"They have followed me from the last wood, sir."
"Let them go, sir, this instant. Send them back, sir. D—n you, sir, I'll teach you to respect private property," replied the General, deploying his staff at the same time to assist in driving the dogs back, as notwithstanding the efforts of the Sergeant to send them to the rear, they crouched at a respectful distance
and eyed him wistfully. "D—n you, sir, I am the General commanding the Division, sir, and by G—d, sir, I command you, as such, to send those dogs back, sir!" nervously stammered the General as he rode excitedly from one side of the road to the other in front of the Sergeant.
The affair speedily became ridiculous. Driving dogs was evidently with the General a more congenial employment than manœuvring men. But his efforts in the one proved as unsuccessful as in the other, as notwithstanding the aid afforded by his followers, the dogs would turn tail but for a short distance. After swearing most dogmatically, as an officer remarked, he turned to resume his ride to the head of the column, but had not gone ten yards before there was a whistle for the dogs. Squab was sent back to ferret out the offender. The whistling increased, and shortly the whole Staff and the Regimental officers were engaged in an attempt at its suppression. But in vain. Whistling in Company A, found echoes in Company B; and after some minutes of fruitless riding hither and thither the General was forced to retire under a storm of all kinds of dog-calls, swelled in volume by the adjacent Regiments.
That authority should be thus abused by the General in endeavoring to enforce his ridiculous order, and set at naught by the men in thus mocking at obedience, is to be deprecated. The men took that method of rebuking the inconsistency, which would permit Regular and many Volunteer Regiments to be followed by all manner of dogs,
"Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
And cur of low degree,"
and yet refuse them the accidental company of but a brace of canines. A simple report of the offender,
supposing the Sergeant to have been one, would have been the proper course, and would have saved a General of Division the disgrace of being made a laughing-stock for his command.
"Talent is something: but tact is everything," said an eminent man, and nowhere has the remark a more truthful application than in the army.
A favorite employment after the evening halt, during this three days' march, was the gathering of mushrooms. The old fields frequent along the route abounded with them, and many a royal meal they furnished. To farmers' sons accustomed to the sight of close cultivation, these old fields, half covered with stunted pines, sassafras, varieties of spice wood, and the never-failing persimmon tree, were objects of curiosity. It was hard to realize that we were marching through a country once considered the Garden of America, whose bountiful supplies and large plantations had become classic through the pen of an Irving and other famous writers. Fields princely in size, but barren as Sahara; buildings, once comfortable residences, but now tottering into ruin, are still there, but "all else how changed." The country is desolation itself. Game abounds, but whatever required the industry of man for its continuance has disappeared.