important things would he endure to see a lame outcome when he might set things in better shape. He encouraged schools and worthy charities by giving them his hearty countenance. No arm was more potent than his in saving the country, nor was his patriotism selfish. He saved his country because he believed it was for the good of the world.

Sherman has been criticised for his ruthlessness, but no one can say that he was not effective. He bore on hard but with the belief that only such action could bring the war to a close. No one could come in contact with him without feeling that he was a soft-hearted man. It was one of the most interesting evenings of my life when, as a guest of N.O. Nelson, the philanthropic captain of industry in St. Louis, I was one of a company of a dozen to hear Sherman tell John Fiske his story of the war. We sat at table from seven o'clock until midnight, the two illustrious figures with their heads together exchanging a rapid fire of question and answer, but the rest of us were by no means silent. Sherman was full of affability and took good-naturedly the sharp inquiries. "How was it, General, at Shiloh; was not your line quite too unguarded on the Corinth side, and was not the coming on of Sidney Johnston a bad surprise for you?" "Oh, later in the war," said Sherman, "we no doubt should have done differently, but we got ready for them as they came on." "Was there not bad demoralisation," I said, "ten thousand or more skulkers huddled under the bluff on the Tennessee?" "Oh," said Sherman, "the rear of an army in battle is always a sorry place; but on the firing line, where I was, things did not look so bad."—"Your adversaries, General, were often good fellows, were they not, and you are good friends now?" "The best fellows in the world," said Sherman, "and as to friendship, Hood wants me to be his literary executor and take care of his memoirs."

He was ready to confess to mistakes, and with frank and proper exultation pointed out the gradual improvement and the triumphant result. Plenty of good stories and much hearty laughter came in among the more tragic episodes. We saw John Fiske take it all in, swaying in his chair ponderously back and forth, but the War in the Mississippi Valley, which came out soon after, showed that his memory retained every point. On another occasion, as Sherman on a stormy night took me home in his carriage, we skirted the blocks which had been the site of Camp Jackson, the first field of the Civil War that Sherman had witnessed. That was the beginning of things in the West, and he on that day only a by-stander. He was at the time possibly irresolute as to what he should do, and he certainly had no premonition of the large part he was destined to play. As he looked out of the window that night into the driving storm on the spot where once he had brooded so anxiously, I wondered if he had any memory of the soul struggle of that crisis.

After his death, there took place in the streets of St. Louis an imposing military funeral. As the cortège paused for a moment, I stood at the side of the gun-carriage which bore the coffin wrapped in the flag, and paid my tribute to this good man and great citizen who had played his part well.

A controversy, which has now died away, used to be waged during and soon after the Civil War as to whether West Point had really vindicated a place for itself. Many an American, full of that over-confidence which besets us, maintained that a man could become a good soldier by a turn of the hand as it were. Given courage, physical vigour, and fair practical aptitude, a lawyer, a merchant, or a civil engineer could take sword in hand and at short notice head a squadron or muster an army. This view has so far as I know been set forward by no one more plausibly than by Jacob D. Cox, a stout civilian soldier who led well the Twenty-third Corps and later became Governor of Ohio and a successful Secretary of the Interior. I once met General Cox in an interesting way, on a Sunday afternoon, at the home of Judge Alfonso Taft at Walnut Hills, a pleasant suburb of Cincinnati. Judge Taft in those days was a somewhat noteworthy figure. He had served the country well as Minister to Russia and also as a member of the Cabinet at Washington, and was one of the foremost men of the fair city where he lived. His sister-in-law married an intimate friend of mine, and there were other reasons which gave me some title to his notice, and I was for the time his guest. A sturdy white-haired boy of ten or so sat at the table at dinner and hung with his brothers about the group of elders as they talked in the afternoon. This boy was William H. Taft taking in the scraps of talk as the chatting progressed on his father's porch. General Cox dropped in for an afternoon call and I scanned eagerly his scholarly face and figure, well knit through the harshest experiences in camp and battle. He was a man of fine tastes and well accomplished both in science and literature with a substratum of manly tenacity and good sense, who did noble duty on many a field and produced, in his Military Reminiscences one of our most satisfactory books on the Civil War period. The manner of the veteran was simple and pleasant. Nothing betrayed that he had been the hero in such an eventful past. I have of course no thought of sketching his career or criticising his account of it. As to the point to which I have referred, his claim that a peaceful American can be turned into a soldier off-hand and that the West Pointers no more made good in the war than did the civilians, he sets forth the case calmly. He takes the curriculum at West Point as it was sixty years ago and plainly shows that as regards acquirements in general it bears a poor comparison with that of civilian universities and colleges of that period. As to especial military education, he claims that the instruction at West Point was comparatively trifling; the cadets were well drilled only in the elements, while as regards the larger matters of strategy and the management of armies there was slight opportunity to learn. The cadet came out qualified to drill a company or at most a regiment, while as to manoeuvring of divisions and corps he had no chance to perfect himself. The cadet, moreover, had this handicap—he had been made the slave of routine and his natural enterprise had been so far repressed that he magnified petty details and precedents and was slow to adapt himself to an unlooked-for emergency. He cites an example where he himself was set to fight a battle by a West Point superior with old-fashioned muzzle-loading guns, the improved arms which were at hand and which might easily have been used with good effect remaining in the rear. His conclusion is that a wide-awake American trained in the hustle of daily life, with a good basis of common sense and some capacity for adaptation, could, with a few month's experience, undertake to good advantage the direction of soldiers, and that the West Point preceding 1861 had an influence rather nugatory in bringing about success. It is perhaps sufficient answer to arguments of this kind that while during our Civil War there was a most relentless sifting of men for high positions, little regard being paid to the education and antecedents of those submitted to it, the men who finally emerged at the front were almost exclusively West Pointers. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas, the Union champions par excellence, were West Pointers. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, the Johnstons, and Longstreet are no less conspicuous among the Confederates. Civilians for the most part were not found in the high places, or if they were so placed the results were unfortunate, as in the cases of Butler, Banks, and McClernand. There were of course good soldiers who came from civil life. Cox himself is a conspicuous instance, and there were Terry, John A. Logan, and other good division commanders. On the Southern side may be instanced N.B. Forrest and J.B. Gordon; but these men rarely attained to more than secondary positions, the