All of these occurrences were joyous occasions, but one day in October the Troopers were called upon to perform a duty which saddened every heart. On that day, for the first time since the outbreak of hostilities, there was a voice missing at roll call which would never respond again. Stuart Wheeler had fallen a victim to typhoid fever, contracted while in Puerto Rico, and to the grave of this lost comrade the Troopers marched in silent sorrow to pay the last military respects.
Mr. Wheeler had seemed in good health upon his arrival in the United States after the campaign, and, with several friends, had gone upon a hunting trip in the Maine woods. There the fever seized him, and he died a few days after his removal to a Boston hospital.
Of the departed young hero, the Troopers will ever speak with affection and praise. In college he was an unusually earnest student, on the athletic fields he won laurels that will long remain green, at home he was a loving son and brother, with the Troop he showed the mettle of a gallant soldier. He died for his country—as surely as though his body had been found on a Puerto Rican battlefield, pierced with a Spanish bullet.
At noon on the eleventh day of November, the City Troopers gathered at their armory to bid farewell to the United States Volunteer service. Their sixty-day furlough had expired, and while there was not one who would have hesitated to re-enlist should need arise, it is safe to say that none were sorry that the moment for ending their terms as warriors had arrived. Six men were unable to be present because of sickness.
Lieutenant B. F. Hughes, of the Tenth U. S. Cavalry, was on hand to muster-out the men, all of whom were first obliged to report to Doctors Spelissy and Brinton for physical examinations.
For a week preceding Captain Groome had made every preparation calculated to expedite the work, and before the men were drawn up for roll call, all the muster-out rolls, the descriptive lists and discharge papers had been prepared for the mustering officer. Even the computations of pay for each man had been figured out. As soon as each Trooper had received his physical examination he was dismissed until the following Monday. On the morning of that day discharge papers and pay were ready for all the Troopers, and so far as they were concerned the war was over.
It was not until twenty days later that the Spanish Commissioners, in Paris, agreed to accept the American terms, and surrendered to the United States 240,110 square miles of territory, with a population estimated at 9,500,000. A treaty of peace between the nations was then prepared. Practically, however, peace had existed since that day in August when but a few minutes separated the City Troopers' bivouac, in a field of flowers, from a charge which would have made desolate hundreds of homes.
