Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/513

 Germantown, to commemorate the battle, from being disturbed.

By my appointment he had been a member of the commission which erected the memorial and had been much talked of for the governorship at the time I was selected. He told me of his trouble and then sat in my office and talked. A large man, weighing perhaps two hundred and twenty pounds, with gray hair, blue eyes and a double chin, he did pretty much all of the talking and was deliberate, with low, unemphatic utterance to the point almost of exasperation. He had been in the same class with Dr. Nathan A. Pennypacker in the school at the Trappe. He had been at the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg and had there spoken. In creating the commission Governor Stuart had asked him to be a subordinate to General Louis Wagner, who was never at Gettysburg at all and had commanded a negro regiment and was turned out of the commission by Governor Tener, but the General had held too high a rank to be a bob to any kite and he had declined. He had gone at one time to the office of General Wagner. As he entered he stepped on a mat and a bell rang. Wagner yelled at him: “Get off of the mat!” He turned around on the mat and the bell again rang.

“Get off of the mat!” Wagner yelled more loudly.

“He probably did not recognize you,” I gently suggested.

“It makes no difference who I was,” replied the General, “he is no gentleman. I turned on my heel and have had nothing to do with him since.” And the General continued:

“The rebels who tried to break up the government are now in control of it. The Secretary of War has ordered that wherever in the records of his department the word ‘Rebellion’ is written, it shall be obliterated and the words ‘The Civil War’ be substituted. It is all due to that fellow Roosevelt, who is disordered but has an infinite capacity for mischief.” Rh