"At this the General put spurs to his horse, and left. Half an hour afterward, a Corporal's Guard came after Tom. They took him up to the marquee of the Surgeon of the Division. Tom played it just as well there, and yesterday his discharge came down, all O.K., and they've got the Commissary on the strength of it, and are having a high old time generally."
"Bully boy with a glass eye! How are you, discharge!" and like slang exclamations broke rapidly and rapturously from the crowd.
"But," said one of the more thoughtful of the crowd, as the condition of a brother then lying hopelessly ill, with no prospect of a discharge,—although it had been promised repeatedly for months past,—pressed itself upon his attention, "how shameful that this able-bodied coward and idler should get off in this way, when so many better men are dying by inches in the hospitals. A General who understood his command and had more knowledge of human nature, could not be deceived in that way."
"Tom had lounged about Divisions Head-Quarters so much, that he knew old Pigey thoroughly, and just when to take him," said a comrade.
"All the greater shame that our Generals can be taken off their guard at any time," retorted the other.
"Oh, well," continued he, "about what might be expected of one educated exclusively as a Topographical Engineer, and having no acquaintance with active field service, and with no talent for command; for it is a talent that West Point may educate, but cannot create."
"And what is a Tippo, Typo, or Toppographical Engineer, Sergeant?" broke in the little Irish Corporal, who chanced to be one of the group, rather seriously.
"Isn't it something like a land surveyor; and be Jabers, wasn't the great Washington himself a land surveyor? Eh? Maybe that's the rayson these Tippos, Typos, or Toppographical Engineers ride such high horses."
"Not badly thought of, Corporal," replied the Sergeant, amid laughter at Terence's discovery, and his attempt at pronunciation; "but Washington was a man of earnestness and ability, and not a guzzler of whiskey, and a mouther of indecent profanity. There are good officers in that Corps. There is Meade, the fighter of the noble Pennsylvania Reserves; Warren, a gentleman as well as a soldier. Others might be named. Meritorious men, but kept in the background while the place-men, cumberers of the service, refused by Jeff. Davis when making his selections from among our regular officers, as too cheap an article, are kept in position at such enormous sacrifices of men, money, and time. I have heard it said, upon good authority, that there is a nest of these old place-men in Washington, who keep their heads above water in the service, through the studied intimacy of their families with families of Members of the Cabinet—a toadyism that often elevates them to the depression of more meritorious men, and always at the expense of the country,—but—
'Dark shall be light.'