; they would say, "He cuss me fool," or "He cuss
me coward," as if the essence of propriety were in harsh and angry
speech,--which I take to be good ethics. But certainly, if Uncle Toby
could have recruited his army in Flanders from our ranks, their swearing
would have ceased to be historic.

It used to seem to me that never, since Cromwell's time, had there been
soldiers in whom the religious element held such a place. "A religious
army," "a gospel army," were their frequent phrases. In their
prayer-meetings there was always a mingling, often quaint enough, of
the warlike and the pious. "If each one of us was a praying man," said
Corporal Thomas Long in a sermon, "it appears to me that we could fight
as well with prayers as with bullets,--for the Lord has said that if you
have faith even as a grain of mustard-seed cut into four parts, you
can say to the sycamore-tree, Arise, and it will come up." And though
Corporal Long may have got a little perplexed in his botany, his faith
proved itself by works, for he volunteered and went many miles on a
solitary scouting expedition into the enemy's country in Florida, and
got back safe, after I had given him up for lost.

The extremes of religious enthusiasm I did not venture to encourage, for
I could not do it honestly; neither did I discourage them, but simply
treated them with respect, and let them have their way, so long as they
did not interfere with discipline. In general they promoted it. The
mischievous little drummer-boys, whose scrapes and quarrels were the
torment of my existence, might be seen kneeling together in their tents
to say their prayers at night, and I could hope that their slumbers were
blessed by some spirit of peace, such as certainly did not rule over
their waking. The most reckless and daring fellows in the regiment were
perfect fatalists in theur confidence that God would watch over them,
and that if they died, it would be because theur time had come. This
almost excessive faith, and the love of freedom and of their families,
all co-operated with their pride as soldiers to make them do their duty.
I could not have spared any of these incentives. Those of our officers
who were personally the least influenced by such considerations, still
saw the need of encouraging them among the men.

I am bound to say that this strongly devotional turn was not always
accompanied by the practical virtues; but neither was it strikingly
divorced from them. A few men,