A Veteran Of The Blue And Gray Meet

Seeing Major A. F. R. Arndt's name on the register at the Germania hotel reminds the writer of an incident which occurred at the Somerville Springs, St. Clair, Mich., last summer. The Major, during the late unpleasantness, was one of the boys who wore the blue, and according to his tell, his men were "true blue." It happened that at the battle of Shiloh one of the important duties which the Major was called upon to perform was to make a tour of inspection of the outer pickets each morning, as they were in close quarters. Just across the river were the boys in gray, waiting impatiently for marching orders. It happened that the officer on inspection on the other side was Major C. C. Clarke, now of Detroit, who had given orders several times to his men to make a target of Major Arndt, but somehow they fell short of their mark and the Major came through safely. Last summer as above stated the Major of the Blue and the Major of the Gray were introduced to each other by the genial clerk of that hostelry, on the spacious veranda, and a more pathetic scene has seldom been witnessed than the exchange of courtesies between these brave warriors of '61 to '65. As they chatted, the light dawned upon them how near they had at different intervals come to being the cause of each other's death; and as the old veterans sat there with tears in their eyes and swelling, manly hearts, they thanked the God of battles for having spared their lives and brought them together after so many years, to enjoy the blessings of "one country and one flag." Major Clarke says that his eyes are open to the fact that they were wrong then, and that it is for the best that it went as it did, and that the thought that their eyes could not have been opened before the lives of eight hundred thousands of America's bravest sons should have been sacrificed, was a mystery which he could not solve.