The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-20

strnctive and Able Address by the Rev.
 G. R. Van De Water-supper Served by
 the Ladies.
 Forefathers' day was celebrated last evening by the New Haven Congrega- tional club at the Grand avenue Con gregational church. The women of the church served a splendid supper at 6:30 o'clock and made arrangements for 250,
 but owing to so much illness about town only about 150 were present. There was a large amount of provisions left over and the women of the church will serve ten-cent turkey supper this eve- ming.
 The women in charge of the supper last evening were as follows: Mrs. w. s. Bishop, president of the Ladies' Aid society, chairman of the committees
 chairman of the committee in charge of
 the tables, Mrs. Henry Stevens assisted
 by Mrs. James Hull; chairman of the committee on food, Miss Gertrude Brad ley, assisted by Mrs. Lennon, Mrs. John Sherwood and Mrs. Henry Musch; pre-
 siding at the tables, Mrs. F. H. Hem ingway, Mrs. Frederick Baldwin, Miss Lucy Griswold, Mrs. Charles Griswold,
 Mrs. Holton, Mrs. Hufford, Mrs. Joseph
 Blinn, Mrs. J. H. Augur, Mrs. William A. Warner, Miss Josephine Bradley,
 Mrs. l.. l.. Bradley, Mrs. Walter Gra- ham, Mrs. James Johnstone, Mrs. Bow
 ditch, Mrs. Arthur Brown Mrs. Walter A. Buck, Mrs. George Kelley, Miss AL ice Finch, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Mehaffey,
 Mrs James Nelson, Mrs. Arthur, Mrs. Alfred Bradley, Mrs. Rogers, Miss Mi
 nerva Mallory, Mrs. Mary Linsley, Mrs.
 Meek, Miss Mary Blakeslee, Mrs. Cur tis, Mrs. Van Name, Miss Maud Kelley, , Miss Edna Sparks, Mrs. Charles Foster,
 Mrs George S. Adams, Mrs. Henry
 Franklyn, Miss Minnie Goodsen and
 Mrs Gilbert Rowe.
 The tables looked very fine with can- delabra and decorations of holly.
 After supper the celebration exercises were held in the auditorium at eight o'clock. The president, Rev. J. Lee
 Mitchell, presided. Prayer was offered
 by Deacon Perkins of the United church.
 Musical selections were given by the
 quartette of the church.
 At the hour of opening the exercises about three hundred people were pres
 ent, many coming in to hear the ad-
 dress by Dr. Van De Water. The sub
 ject of the address was "A Chaplain's Experience in the Cuban Campaign" The speaker was Rev. George R. Van De Water, D. D., chaplain of the Sev-
 enty-frst New York regiment. In part he spoke as follows:
 "The occasion of the war with Spain
 might be termed the sinking of a bat tleship, but knowing men would not claim that any government would go to
 war for that alone; and yet it was one
 of the causes of the war. The people of this country were awakened by the story of the terrible atrocities in Cuba in neighboring island only one hun
 dred miles from our shores. When war
 was declared it was declared by Spain herself But we were unprepared for army was small.
 We did not go into war to expand
 our territory; we did go into war to stop oppression. And we are going to
 do our duty now that the war is over. I was fortunate in going with the only regiment that went out from New York.
 Our regiment and the Second Massa-
 chusetts were the first two to recruit up to the full strength, and we started May S. We were put on board of trans ports, but, learning that Spanish ships
 were off the coast, the two regiments were disembarked and sent to Florida
 by train.
 "There were many volunteers who said they did not expect picnic ana yet they began growing as soon as anything went wrong and there was no
 picnic. Hardly had we got comfortably in camp, some of the soldiers were ill and we had no medicines proper for the occasion. I was sent down to Tampa
 for medicines and all I could find was
 a few quinine pills. Later the proper medicines It is not possible for an ar my to have everything in two weeks. But this was a short and glorious war.
 We have occasion for gratitude that in
 such unreadiness we gained such splen- did victories.
 At Port Tampa we saw the unreadi- ness for war. There were thirty-five transport ships in the harbor It was a case of grab, getting this whole army from Port Tampa. Our men went on
 the Viglancia. All night we worked getting our men and equipment on board; and we lay off in Tampa Bay for ten days in the hottest days of
 summer. Those were weary days. It
 was a beautiful sight when the thirty five ships, conveyed by sixteen war
 ships, left the bay. Most fortunately we had good weather. No one knew where we were to land. After a while we rounded up on the southeastern
 coast of Cuba and then we knew we were going to Santiago. For four days we waited and saw some very inter-
 esting bombardments of the places where we were to land At the mouth of the harbor we saw the magnificent
 Morro castle, which had stood for 300 years.
 '',The block houses along the coast
 had been used in the war with the Cubans. On the night of June 23 Gen.
 eral Shafter came up on the Yale and ordered the regiment to disembark. We were the first troops to land at Siboney. We landed in our boats in the surf;
 there were no docks or lighters. Most of the men got pretty wet. The day we landed the tempera teaswruDWDW