Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. III.djvu/131

 ULYSSES SIMPSON GftA&amp;gt;nV M&quot; on March 4, 1885, congress passed a bill creating him a general on the retired list, thus restoring him to his former rank in the army. He knew that his disease would soon prove fatal. He now bent all his energies to the completing of his &quot;Memoirs,&quot; in order that the money realized from the sale might provide for his family. He summoned all his will power to this task, and nothing in his career was more heroic than the literary labor he now per formed. Hovering between life and death, suffer ing almost constant agony, and speechless from disease, he struggled through his daily task, and laid down his pen only four days before his death. At this time the last portrait was made of the great soldier. On June 16, 1885, he was removed to Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, N. Y., where he passed the remaining five weeks of his life. On Thurs day, July 23, at eight o clock in the morning, Grant passed away, surrounded by his family. A public funeral was held in New York on Saturday, August 8, which was the most magnificent spectacle of the kind ever witnessed in this country. The body was deposited in a temporary grave in River side park, overlooking the Hudson river, until the tomb was completed and formally dedicated with imposing ceremonies, April 27, 1897. In Chicago a bronze equestrian statue of the general has been erected in Lincoln park, overlooking Lake Michi-