ost that of
a boy, and marked with the nonchalance which always characterised
him. There are no military trappings, a rough checked shirt, trousers,
slouching from the waist to campaign boots, hang loosely about the
attenuated limbs. Soon after that he was carried from the field, not
wounded, but in utter exhaustion after exposures which no power of
will could surmount. A few months' respite and he was at his post
again, intercepting by a swift march Lee's retreating column, almost
the last warlike act of the Army of the Potomac before Appomattox.
In this "Last Leaf" I do not deal with "might-have-beens." I only
remember, but we old classmates of Barlow have a feeling that had
the war continued, if only the bullets to which he was always so
hospitable had spared him, he would have gone on to the command of
a corps, and perhaps even to greater distinctions. The photograph
of Barlow, published after his death in the _Harvard Graduates'
Magazine_, presents him as he was soon after the war was over. He
had recovered from the hardships, the face is fairly well rounded
but still rather that of a beardless, laughing boy than of a man. A
stranger studying the face would hear with incredulity the story of
the responsibilities and dangers which that face had confronted. He
laughed it all off lightly, and that was his way when occasionally in
his later years he came to our meetings.

I recall a reunion in 1865, ten years after our graduation. We sat in
full numbers about a sumptuous banquet at the Parker House in
Boston, and naturally in that year the returned soldiers were in the
foreground. In our class were two major-generals, four colonels, a
distinguished surgeon, and many more of lower rank. Barlow was the
central figure. Theodore Lyman, who presided, introduced him with a
glowing tribute, recounting his achievements, a long list from
the time he had entered as a private to his culmination as a full
Major-General. He called at last for nine cheers for the man who had
captured the Spottsylvania salient, and we gave them with a roar that
shook the building. Barlow was the only man in the room who showed not
the slightest emotion. He stood impassive, his face wearing his queer
smile. Other men might have been abashed at the tumultuous warmth of
such a reception from his old mates; a natural utterance at such a
time would have been an expression of joy that the war was over and
that the country had been saved, coupled with mode