lted; then we went back and told the other companies present that
the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They
were getting ready, themselves, to fall back on some place or other, and
were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at
any moment; so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while, but the
majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back, and didn't
need any of Tom Harris's help; we could get along perfectly well without
him and save time too. So about half of our fifteen, including myself,
mounted and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion and
stayed--stayed through the war.

An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three
people in his company--his staff, probably, but we could not tell; none
of them was in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet.
Harris ordered us back; but we told him there was a Union colonel coming
with a whole regiment in his wake, and it looked as if there was going
to be a disturbance; so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little,
but it was of no use; our minds were made up. We had done our share; had
killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and
kill the rest, and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk
young general again until last year; then he was wearing white hair and
whiskers.

In time I came to know that Union colonel whose coming frightened me
out of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent--General
Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as
I was myself; at a time when anybody could have said, 'Grant?--Ulysses
S. Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.' It seems difficult
to realise that there was once a time when such a remark could be
rationally made; but there was, and I was within a few miles of the
place and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.

The thoughtful will not throw this war-paper of mine lightly aside as
being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what
went on in many and many a militia camp in the first months of the
rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the
steadying and heartening influence or trained leaders; when all their
circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated
terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the
field had turned th