out from the piazza, a mortar, properly mounted on a mortar-bed and encompassed by some yards of a great chain, placed on the slope overlooking the little valley below, as if to protect the house.  I asked my host what was the history of this piece of ordnance.  “Well,” he said, “the chain you might have some personal interest in.  It is a part of the chain your great-uncle Israel placed across the river at West Point for the purpose of blocking or at least of checking the passage of the British vessels.  The chain was forged here in the Ringwood foundry and I have secured a part of it as a memento.  The mortar was given to me by President Lincoln, as also was the mortar-bed.”  This report naturally brought out the further question as to the grounds for the gift.  “I made this mortar-bed,” said Hewitt, “together with some others, and Lincoln was good enough to say that I had in this work rendered a service to the State.  It was in December, 1861, when the expedition against Fort Donelson and Fort Henry was being organised at Fort Cairo under the leadership of General Grant.  Grant reported that the field-pieces at his command would not be effective against the earthworks that were to be shelled and made requisition for mortars.”  The mortar I may explain to my unmilitary readers is a short carronade of large bore and with a comparatively short range.  The mortar with a heavy charge throws its missile at a sharp angle upwards, so that, instead of attempting to go through an earthwork, it is thrown into the enclosure.  The recoil from a mortar is very heavy, necessitating the construction of a foundation called a mortar-bed which is not only solid but which possesses a certain amount of elasticity through which the shock of the recoil is absorbed.  It is only through the use of such a bed that a mortar can be fired from the deck of a vessel.  Without such, protection, the shock would smash through the deck and might send the craft to the bottom.

The Ordnance Department reported to the Secretary of War and the Secretary to Lincoln that mortars were on hand but that no mortar-beds were available.  It was one of the many cases in which the unpreparedness of the government had left a serious gap in the equipment.  The further report was given to Lincoln that two or three months’ time would be required to manufacture the thirty mortar-beds that were needed.  A delay of any such period would have blocked the entire purpose of Grant’s expedition.  In his perplexity, Lincoln remembered that in his famous visit to New York two years before, he had been introduced to Mr. Hewitt, “a well-known iron merchant,” as “a man who does things.”  Lincoln telegraphed to Hewitt asking if Hewitt could make thirty mortar-beds and how long it would take.  Hewitt told me that the message reached him on a Saturday evening at the house of a friend.  He wired an acknowledgment with the word that he would send a report on the following day.  Sunday morning he looked