c _abandon_ to his task, and seldom is there to be found
within the covers of a single volume such an infinite variety of
incident and personal reminiscence. The chapters which deal with the
early youth of General Custer are exceedingly interesting photographs,
as it were, of a certain phase of American domestic and academic life.
The characteristics of the child, the sorrows of the "plebe," and the
aspirations and experiences of the cadet, are faithfully narrated. The
first service of the subaltern, and his initiation into the perils and
responsibilities of an officer in time of war, are interwoven with
Custer's own recollections of his generals and their campaigns. We are
irresistibly reminded of Lever in the style of the narration, and of
that dashing creature "O'Malley" in the adventures of our own dragoon.
The story of General Custer's wooing is quaintly told, and shines like a
bow of promise through all the clouds of his stormy career; it is a
romance by itself. _Apropos_ of the charge which we are told won the boy
general his star, we clip a bit of word painting which could only have
been written by "one who has been there":

Were you ever in a charge--you who read this now by the winter
fireside, long after the bones of the slain have turned to
dust, when peace covers the land? If not, you have never known
the fiercest pleasure of life. The chase is nothing to it; the
most headlong hunt is tame in comparison. In the chase the game
flees, and you shoot; here the game shoots back, and every leap
of the charging steed is a peril escaped or dashed aside. The
sense of power and audacity that possesses the cavalier, the
unity with his steed, both are perfect. The horse is as wild as
the man: with glowing eyeballs and red nostrils, he rushes
frantically forward at the very top of his speed, with huge
bounds as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop
as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze.
Horse and rider are drunk with excitement; feeling and seeing
nothing but the cloud of dust, the scattered flying figures;
conscious of only one mad desire, to reach them, to smite,
smite, smite!

The author of this book is too much of an artist, too much of a poet,
perhaps, to divest his battle descriptions of anything that is doubtful
in fact, if only it is eulogistic of his hero or picturesque in its
nature. He