Mania. Never did it develop itself in a command, however, more spontaneously. The plain, practical sense of our Brigadier was the more noticeable to the men, on account of its marked contrast to the quibbles and conceit of the General of Division. The officers and men of the Brigade had with great care and cost selected a noble horse of celebrated stock upon which to mount their Brigadier, and, on a pleasant evening in March, a crowd informally assembled was busied in arranging for the morrow the programme of presentation. The General of Division, so far in the cold in the matter, was just then making himself sensibly felt.
"Colonel," said an officer, who from the direction of Brigade Head-quarters neared the crowd, addressing a central figure, "you might as well take the General's horse out to grass awhile."
"Explain yourself," say several.
"Pigey has his foot in the whole matter nicely. The General, you know, just returned this evening from sick leave. Well, he and his friends, who came with him to see the presentation ceremonies, had not been at Head-quarters an hour before that sucker-mouthed Aid made his appearance, and said that he was directed by the General Commanding the Division to place him under arrest. The fellow was drunk, and the General hardly deigned to notice him. As he staggered away, he muttered that there were fifteen charges against him, and that he would find the General's grip a tight one."
Amid exclamations, indicating that the perplexity of the matter could not prevent a sly smile at the ludicrous position in which the Brigadier and his friends from abroad were placed, the officer continued—
"But the General brings good news from Washington. The Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel of the 210th return at an early day."
"Yes, sir, that is so," broke in our Western Virginia Captain, who had just returned from enjoying one of the furloughs at that time so freely distributed. "At last the War Department, or rather Mr. Secretary Stanton, for all the balance of the department, as far as I could learn, thought the delay outrageous, fulfils its promise. After the Lieutenant-Colonel had been at home on a sick leave for some time, and we all thought the matter about dropped; what should I see one day but his name, with thirty-two others, in a daily, under the head of 'Dismissals from the Army.' There it was, dismissed for doing his duty, and published right among the names of scoundrels who had skulked five times from the battle-field; men charged with drunkenness, and every offence known to the Military Decalogue. My furlough had just come, and I started for Washington by the next boat, bound to see how the matter stood. The morning after I got there, I posted up bright and early to the War Department, but a sergeant near the door, with more polish on his boots than in his manners, told me that I had better keep shady until ten o'clock, as business hours commenced then. I sat down on a pile of old lumber near by, and passed very nearly three hours in wondering why so many broad-shouldered fellows, who could make a sabre fall as heavy as the blow of a broad-axe, were lounging about or going backward and forward upon errands that sickly boys might do as well. As it grew nearer ten, able-bodied, bright-looking officers, Regulars, as I was told, educated at Uncle Sam's
expense to fight, elegantly shoulder-strapped, passed in to drive quills in a quiet department, 'remote from death's alarms,' and I wondered if some spirited clerks and schoolmasters that I knew, who would have been willing to have gone bent double under knapsacks, if the Surgeon would have accepted them, would not have performed the duty better, and have permitted the country to have the benefit of the military education of these gentlemen."
"I see, Captain, that you don't understand it," interrupted an officer. "Our Regular Officers are not all alike patriotic up to the fighting point; and it is a charitable provision that permits one, say,—who is married to a plantation of niggers, or who has other Southern sympathies or affinities, or who may have conscientious scruples about fighting against our 'Southern brethren,'—to take a snug salary in some peaceful department, or to go on recruiting service in quiet towns, where grasshoppers can be heard singing for squares, and where he is under the necessity of killing nothing but time, and wounding nothing but his country's honor and his own, if a man of that description can be said to possess any. In their offices, these half-hearted Lieutenants, Captains, and Colonels, are like satraps in their halls, unapproachable, except by passing bayonets that should be turned towards Richmond."