An original hand-written eight-page document (plus inked title page), written from a speech given by George H. Mader. Inked on recto side only of each page on 9-7/8"x7-7/8" paper, single staple on middle top edge.

Begins: "My dear Comrades: Nearly two-score years have drifted away into eternity since we returned from the bloody fields of carnage to our peaceful vocations in life. Many of us have since fallen by the way-side...dropping out of our sight...reminding us of the near approach of our own exit from a world, to the history of which we have been permitted to contribute our mite. Among those lately mustered out of mundane service we mourn the loss of our dearly beloved Captain R. S. Milton. He was heart and soul a soldier without any of the coarse features so commonly attributed to military characters...for the men who served under him in the sunshine and in the storm; in victory and in defeat; in joy and in sorrow of those years which made the history of the Ninth Mass. Battery one of the glittering points on the record of Our Nation's golden page of remembrance. Captain Milton was a hero, one of the truly patriotic type. I have personally experienced this to be a fact. One the 21st day of August 1864, on that memorable Sabbath morning when the rebels along the Weldon Railroad met with such a crushing blow from General Hanon our left and shells fell thick, and fast upon our position near the Yellow Tavern, I was No. 5 man supplying the gun of the second detachment, Sergeant Nelson Lowell, with ammunition. Captain Milton was squatting down, peeping over the parapet for the purpose of examining the range. He was but a few feet distant from my pathway from limber-chest to muzzle; and just as I came up behind him a rebel-shell dropped almost in his immediate front without bursting, but throwing and spattering mud all over him. He assumed an upright position as if he were touched by an electric spark; turned around and looked about him as if surprised; but with a gentle smile curling around his lips. He was extremely pale, but without any visible sign of excitement. 'Captain, you had a rather narrow escape' I...said to him. 'Yes, but an inch is as good as a mile' he kindly...replied. This sentence from our captain's lips at the supreme moment of danger I shall never forget, it was the language of a heroic mind..." Title cover page signed at the end "by Geo. H. Mader." Each page with a tiny circular rubberstamp with an asterisk in the middle on the lower portion; the last page loose from staple gathering.