"Let's have it!" said a dozen in the crowd, now considerably increased.
"The Captain," continued the Sergeant, "had asked me to take a walk with him after dress-parade, and we strolled along the Sharpsburg road towards Corps Head-quarters. As we got just beyond the house and barn where the Rebel wounded are, we came upon a crowd of officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, and some privates. A quite young officer, with a milk-and-water face and a moustache like mildew on a damp Hardee, was talking very excitedly about the Administration not appreciating General McClellan; that there wasn't intellect enough there to appreciate a really great military genius; that European officers praised him as our greatest General, and that even the Rebel officers said that they feared him more than any of our Commanders; and yet all the
while the Abolition Administration tied his hands and fettered his movements, and all because Little Mac wasn't crazy enough to say that the Rebels could be subjugated and their armies exterminated, as some fanatical Regulars and nearly all the Volunteer officers pretend to say. 'Now, I believe,' said the officer, thrusting his thumbs between his armpits and his vest, and puffing out his breast pompously, 'I believe, as Little Mac says, 'we can drive them to the wall;' we can lessen the limits of their country; but, gentlemen, after all, there will have to be a peace.'
"I thought," said the Sergeant, "the Captain was going to break in upon him here. He threw back his cap till the rim was on top of his head, rammed his hands into his pockets, and edged his way a little further into the crowd, towards the speaker; but he didn't, and the speaker went on to say:
"'There are the people, too, crazy about a forward movement. Why don't they come down and shoulder muskets themselves?'
"The Captain could hold in no longer. He drew his hands out of his pockets, straightened them along his side, like a game rooster stretching his wings just before a fight, and sidling up to the officer, looking at him out of the corner of his eye, he burst out—
"'Why don't they shoulder muskets themselves? I'll tell you why,—because we are here to do it for them. They have sent us, they pay us, and they've a right to talk, and I hope they will talk. Anything like a decent forward movement of this Corps would have saved the disgrace of the second Bull Run battle. We all know how the Corps lagged along the road-side, and the Rebel cannon all the while thundering in the ears of its Commander.'
"'A Volunteer officer, I suppose,' said the young
officer, somewhat sneeringly. 'Where have you ever seen service?'
"'Yes, sir, a Volunteer officer,' said the Captain straightening up, facing full the officer, and eyeing him until his face grew paler. 'Where have I seen service? In Mexico, as private in the 4th Regular Artillery, while you were eating pap with a spoon, you puppy! You had better have stayed at that business; it was an honest one, at any rate, and Uncle Sam would have been saved some pay that you draw, while, like a dishonest sneak, you preach treason.'