s office. Young Pearley can remain with
your company until I make out a detail for him."

It was impossible for Jack to sustain the _role_ of frowning displeasure
as Dick skipped back with him to the company. He remembered his own
delight three months before, even with the haunting thoughts of his
mother's reproaches to dampen his ardor, and he was soon dazzling the
neophyte with the wonders that were just about to begin.

It was the afternoon of the 16th of July, and the hillsides, which the
day before were covered with tents as far as the eye could see on every
hand, were now blue with masses of men, while other masses had been
passing on the red highways since early morning, taking the direction of
the Potomac bridges.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.

It has always seemed to me that the life, the routine, the many small
haps in the daily function of a soldier, which in sum made up to him all
that there was in the _devoir_ of death, ought to be read with interest
by the millions whose kin were part of the civil war, as well as by
those who knew of it only as we know Napoleon's wars or Washington's.
For my part, I would find a livelier pleasure in the diary of a common
soldier, in any of the great wars, than I do in the confusing pamphlets,
bound in volumes called history. I like to read of war as our Uncle Toby
related it. I like to know what two observing eyes saw and the feelings
that sometimes made the timidest heroes--sometimes cravens.

For a month--yes, months--the burden of the press, the prayers of the
North, had been, "On to Richmond!" Jack, through Colonel Grandison, knew
that General McDowell and the commander-in-chief, the venerable soldier
Scott, had pleaded and protested against a move until the new levies
under the three-months' call could be drilled and disciplined. But on
the Fourth of July Congress had assembled, and the raw statesmen--with
an eye to future elections--took up the public clamor. They gave the
Cabinet, the President, no peace until General Scott and McDowell had
given way and promised the pending movement.

"Our soldiers are so green that I shall move with fear," McDowell said
to the President.

"Well, they" (meaning the rebels) "are green too, and one greenness will
offset the other," Lincoln responded with kindly malice. It was useless
to argue further; useless to point out that the rebels were not so
"green," for the young men of the semi-aristocratic society