"Well, I am very sorry," said the soldier on horseback, "but if you wear those clothes you've got to be general. It's a hard position to occupy, and of course you'd rather be a high-private or a member of the band, but as it is, there is no way out of it. If the clothes would fit any one else here, you might exchange with him; but they won't, I can tell that by looking at the yellow stripes on your trousers. The stripes alone are wider than any of our legs."
"Oh!" responded Jimmieboy, "I don't mind being general. I'd just as lief be a general as not; I know how to wave a sword and march ahead of the procession."
At this there was a roar of laughter from the soldiers.
"How queer!" said one.
"What an absurd idea!" cried another.
"Where did he ever get such notions as that?" said a third.
And then they all laughed again.
"I am afraid," said the soldier on horseback, with a kindly smile which won Jimmieboy's heart, "that you do not understand what the duties of a general are in this country. We aren't bound down by the notions of you nursery people, who seem to think that all a general is good for is to be stood up in front of a cannon loaded with beans, and knocked over half a dozen times in the course of a battle. Have you ever read those lines of High-private Tinsel in his little book, 'Poems in Pewter,' in which he tells of the trials of a general of the tin soldiers?"
"Of course I haven't," said Jimmieboy. "I can't read."
"Just the man for a general, if he can't read," said one of the soldiers. "He'll never know what the newspapers say of him."