casualties of battle after they were in the service." In all that I have said concerning the record of Kansas during the war, I have simply quoted the official figures, but these are a eulogy far above and far beyond the compass of words. They establish three remarkable facts: first, that Kansas was the only State in the Union that filled and more than filled the quotas assigned her; second, that she furnished more soldiers in proportion to population than any other State; and, third, that the proportion of her soldiers killed in battle was larger than that of any other State. But not alone in the number of soldiers furnished, and their casualties in battle, was Kansas a notable figure during the Civil War. With Missouri on her eastern border, the Indian Territory south and westward, the vast plains swarming with savages, the young State was almost surrounded by foes and the position of her people was one of extreme exposure and peril. Her volunteer regiments were soon ordered to distant points; the First and Seventh were in the Army of the Tennessee, the Eighth was serving in the Army of the Cumberland, the Tenth was with the Army of the Gulf, and Fifth was with the Army of the Southwest, and nearly all the others were attached to the Army of the Frontier. Thus it happened that the borders of Kansas were frequently left exposed to the fury of her enemies, and were repeatedly invaded by swarms of guerrillas. More than a dozen cities and towns of Kansas were sacked and burned by the cowardly, brutal miscreants who followed Quantrell, Anderson, Todd, and other border chiefs, and at last, in October, 1864, the strong army of the Confederate General Price moved northward to invade the State, expecting to capture Fort Leavenworth and drive from this region of country all the loyal people.

this.

But Kansas was prepared even for such an emergency as

The isolation and perils of her position were fully comprehended by her people, and in every city, town, and neighborhood within her borders companies of well-armed and fairly

drilled militia had been organized. The flower of the young State's youth and manhood was in the volunteer service, but the boys and the old men and those whose physical condition or personal duties prevented them from enlisting for continuous service were ready for this emergency. The Governor's call to the militia for active service was responded to at once by twentyfour well-organized regiments, numbering fully 16,000 men, and for twenty days this force did duty in the field. It invaded Missouri, it confronted with sturdy firmness the veteran legions of Price. Several regiments participated in severe engagements, in which they sustained heavy losses; all were honorably mentioned by the commanding general of the United States' forces, and their numbers, enthusiasm, and valor contributed largely to the utter discomfiture of the Confederate Army and its hasty retreat.

"States are not great except as men may make them;
Men are not great except they do and dare;
But States, like men, have destinies that take them,
That bear them on not knowing why or where.

All merit lies in daring the unequal,

All glory comes from daring to begin.

Fame loves the State that, reckless of the sequel,
Fights long and well, though it may lose or win."

The Banquet at Topeka, Kansas,

February 6, 1889.

Response to the Toast "The Army Mule,"

By Colonel J. H. Gillpatrick.

THE ARMY MULE.

"King, prince, and potentate are of the royal class";

I, good my lords, am but a meek and lowly ass."

Companions, something asinine seems to be wanted. Lend me, then, your relics of a stormy past; lend me your ears while I chant of the army mule.

Groping for the origin of my theme, I am bothered at the very start. Sure it is that the mule was not antediluvian. No such discordant voice disturbed the leafy solitude in paradisiacal days. Noah named him not in his bill of lading. The animals shipped to be saved from the Deluge, stowed higgledy-piggledy, must have caused many a chance acquaintance and strange liaisons, and it is not improbable that this mule, the puzzle of the zoologist, dates from the voyage of the Ark.

The natural antipathy of the dam to the sire is well known, and it is not to be presumed that the mule was the result of a theory and practice of the breeders of animals in those days, for we find it laid down in the Levitical law: "Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind." (Leviticus 19:19.) The noble animal is shrouded in mystery; and any hypothesis is doubtful. He came into notice by no gradual process, and evolution will not account for his coming.

Anah, the son of a patriarch, became distinguished among his fellows, and a man of mark by the discovery of mules, for it is written: "This was that Anah that found the mules in the wilderness, as he was feeding the asses of Zibeon his father." (Genesis 36:24.) For this he is remembered, while his contemporaries are forgotten. Why this finding, evidently a startling thing to the ancients, was introduced by the historiographer to be so meagerly explained is difficult to understand. Probably he gave us all he knew, and maybe more not an uncommon thing among historians from that time to Herodotus, and even in these degenerate days. Anah, had he lived, would have been astonished to see what a "big find" he made.

The mule was begotten, and he gendered not again. That much is certain. But he was not an original idea; is rather an improvement on that great invention, animal mechanism. And indeed in the economy of Nature he is a scratch-a chance carom on the jack and the mare, a kind of beastly miscegenation. Looking through sacred history for his pedigree, you will find the first mention made of the ass, and discover that there were a great many asses in those days.

The Redeemer of mankind rode to Jerusalem on an ass and a colt the foal of an ass, and the people shouted "Hosanna!" Saul of Tarsus was astraddle of the same animal when he journeyed to Damascus and was so miraculously brought to a realizing sense of his sins. But few men nowadays, no matter how solid they might feel with their constitutions, would risk reputation by such locomotion. What would you think of a traveling lecturer riding into Topeka on an ass?

Well, after an accidental coition, a conception under protest, the offspring came rapidly into general use and was called a mule. When King David sent for Solomon, he said: "Let him come upon mine own mule." And of David's sons at another time it is written that "every man gat him upon his mule and fled." And that first secessionist, Absalom, rode a mule, “and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth, and the mule that was under him went away." The inspired penman who wrote and hands down to us this veracious history plainly is disposed to gloat over Absalom's tragic end, and would laugh at his calamity, but he further interests himself to guy the mule, to make game of him. I don't know what they expected of mules in those days, and I don't see what the mule could do but go away. After Absalom was taken up between heaven and earth, the mule that was under him went away; of course he did, he had no further business there; and he has been going ever since.

1

George Washington first introduced him into this country,