No military occurrences followed this, save the return from time to time of the boys in blue, and Independence Day witnessed a public picnic in their honour, held on “Brier Hill,” and managed by a committee of women at whose head were Mrs. Charles H. Mason (Rachel Huckeby), Mrs. Daniel L. Armstrong (Susan James), and Miss Kate Kolb. General Walter Q. Gresham, announced as speaker of the day, was unable to fulfill his engagement, and Edwin R. Hatfield made an able substitute in the grace of fluent oratory. Ferdinand Mengis, of Tell City, spoke to the Germans present in their mother tongue, and the sounding aisles of the green woods rang once more with the anthem of the free, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The knowledge that the cruel war was over filled “to its highest top sparkle each heart and each cup,” though among the sturdy lads who had gone away in youth’s flush of health, some came home as aged men of broken constitution, with perhaps an empty sleeveer frightful scars. Others had crossed the river to rest under the shade of the trees, in the faraway Southland “where all the golden year the summer roses blow.” Whether the resting place of their sacred dust is marked today by gleaming marble or lost under the verdure of fifty fleeting years, both North and South have come at length to realize that for Federal and Confederate hero alike,

“Glory guards, with solemn round, the bivouac of the dead.”

From the book History of Perry County, Indiana