ttle gray, he wore a
soft hat something like Ephraim's, a black tie on a white pleated shirt,
and his eyeglasses were pinned to his vest. His eyes were all kindness.

"How do you do, Comrade?" he said, holding out his hand.

"General," said Ephraim, "Mr. President," he added, correcting himself,
"how be you?" He shifted the green umbrella, and shook the hand timidly
but warmly.

"General will do," said the President, with a smiling glance at the tall
senator beside him, "I like to be called General."

"You've growed some older, General," said Ephraim, scanning his face
with a simple reverence and affection, "but you hain't changed so much
as I'd a thought since I saw you whittlin' under a tree beside the Lacy
house in the Wilderness."

"My duty has changed some," answered the President, quite as simply. He
added with a touch of sadness, "I liked those days best, Comrade."

"Well, I guess!" exclaimed Ephraim, "you're general over everything now,
but you're not a mite bigger man to me than you was."

The President took the compliment as it was meant.

"I found it easier to run an army than I do to run a country," he said.

Ephraim's blue eyes flamed with indignation.

"I don't take no stock in the bull-dogs and the gold harness at Long
Branch and--and all them lies the dratted newspapers print about
you,"--Ephraim hammered his umbrella on the pavement as an expression of
his feelings,--"and what's more, the people don't."

The President glanced at the senator again, and laughed a little,
quietly.

"Thank you; Comrade," he said.

"You're a plain, common man," continued Ephraim, paying the highest
compliment known to rural New England; "the people think a sight of you,
or they wouldn't hev chose you twice, General."

"So you were in the Wilderness?" said the President, adroitly changing
the subject.

"Yes, General. I was pressed into orderly duty the first day--that's
when I saw you whittlin' under the tree, and you didn't seem to have no
more consarn than if it had been a company drill. Had a cigar then, too.
But the second day; May the 6th, I was with the regiment. I'll never
forget that day," said Ephraim, warming to the subject, "when we was
fightin' Ewell up and down the Orange Plank Road, playin' hide-and-seek
with the Johnnies in the woods. You remember them woods, General?"

The President nodded, his cigar between his teeth. He looked as though
the scene were coming back to him.

"Never seen suc