A group of
officers stood chatting outside of it, and they told me that the General
had walked over to get his mail. He is just as unassuming and democratic
as "my general." General Rankin took me into the office, a rude room,
and we sat down at the long table there. Presently the door opened,
and a man came in with a slouch hat on and his coat unbuttoned. He was
smoking a cigar. We rose to our feet, and I saluted.

It was the general-in-chief. He stared at me, but said nothing.

"General, this is Major Brice of General Sherman's staff. He has brought
despatches from Goldsboro," said Rankin.

He nodded, took off his hat and laid it on the table, and reached out
for the despatches. While reading them he did not move, except to light
another cigar. I am getting hardened to unrealities,--perhaps I should
say marvels, now. Our country abounds in them. It did not seem so
strange that this silent General with the baggy trousers was the man who
had risen by leaps and bounds in four years to be general-in-chief of
our armies. His face looks older and more sunken than it did on that
day in the street near the Arsenal, in St. Louis, when he was just a
military carpet-bagger out of a job. He is not changed otherwise. But
how different the impressions made by the man in authority and the same
man out of authority!

He made a sufficient impression upon me then, as I told you at the time.
That was because I overheard his well-merited rebuke to Hopper. But I
little dreamed that I was looking on the man who was to come out of the
West and save this country from disunion. And how quietly and simply he
has done it, without parade or pomp or vainglory. Of all those who, with
every means at their disposal, have tried to conquer Lee, he is the
only one who has in any manner succeeded. He has been able to hold him
fettered while Sherman has swept the Confederacy. And these are the two
men who were unknown when the war began.

When the General had finished reading the despatches, he folded them
quickly and put them in his pocket.

"Sit down and tell me about this last campaign of yours, Major," he
said.

I talked with him for about half an hour. I should rather say talked to
him. He is a marked contrast to Sherman in this respect. I believe that
he only opened his lips to ask two questions. You may well believe that
they were worth the asking, and they revealed an intimate knowledge of
our march from Savannah. I was interrupted many t