The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-01-02
WAR AND WEST POINT.
HOW THE GUNS REsOUND
AMONG THE HILLS.
"Reminiscences and Reflections on
the Great Military School
ON the Hudson.

on the Hudson.
The echo of guns from this historical
circle of hills is not the least Of it's at
fractions. The French word for thunder
has always seemed to me descriptive
| sgrondeur's exactly describes that noble
and terrible sound. So when thirteen
guns announced the victory at Santiago
frDm gentleman's country seat and
were followed by forty-four from the
official standpoint, the way the hills
took them up and sent them all over
this piece of country was something
glorious. There is a great deal to think
or past and present, up here in this
romantic locality. One cannot but
think of the shades of Washington and
Lafayette, like those shadows on the
Broken calmly standing on old Gro
nest, and as the eleven guns were fired
over the body of Sergeant Hamilton
Fish it seemed as if the shade of his
grandfather Nicholas Fish, stood
with his chapeau in his hand, saying
We'll done!" Here the friend of Wash
ington came to consult with his great
chief and dear friend, and the young
at Santiago was entitled to wear the
Order of the Cincinnati of the first
class. 1t is good patriotic fighting
blood. Here more than anywhere is
soldiers funeral impressive, and when
the gallant Gilman was laid away in
the beautiful West Point cemetery, "a
place to make one in love with DEATH"
it seemed that the guns said: "SWeet
and decent is it to die for ones coun-
try
And scarcely had these echoes died
away when the rousing salute of
twenty-one guns was ringing merrily
TO greet Prince of good fighting blood,
Victor Emmanuel The cadets were
drawn up in royal good order, the tents
We're ready for a march, for Colonel
Helm, a .'beau sabreur'' himself, full Of
his profession, was sending them off fer
an experience of camping out and doing
their own cooking. Then the trumpets
rang out like a carlton. The royal
young man, educated as becomes the
grandson of Victor Emmanuel, was de-
lighted with that hour before sunset,
when he saw how we made republican
soldiers. He knew how they could
fight, for he had read history and the
daily newspapers, and he saw how well
they were trained. Perhaps these
twenty-one guns will reverberate fur
Their than we think on the italian plains.
A friend writes me from Berlin:
Europe very much respects Americas
big guns and listens now for them re-
spectfuly.' We have become of age;
we are now twenty-one ourselves. and
must enter the family of nations and
play the part Of an heir who has come
into his inheritance, on longer the
"Yonker," as the old Dutch settlers
called the boy of the family. The
YonlSer has put on the toga virilis.
One thinks great thoughts as, wan
dering back into the valleys behind the
Bull Head Mountain, which faces Gro
nest, one comes on graveyard not less
solemn than that at Arlington, but I'M
marked by monument save one lately
put up by the patriotic Daughters of
the Revolution to those heroes who fell
at the battle of White Plains, for the
wounded and sick, of all those years
so full of misery, who were brought
here, as when Washington and Nicholas
Fish paced their horses up through this
serene and delicious valley, with grave
faces, talking of ways and means For
the army was so poor that when lnan
died his body was buried in a blanket
and his clothes were given to the next
man. The grassy field at which l look
ed on Sunday evening holds thousands
OF these farmer warriors who fell dur
ing those dreadful years from 1872 to
ITO. Nor does it make a sign, but one
hopes that these echoes, these reverbe-
rations from West Point. reach the de-
parted heroes, to tell their undaunted
souls that they did not die in vain.
How strange it seems to realize that
Professor Charles Eliot Norton could
have found no better man to quote than
supercilious Horace Walpole when, re-
ferring to our brave army, he found
nothing more appropriate to say than
Il should love my country better were
it not for my countrymen' One is
rather proud of ones countrymen when
he looks at this monument to the mem
DRY of Washington and Lafayette and
to those who fell, after patient suffer-
ing, hidden away in these hills,
Traveller going hence to Sparta, tell,
here IN obedience to her laws we fell.
That is POLITICALLY what the modest
stone says. In a pretty old Colonial
farmhouse near here Lafayette lay Ill
for long time. He is now honored at
Fishkin by Lafayette Post and hand
some monument. General Butterfield,
in full uniform, made the address al
the monument, in which he said some
beautiful things. Among others one
was that while the duty of a soldier
in action. is obedience, the duty of a
retired soldier is remembrance of those
who are gone All this neighborhood,
from Cold Spring up to Fishkill, is rich
With the breath of heroes, and is filed
With noble shades.
The soldier of to-day is no longer a
machine, as he was in the day of Fred
erick the Great. He became in our
Revolutionary War a thinking bayonet,
a citizen, not isolated, as in the States
where mercenaries are bought and sold,
but a living part Of ourselves. Look
for a moment at the portrait of the
Duke of Brunswick, painted by Sir
Peter Lely, man in a suit of armor, |
With bare neck, over which is draped a
scarf Of red velvet, While helmet, like I!
that OF Achilles, with a dozen nodding
plumes of blue, makes his head look
like that Of a fashionable lady. The
uniforms of the past removed the sol
der from human sympathy. In the
early days of Napoleon the white cloak
and red jacket and the chapeau bras