"Yes."
"Well, I saw that game," the surgeon went on; "and I say, Captain, be sure to assign this young fellow to a regiment that will get into the scrimmage. Nothing but the firing-line will suit his style."
"Which do you prefer, infantry or cavalry?" questioned the Captain briefly.
"As I've walked all my life, I think that I'll ride now that I have the chance," Graham answered.
"Very well. You are over regulation weight and length for a trooper, but special orders will let you in for the war only."
"The fighting is all I want," said Graham
"All right," replied the officer. "I'll send you to the 10th. They have always gotten into it so far, and likely nobody will miss seeing service in this affair."
Graham was given a suit of uniform and ordered to report morning and afternoon each day till his squad would be sent to join the regiment. He carried the uniform to a tailor to have it fitted to his figure, in which he took some little pride; and lost no time in getting into it when the tailor had finished with it, and hurrying to parade himself before his mother's admiring eyes. That worthy woman was as proud of him as only a combination of mother love, womanly admiration for a soldier, and a negro's surpassing delight in brass buttons, could make her.
Graham busied himself with the study of a book on cavalry tactics borrowed from the old sergeant at the recruiting station, and with that experienced soldier's help he picked up in the ten days that elapsed before he was sent away no little knowledge of the business before him. He was an enthusiastic student, took great pains to perfect himself in the ceremonious side of soldiering, and delighted in the punctilios which the regulations prescribed. He went at every opportunity to witness the drills of the national guard troops who were preparing to leave for the front; and began to acquire the feeling of superiority which the regular has for the volunteer, and to sniff at the little laxities of the guardsmen, and with the air of a veteran comment sarcastically upon them to the old sergeant: till he finally persuaded himself that his good angel had saved him from these amateurs to make a real soldier of him.
Two days before Graham was sent away the 71st gave its farewell parade. Graham was there, of course. It was near sunset. The wide street was lined with spectators. The ranks were standing at rest, and the soldiers and their friends were saying all manner of good-byes. The band was blowing itself breathless in patriotic selections, and as it crashed into one after another soldiers and people cheered and shouted with gathering enthusiasm. Colonel Phillips, sitting on his horse by his wife's carriage, said, "Orderly, tell Brandt to play 'Dixie,'" and, addressing the crowd of friends about him, "My mother was a South Carolinian," he added jocularly. When the band burst in on that unaccountably inspiring air the assemblage stood on its toes to yell and scream, and the tall Texas colour-sergeant came near letting "Old Glory" fall in the dust in his conscientious effort to split his lungs.