er performance this year! We're going into
winter quarters--that's where we're going. Yes, siree, up with the polar
bears--" "And the living skeletons--" "Gosh! I'm a warm weather crittur!
I'd jest like to peacefully fold the equator in my arms an' go to sleep."
"Oh, hell!--Beg your pardon, sir, it just slipped out, like one of the
snake charmer's rattlers!" "Boys, jes' think of a real circus, with all the
women folk, an' the tarletan, an' the spangles, an' the pink lemonade, an'
the little fellers slipping under the ropes, an' the Grand Parade coming
in, an' the big tent so hot everybody's fanning with their hats--Oh, Lord!"
"Yes, and the clown--and the ring master--" "_What d'ye think of our ring
master?_" "Who d'ye mean? _Him?_ Think of him? I think he's a damned clown!
Don't they call him Fool Tom--"

Will rose from the straw. "While I am by, I'll allow no man to reflect
upon the general commanding this army--"

A Georgian of Loring's, tall, gaunt, parched, haggard, a college man and
high private astray from his own brigade, rose to a sitting posture.
"What in hell is that young cockerel crowing about? Is it about the
damned individual at the head of this army? I take it that it is. Then I
will answer him. The individual at the head of this army is not a
general; he is a schoolmaster. Napoleon, or Caesar, or Marlborough, or
Eugene, or Cromwell, or Turenne, or Frederick wouldn't turn their heads
to look at him as they passed! But every little school-yard martinet
would! He's a pedagogue--by God, he's the Falerian pedagogue who sold
his pupils to the Romans! Oh, the lamb-like pupils, trooping after him
through flowers and sunshine--straight into the hands of Kelly at
Romney, with Rosecrans and twenty thousand just beyond! Yaaah! A
schoolmaster leading Loring and all of us! Let him go back to Lexington
and teach the Rule of Three, for by God, he'll never demonstrate the
Rule of One!"

He waved a claw-like hand. "Kindly do not interrupt. Stiff, fanatic,
inhuman, callous, cold, half mad and wholly rash, without military
capacity, ambitious as Lucifer and absurd as Hudibras--I ask again what
is this person doing at the head of this army? Has any one confidence in
him? Has any one pride in him? Has any one love for him? In all this
frozen waste through which he is dragging us, you couldn't find an echo
to say 'One!' Oh, you needn't shout 'One!' You're not an echo; you're
only a misguided V. M. I. cadet! And you don't cou