the ivy, adorn them with the rose, deck them with all that may be beautiful and lovely on the shores of the lake, in order to make an audience of Toledo believe that we have the loveliest and most attractive habitation on the face of the globe? We are rich in all the elements that constitute greatness; we are richer in the materials that are embedded in mother earth, in our mechanical genius, bolder and loftier in our conceptions. In the skill of American mechanics, we

all are proud to display the blistered hand of toil. We are formed in all that constitutes a brave and liberty-loving people. We are richer in beautiful and accomplished women. We are richer in the attributes

that make up and adorn manhood. We are richer in the country's heroic defenders. We can muster more men, in less time, who will face courageously the shock of battle, in defense of their flag, than all the nations of the earth combined.

Do you ask me now to trespass further upon your time and patience to portray the magnificence, glory, and strength of the United States of America, the fertility of its soil, its boundless resources, its incomprehensible genius, its glory and its power?

God grant that no day may come when all the people of the country, South and North alike, may not unite in humble prayers of thankfulness that the common flag has been restored, and that the flag of a firm and enduring Union shall live and be perpetuated in the frozen North as well as in the clime where summer is well nigh eternal.

LIEUTENANT COCHRAN :

Passing to the North-west, I call attention to the toast of "THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES," and request a citizen of that state from whom came the honorable president who was named by COLONEL WICKERSHAM, and I would ask GENERAL SMITH D. ATKINS, of Illinois, to respond.

GENERAL SMITH D. ATKINS:

To the American soldier the American flag is the embodiment of the nation's power and grandeur. It came when the nation was born like a gleam of glory, and so it will remain as long as the nation endures. The President of the United States is Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy; into his keeping the flag is given; to him, for the time being wherever he may be, is due the faithful allegiance of every citizen, and every faithful citizen loyally accords it. Earth has no greater honor to bestow, and to that great office the humblest