HISTORY OF THE ORPHAN BRIGADE.

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been;" and the knowledge of what part they played in the great tragedy whose curtain was at last rung down only after the world had witnessed their undoing,   all this had the effect of profoundly stirring the minds of these men, intensifying their feelings, and of binding them together as only achievements, sufferings, calamities borne in common, can strengthen the ties that unite either families or organized bodies of men.

In the beautiful ceremony of decorating the graves of their dead, one who studies the meaning of manifestations finds indications of thoughts and feelings that are not paraded before men. Running through the simple ceremonies of these occasions   the prayer, the unstudied address, the quiet conversations of the men and women who move reverently above the sleeping dust of their comrades and friends   is the echo of a tender refrain, an undertone of sadness, which speaks of a past whose lines are deeply and ineffaceably graven upon heart and character, to the chastening of them and the bettering of them in directions most honorable to human nature.

If loyal comradeship among the living, continuing through the life of man, is noble, the reverential tribute of annually " decking the hallowed mould " where dead comrades sleep is both beautiful and useful. When Rome ceased to apotheosize her good and great men, (a step toward losing reverence for the memory of those whose lives had been devoted to her service), the first traces of "Ichabod" were written upon the walls of the mighty empire   her glory had begun to depart. And when the Confederate soldier ceases to take a deep and serious interest in the dead past in which he was a notable actor, and to manifest to the world that he still holds in his heart and honors in his thought the comrades who trod with him the paths of suffering, of danger, and of manful deeds, he will cease to cherish in him and his posterity the noble traits that make the highest order of citizen and the truest patriot.

At the close of the war thousands of our fellow-soldiers still lay in the rude graves on the many battlefields and in their vicinity; about the hospitals where they died of wounds or disease; and near prisons where they died or were killed. Some few had been brought home by their relatives and friends. To Charlie Herbst, an intelligent, brave and faithful soldier of Co. H, Second Kentucky, more than to any other, perhaps to all others, is due the honor of making it possible to identify the graves of hundreds of them and remove the bodies to cemeteries in the South, or home to Kentucky to rest with kindred dust. Soon after the war he began to devote himself sedulously to locating the spots where his fellow-Kentuckians lay, and indicating them by neat head-boards.   From time to time for twenty years these