States soldier. I follow General Scott. No Virginian need be ashamed to follow old Fuss and Feathers. We used to swear by him in the army. Great Scott! the fellows said. Well, as I had to give up my father's State, I have come to my mother's. I want old Barataria to distinguish herself. Now's the chance. We are going to have a long war. I want the State to be prepared and come out strong; it's the grandest chance she'll ever have to make herself famous. I've been to see the Governor. I said to him, 'Governor, now's your chance; now's the chance for Barataria; now's my chance. It's going to be a long war. Don't depend on volunteering—it won't last. Get a militia system ready which will classify the whole population, and bring it into the fight as fast as it's needed. Make the State a Prussia. If you'll allow me, I'll draw up a plan which shall make Barataria a military community, and put her at the head of the Union for moral and physical power. Appoint me your chief of staff, and I'll not only draw up the plan, but put it in force. Then give me a division, or only a brigade, and I'll show you what well-disciplined Baratarians can do on the battle-field.' Now what do you think the Governor answered?—Governor's a dam fool!"
"Oh, no!" protested Colburne, astonished; for the chief magistrate of Barataria was highly respected.
"I don't mean individually—not a natural-born fool," explained the Lieutenant-Colonel—"but a fool from the necessity of the case; mouthpiece, you see, of a stupid day and generation. What can he do? he asks. I admit it. He can't do anything but what Democracy permits. Lose the next election, he says. Well, I suppose he would; and that won't answer. Governor's wise in his day and generation, although a fool by the eternal laws of military reason.—I don't know as I talk very clearly. But you get at my meaning, don't you?—Well, I had a long argument, and gave it up. We must go on volunteering, and commissioning the rusty militia-men and greasy demagogues who bring in the companies. The rank and file is magnificent—can't be equalled—too good. But such an infernally miserable set as the officers average! Some bright young fellows, who can be licked into shape; the rest old deacons, tinkers, military tailors, Jew pedlars broken down stump orators; wrong-headed cubs who have learned just enough of tactics to know how not to do it. Look at the man that I, a Virginian gentleman, a West Pointer, have over me for Colonel. He's an old bloat—an old political bloat. He knows no more of tactical evolutions than he does of the art of navigation. He'll order a battalion which is marching division front to break into platoons. You don't understand that? It's about the same as—well, never mind—it can't be done. Well, this cursed old bloat is engineering to be a General. We don't want such fellows for Generals, nor for Colonels, nor for Captains, nor for privates, by Jove! If Barataria had to fit out frigates instead of regiments, I wonder if she would put such men in command of them. Democracy might demand it. The Governor would know better, but he might be driven to it, for fear of losing the next election."
"Now then," continued the Lieutenant-Colonel, "I come to business. We shall have to raise more regiments. I shall apply for the command of one of them, and shall get it. But I want gentlemen for my officers. I am a gentleman myself, and a West Pointer. I don't want tinkers and pedlars and country deacons. You're a college man, aint you? All right. College men will do for me. I want you to take a company in my regiment, and get in as many more of your set as you can. I'm not firing blank cartridge. My tongue may be thick, but my head is clear. Will you do it?"
"I will," decided Colburne, after a moment of earnest consideration.
The problem occurred to him whether this man, clever as he was, professional soldier as he was, but apparently a follower of rash John Barleycorn, would be a wiser leader in the field than a green but temperate civilian. He could not stop to settle the question, and accepted the Lieutenant-Colonel's leadership by impulse. The latter thanked him cordially, and then laughed aloud, evidently because of that moment of hesitation.
"Don't think I'm this way always," he said. "Never when on duty; Great Scott! no man can say that. Indeed I'm not badly off now. If I willed it I could be as logical as friend Whitewood—I could do a problem in Euclid. But it would be a devil of an effort. You won't demand it of me, will you?"
"It's an odd thing in man," he went on gravely, "how he can govern drunkenness and even sickness. Just as though a powder-magazine should have self-control enough not to explode when some one throws a live coal into it. The only time I ever got drunk clear through, I did it deliberately. I was to Cairo, caught there by a railroad breakdown, and had to stay over a night. Ever at Cairo? It is the dolefullest, cursedest place! If a man is excusable anywhere for drinking himself insensible, it is at Cairo, Illinois. The last thing I recollect of that evening is that I was sitting in the bar-room, feet against a pillar, debating whether I would go quite drunk, or make a fight and stay sober. I said to myself, It's Cairo, and let myself go. My next distinct recollection is that of waking up in a railroad car. I had been half conscious two or three times previously, but had gone to sleep again, without taking notice of my surroundings. This time I looked about me. My carpet-bag was between my feet, and my over-coat in the rack above my head. I looked at my watch; it was two in the afternoon. I turned to the gentleman who shared my seat and said, 'Sir, will you have the goodness to tell me where this train is going?' He stared, as you may suppose, but replied that we were going to Cincinnati. The devil we are! thought I; and I wanted to go to St. Louis. I afterwards came across a man who was able to tell me how I got on the train. He said that I came down at five in the morning, carpet-bag and over-coat in hand, settled my bill in the most rational manner possible, and took the omnibus to the railroad station. Now it's my belief that I could have staved off that drunken fit by obstinacy. I can stave this one off. You shall see."
He emptied his glass, lighted a fresh segar big enough to floor some men without other aid, and commenced walking the room, taking it diagonally from corner to corner, so as to gain a longer sweep.
"Don't stir," he said. "Don't mind me. Start another segar and try the ale. You won't? What an inhuman monster of abstinence!"
"That is the way they bring us up in New Boston. We are so temperate that we are disposed to outlaw the raising of rye."
"You mean in your set. There must be somebody in this city who gets jolly! there is everywhere, so far as I have travelled. You will find a great many fellows like me, and worse, in the old army. And good reason for it; just think of our life. All of us couldn't have nice places in charge of arsenals, or at Newport, or on Governor's Island. I was five years on the frontier and in California before I got to Baton Rouge; and that was not so very delightful, by the way, in yellow fever seasons. Now imagine yourself in command of a company garrisoning Fort Wallah-Wallah on the upper Missouri, seven hundred miles from an opera, or a library, or a lady, or a mince pie, or any other civilizing influence. The Captain is on detached service somewhere. You are the First Lieutenant, and your only companion is Brown the Second Lieutenant. You mustn't be on sociable terms with the men, because you are an officer and a gentleman. You have read your few books, and talked Brown dry. There is no shooting within five miles of the fort; and if you go beyond that distance, the Blackfeet will raise your hair. What is there to save you from suicide but old-rye? That's one way we come to drink so. You are lucky. You have had no temptations, or almost none, in this little Puritan city."
"There are some bad places and people here. I don't speak of it boastingly."
"Are there?" laughed Carter. "I'm delighted to hear it, by Jove! When my father went through college here, there wasn't a chance to learn anything wicked but hypocrisy. Chance enough for that, judging from the stories he told me. So old Whitewood is no longer the exact model of all the New Bostonians?"
"Not even in the University. There used to be such a solemn set of Professors that they couldn't be recognized in the cemetery because they had so much the air of tombstones. But that old dark-blue lot has nearly died out, and been succeeded by younger men of quite a pleasant cerulean tint. They have studied in Europe. They like Paris and Vienna, and other places that used to be so wicked; they don't think such very small lager of the German theologians; they accept geology, and discuss Darwin with patience."
"Don't
