ed at it I recalled
another picture of a battle-scene, painted by a friend of mine, a French
artist, who had watched our life with an artist's eye. One of the
figures in the foreground was a dead Confederate boy, lying in the angle
of a worm fence. His uniform was worn and ragged, mud-stained as well as
blood-stained; the cap which had fallen from his head was a tatter, and
the torn shoes were ready to drop from his stiffening feet; but in a
buttonhole of his tunic was stuck the inevitable toothbrush, which
continued even to the end of the war to be the distinguishing mark of
gentle nurture,--the souvenir that the Confederate so often received
from fair sympathizers in border towns. I am not a realist, but I would
not exchange that homely toothbrush in the Confederate's buttonhole for
the most angelic smile that Rothermel's brush could have conjured up.

[Note: The toothbrush was a badge of culture on both sides, as the
following passage shows:

"'Light marching order' implies that a soldier may carry upon his person
only a few of the more obvious necessities of life and no luxuries save
tobacco. But a soldier must be clad even to sixty rounds of ball
cartridge. Small wonder is it then, if only the lightest toothbrush
drawn through the buttonhole of his blouse must suffice as an epitome of
the refinements of life. Many of the victories of our adversaries were
fairly attributed to the scantier attire and lighter marching order of
the men."--Atlantic Monthly, May, 1893, p. 214.]

[Note: DAVID RAMSAY, grandson of the historian and biographer of
Washington of the same name, my fellow-student at Goettingen in 1852,
fell after heroic services at Battery Wagner in 1863. What the state,
what the country lost in the promise of that rare man, this is not the
place to rehearse. Scholar, wit, embodiment of all the inherited social
graces of what we once called "the better days," delightful companion,
devoted and generous friend, he is still in memory part of my life.]

Now I make no doubt that most of the readers of The Atlantic have got
beyond the Rothermel stage, and yet I am not certain that all of them
appreciate the entire clearness of conscience with which we of the South
went into the war. A new patriotism is one of the results of the great
conflict, and the power of local patriotism is no longer felt to the
same degree. In one of his recent deliverances Mr. Carnegie, a canny
Scot who has constituted himself the represent