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From these headquarters Washington promulgated his memorable order for the cessation of hostilities and recalled the fact that its date, April 18th, was the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord.

    Thomas F. Bayard.

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The Hasbrouck family returned to their old home, made historic for all time, after the disbandment of the army and remained until it became the property of the State.  On July 4, 1850, the place was formally dedicated by Major-General Winfield Scott, dedicatory address delivered by John J. Monell, an ode by Mary E. Monell, and an oration by Hon. John W. Edmunds.  The centennial of the disbanding of the army was observed here October 18, 1883.  After the noonday procession of 10,000 men in line, three miles in length, with governors and representative people from almost every State, 150,000 people, “ten acres” square, gathered in the historic grounds.  Senator Bayard, of Delaware, was chairman of the day.  Hon. William M. Evarts was the orator, and modestly speaking in the third person, Wallace Bruce, author of this handbook, was the poet.  No one there gathered can ever forget that afternoon of glorious sunlight or the noble pageant.  The great mountains, which had so frequently been the bulwark of liberty and a place of refuge for our fathers, were all aglow with beauty, as if, like Horeb’s bush, they too would open their lips in praise and thanksgiving.  One of the closing sentences of Senator Evarts’ address is unsurpassed in modern or ancient eloquence:  “These rolling years have shown growth, forever growth, and strength, increasing strength, and wealth and numbers ever expanding, while intelligence, freedom, art, culture and religion have pervaded and ennobled all this material greatness.  Wide, however, as is our land and vast our population to-day, these are not the limits to the name, the fame, the power of the life and character of Washington.  If it could be imagined that this nation, rent by disastrous feuds, broken in its unity, should ever present the miserable spectacle of the undefiled garments of his fame parted among his countrymen, while for the seamless vesture of his virtue they cast lots—­if this unutterable shame, if this immeasurable crime, should overtake this land and this people, be sure that no spot in the wide world is inhospitable to his glory, and no people in it but rejoices in the influence of his power and his virtue.”  In his lofty sentences the old heroes seemed to pass again in review before us, and the daily life of that heroic band, when Congress sat inactive and careless of its needs until the camp rose in mutiny, happily checked, however, by the great commander in a single sentence.  It will be remembered that Washington began to read his manuscript without glasses, but was compelled to stop, and, as he adjusted them to his eyes, he said, “You see, gentlemen, that I have not only grown gray, but blind, in your service.”  It is needless to say that the “anonymously called” meeting was not held.