'It Was on Me'

"My children have had other birthplaces, and so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth," he writes. "It was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in uncle sam's brick edifice when i might as well or better have gone somewhere else." He adds: 'I doubt greatly whether any public functionary of the united states has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself'