“Oh, Jinny, I saw what you were doing for one of our men.  What am I saying?” she cried.  “They are your men, too.  This horrible war cannot last.  It cannot last.  It was well that Virginia did not see the smile on the face of the commanding general when Mr. Brinsmade at length got to him with her request.  This was before the days when the wounded arrived by the thousands, when the zeal of the Southern ladies threatened to throw out of gear the workings of a great system.  But the General, had had his eye on Mr. Carvel from the first.  Therefore he smiled.

“Colonel Carvel,” said Mr. Brinsmade, with dignity, “is a gentleman.  When he gives his word, it is sacred, sir.”

“Even to an enemy,” the General put in, “By George, Brinsmade, unless I knew you, I should think that you were half rebel yourself.  Well, well, he may have his Arkansan.”

Mr. Brinsmade, when he conveyed the news to the Carvel house, did not say that he had wasted a precious afternoon in the attempt to interview his Excellency, the Commander in-chief.  It was like obtaining an audience with the Sultan or the Czar.  Citizens who had been prominent in affairs for twenty years, philanthropists and patriotic-spirited men like Mr. Brinsmade, the mayor, and all the ex-mayors mopped their brows in one of the general’s anterooms of the big mansion, and wrangled with beardless youths in bright uniforms who were part of the chain.  The General might have been a Richelieu, a Marlborough.  His European notions of uniformed inaccessibility he carried out to the letter.  He was a royal personage, seldom seen, who went abroad in the midst of a glittering guard.  It did not seem to weigh with his Excellency that these simple and democratic gentlemen would not put up with this sort of thing.  That they who had saved the city to the Union were more or less in communication with a simple and democratic President; that in all their lives they had never been in the habit of sitting idly for two hours to mop their brows.

On the other hand, once you got beyond the gold lace and the etiquette, you discovered a good man and a patriot.  It was far from being the General’s fault that Mr. Hopper and others made money in mules and worthless army blankets.  Such things always have been, and always will be unavoidable when this great country of ours rises from the deep sleep of security into which her sons have lulled her, to demand her sword.  We shall never be able to realize that the maintenance of a standing army of comfortable size will save millions in the end.  So much for Democracy when it becomes a catchword.

The General was a good man, had he done nothing else than encourage the Western Sanitary Commission, that glorious army of drilled men and women who gave up all to relieve the suffering which the war was causing.  Would that a novel—­a great novel—­might be written setting forth with truth its doings.  The hero of it could be Calvin Brinsmade, and a nobler hero than he was never under a man’s hand.  For the glory of generals fades beside his glory.