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 cortege 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