Sullivan. Ye couldn't raich the head av a man, Sweeney. Ye hav'n't got the hoight for it.
Sweeney. I'd throw him down. Thin I'd be tall enough.
"And so they go on till one or two in the morning, when I fall asleep, leaving them still talking."
Even the characteristics of a brute afford matter of comment amid the Sahara-like flatness of ordinary camp life.
"I have nothing more of importance to communicate," he says in one letter, "except that I have been adopted by a tailless dog, who, probably for the lack of other following, persists in laying claim to my fealty. If I leave my tent door open when I go out, I find him under my bunk when I come in. As he has nothing to wag, he is put to it to express his approval of my ways and character. When I speak to him he lies down on his back with a meekness of expression which I am sure has not been rivalled since Moses. He is the most abnormally bobbed dog that ever excited my amazement. I think I do not exaggerate when I declare that his tail appears to have been amputated in the small of his back. How he can draw his breath is a wonder. In fact, he seems to have lost his voice by the operation, as though the docking had injured his bronchial tubes, for he never barks, nor growls, nor whines. I often lose myself in speculation over his absent appendage, questioning whether it was shot away in battle, or left behind in a rapid march, or bitten off, or pulled out. Perhaps it is on detached service as a waggin-master, or has got a promotion and become a brevet lion's tail. Perhaps it has gone to the dog heaven, and is wagging somewhere in glory. Venturing again on a pun I observed that it is very proper that an army dog should be detailed. I wish I could find his master;—I have just one observation to make to that gentleman;—I would say to him, 'There is your dog.—I don't want the beast, and I don't see why he wants me; but I can't get rid of him, any more than I can of Henry, who is equally useless.' I sometimes try to estimate the infinitessimal loss which the world would experience if the two should disappear together, but always give up the problem in despair, not having any knowledge of fractions small enough to figure it."
"In a general way," says Colburne, "we are sadly off for amusements. Fowling is not allowed because the noise of the guns alarms the pickets. Even alligators I have only shot at once, when I garrisoned a little post four miles from camp, and, being left without rations, was obliged to subsist my company for a day on boiled Saurian. The meat was eatable, but not recommendable to persons of delicate appetite, being of an ancient and musky flavor, as though it had been put up in its horny case a thousand years ago. By the way, a minie ball knocks a hole in these fellows' celebrated jackets without the slightest difficulty. As for riding after hounds or on steeple chases, or boxing, or making up running or rowing matches, after the gymnastic fashion of English officers, we never think of it. Now and then there is a horse-race, but for the most part we play euchre. Drill is no longer an amusement as at first, but an inexpressibly wearisome monotony. Conversation is profitless and dull, except when it is professional or larkish. With the citizens we have no dealings at all, and I have not spoken to a lady since I left New Orleans. Books are few because we cannot carry them about, being limited in our baggage to a carpet-sack; and moreover I have lost my taste for reading, and even for all kinds of thinking except on military matters. My brother officers, you know, are brave, sensible and useful men, but would not answer to fill the professorial chairs of Winslow University. They represent the plain people whose cause is being fought out in this war against an aristocracy. When I first went into camp with the regiment they humorously recognized my very slight fashionable elevation by styling my company, which then numbered eighteen men, 'The Upper Ten Thousand.' Now all such distinctions are rubbed out; it is, who can fight best, march best, command best; each one stands on the base of his individual manhood. In the army a man cannot remain long on a social pedestal which will enable him to overlook the top of his own head. He can obtain no respect which is not accorded to rank or merit; and very little merit is acknowledged except what is of a professional character."
With true esprit du corps he frequently expatiates on the excellencies of his regiment.
"The discipline in the Tenth is good," he declares, "and consequently there are no mutinies, no desertions and not much growling. Ask the soldiers if they are satisfied with the service, and they might answer, 'No;' but you cannot always judge of a man by what he says, even in his impulsive moments; you must also consider what he does. Look at an old man-of-war's man: he growls on the forecastle, but is as meek as Moses on the quarter-deck; and, notwithstanding all his mutterings, he is always at his post and does his duty with a will. Just so our soldiers frequently say that they only want to get out of the service, but never run away and rarely manœuvre for a discharge."
This, it will be observed, was before the days of substitutes and bounty-jumpers, and while the regiments were still composed of the noble fellows who enlisted during the first and second years of the war.
From all that I can learn of Captain Colburne I judge that he was a model officer, at least so far as a volunteer knew how to be one. While his men feared him on account of his reserve and his severe discipline, they loved him for the gallantry and cheerful fortitude with which he shared their dangers and hardships. The same respect which he exacted of them he accorded, at least outwardly, to all superior officers, even including the contemptible Gazaway. He did this from principle, for the good of the service, believing that authority ought not to be questioned lightly in an army. By the way, the Major did not like him: he would have preferred to have the Captain jolly and familiar and vulgar; then he would have felt at ease in his presence. This gentlemanly bearing, this dignified respect, kept him, the superior, at a distance. The truth is that, although Gazaway was, in the emphatic language of Lieutenant Van Zandt, "an inferior cuss," he nevertheless had intelligence enough to suspect the profound contempt which lay behind Colburne's salute. Only in the Captain's letters to his intimate friend, Ravenel, does he speak unbecomingly of the Major.