Club

At Stillwater, Mass., the Last Man's Club was holding its last dinner. There were really three Last Men--Peter Hall, 89; Charles Lockwood, 86; John Goff, 85. Sixty-six years ago they had marched off to the Civil War with Company B of the First Minnesota Regiment. Many soldiers of Company B fell at their first battle--Bull Run--many at Antietam, at Gettysburg, at other battles that are history to almost everyone today but are memories to the old men of the Last Man's Club. In 1886 there were only 34 Company B members surviving. In that year those 34 men formed the Last Man's Club. They agreed to meet every year on July 21 (Bull Run Day), as long as any of them should be left alive. They put away a bottle of Burgundy from which the Last Man should drink a toast to his dead comrades. They decided that in their dining-hall there would be 34 chairs, even when most of those chairs should hold no occupant. And they appointed Mrs. Samuel Bloomer, widow of the Company's color sergeant to be custodian of their battle flag.

For last week's dinner Mrs. Bloomer had draped with black and ornamented with bouquets 31 of the 34 chairs. The three men who remained decided that this would be their last meeting, feeling, perhaps, that none of them might be left alive when July 21 should have arrived again. So they brought out the bottle of Burgundy and stood stiffly erect while Peter Hall gave the toast: "Men love their country now, but our dead comrades loved "it most." The Last Dinner of the Last Man's Club was history.