white with fluttering handkerchiefs and vocal with approving cheers, one enthusiastic on-looker was heard to exclaim: "Thank God I am an American!"

It was a prophecy of the future. All the day before the flower of America's citizen soldiery had passed that same reviewing stand, a token of the triumphant present. But in those serried ranks of young Americans marched the promise of the nation; for what the schoolboys of one city in the land can do that can the lads of all the land perform. Come peace or war, come need or cause for service it is upon such as these that the nation must depend for worth and valor, it is from such as these that alike volunteer and veteran must be made. The youth of the Republic hold ever its keeping and its life in their hands.

The promise of the Future fitly followed in that national display the grandeur of the Present and the glory of the Past. On the second day of that historic parade and from that same reviewing stand, the President of the United States had looked down upon a gallant host - the Nation's tribute to the memory of its first soldier-president. What his twenty-second successor saw was, as one chronicler has described it: "An army larger than that first called into the field by President Lincoln to suppress the Rebellion, and alongside of which the Continental forces in many a famous Revolutionary battle seem a corporal's guard, called, most of it, from the pursuits of peace, yet still maintaining the discipline and outward show of actual warfare; glittering ranks of infantry, battalion after battalion, whose infinite variety of color and movement alone prevent the tiring of all the senses; cavalry, and artillery clattering in their gorgeous red and yellow uniforms over the smooth cobblestones; the dashing staff, all lace and plumes; generals of brig

ade, generals of division, Governors of States, an almost endless file of the varied representatives of the military strength of the Nation, gathered to be reviewed by its Chief Magistrate — a picture notable in the history of this pacific Republic."

And, not the least impressive sight in all that gallant array that met the President's eye, was the appearance in line of the more than eight thousand veterans in blue-the representatives of that comradeship of old soldiers known as the Grand Army of the Republic.

The warm spring sun only served to emphasize by its searching brilliancy the worn and faded shreds of bunting, held proudly aloft above the ranks of blue-those wind-torn and bullet-riddled banners that were all that remained of the oldtime battle-flags. There were gray heads and grizzled beards in plenty, for the years have touched alike the vigor and the looks of those who, a quarter of a century back, were sturdy and valiant young fighters in the ranks of Liberty and Law. An empty sleeve here, a halting step there, a shrunken form or a scarred face showed that, for these veterans of the nation's mightiest conflict, the great parade of 1889 was as much a duty to old memories as a pendant to present glory. In the ranks of those eight thousand veterans, beneath the tattered and faded battle-flags, marched the living presence of the stormawakened spirit of 1861.

The comradeships of war are its choicest memorials. The fellow-soldiers who have touched elbow and kept step together, comrades at mess, on picket, in drill, in march and battle, who have suffered together, grumbled together, "skylarked" together and, together, experienced all the woes and worries, the fun and frolic, the drills and disciplines, the excitements and exultations of life in camp and service in the field become

brothers in arms, indeed, and develop a fraternity and spirit of kinship that, even though sometimes clannish and assertive, still welds all the firmer that bond of brotherhood that holds them fast as comrades and as friends long after the deeds that

It is asserted that, not long ago, at a concert in a Western town a veteran in the audience whose knowledge of music was less positive than his loyalty to old associations broke out into such uproarious applause over the music of the noble Twelfth Mass that the ushers hastened to quiet his enthusiasm. "Keep

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Before the Amy of the Ker Jution was disbanded in on the Elheen & of Apd peg. Generai Henry Kata suggested sted the permanent organ zation of the surviving icers o cers of those days of strugge into a woolery that should keep the keep the old friendships alive and extend needed help to its members. The plan found favor with the brotherofficers of Washington's trusted friend and Chleboletaff. The society was duly organized and taking its name from the old Roman patrist Cincinnatus was called the Society of the Cincinnati. At the first meeting after the disbanding of the army, held at the City Tavern in Philadelphia in 1784, Washington was elected President-General. The presidents of the Society since Washington have been Alexander Hamilton, Charles C. Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, Aaron Ogden, Morgan Lewis, William Popham, Henry A. S. Dearborn and Hamilton Fish.

objects of the Society of the Cincinnati, as proclaimed

:

at its organization, were: "To perpetuate the remembrance of the achievement of national independence as well as the mutual friendships which have been formed under the pressure of common danger and in many instances cemented by the blood of the parties." It was further asserted that it was the unalterable determination of the members of the Cincinnati "to promote and cherish between the respective States that union and national honor so essentially necessary to the happiness and future dignity of the American Empire."

Harmless and patriotic as these proclaimed purposes would seem there still existed in the breasts of the earliest American democrats so strong a feeling against anything that smacked of the aristocratic element they had confederated to put down that a bitter opposition against the new society was speedily abroad and for years its members were regarded with suspicion and denounced by over-zealous patriots. Mirabeau saw in the society the seed of ruin to the new republic and declared that in less than a century, it would have reduced America to the condition of old Rome-a nation divided into patricians and plebeians.

It is scarcely necessary to say that alike the opposition of fellow-countrymen and the prophecies of foreign critics were unnecessary. The Society of the Cincinnati has ever remained the same honorable and harmless association of heroes and the sons of heroes that its founders contemplated. It has been for years an honored American order of moderate dimensions and of quiet ways, meeting semi-occasionally at banquets and reunions and always loyal to the one toast, drank standing and in silence: "To the memory of Washington!"

The War of 1812 and that against Mexico had their associations of veterans while the great strife against secession 1