CHAPTER IX. FROM NEW BOSTON TO NEW ORLEANS, VIA FORT JACKSON.
"By" (this and that)! swore Colonel Carter to himself when, twenty-four hours out from Sandy Hook, he opened his sealed orders in the privacy of his state-room. "Butler has got an expedition to himself. We are in for a round of Big Bethels as sure as" (this and that and the other.)
I wish it to be understood that I do not endorse the above criticism on the celebrated proconsul of Louisiana. I am not sketching the life of General Butler, but of Colonel Carter—I am not trying to show how things really were, but only how the Colonel looked at them.
Carter opened the door and looked into the cabin. There stood a particularly clean soldier of the Tenth, his uniform carefully brushed, his shoes, belts, cartridge-box and cap-pouch blacked, his buttons and brasses shining like morning suns, white cotton gloves on his hands, and his bayonet in its scabbard, but without a musket. Being the neatest man of all those detailed for guard that morning, he had been selected by the Adjutant as the Colonel's orderly. He saluted his commander by carrying his right hand open to his fore-piece, then well out to the right, then dropping it with the little finger against the seam of his trousers, meanwhile standing bolt upright with his heels well together. The Colonel surveyed him from top to toe with a look of approbation.
"Very well, orderly," said he. "Very clean and soldierly. Been in the old army, I see."
Here he gratified himself with another full-length inspection of this statue of neatness and speechless respect.
"Now go to the captain of the vessel," he added, "give him my compliments, and request him to step to my state-room."
The orderly saluted again, faced about as if on a pivot, and walked away.