ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 253 



times, of which we are speaking, the greatest skill was 

 needed; but in the history of our country no great oc- 

 casion has arisen in which the man of the hour did not 

 appear. Pilots may steer but the winds, the tides, and 

 the currents move the ship. 



In those weary days, "Grief burned faster than tears 

 could drown," but the end came at last, and now, after 

 fifty years, it seems like a frightful dream. Many of the 

 old men of that day still hang on like oak leaves in the 

 late winter, and a goodly number are now gathered in one 

 of the most remarkable reunions of all time. 



The magnitude of that contest is difficult of compre- 

 hension to the generation of today. The Greek children 

 were taught to commit to memory the names of the three 

 hundred heroes who fell at Thermopylae. But so great 

 was the Civil War that the mere cost of compiling and 

 printing its official record was $3,000,000. Human mem- 

 ory could only contain its principal events. 



When I visited the Wilderness Battle Ground a few 

 years ago, I sought for some memento to carry home, and 

 in one of the trees hung an empty hornets' nest, collected 

 by nature's little warriors in time of peace, and it now 

 hangs in my library as a suitable memorial of an empty 

 battlefield. The Hornets' Nest Brigade is here today, 

 but without their stings. Nature, the all-forgiving, takes 

 the red battlefield in her arms and hides it with flowers 

 and harvests. 



In Shiloh Park is commemorated the first great battle 

 of the war where a large part of the troops on both sides 

 had seen but little of drill and discipline, but where they, 

 nevertheless, fought with heroic valor. 



At Gettysburg may be seen in the fertile fields of an 

 old and populous state the memorial of trained and tried 

 troops coming on both sides from many a well-contested 

 field. 



