urnished. As he phrased it,
"I know no more of grammar than one of your calves." But he went to the
great university of the West, where he sedulously pursued the study of
Liberty, for which he had early betrayed a fondness, and having taken
many degrees, he finally commenced the public practice of Humanity in
Kansas, as you all know. Such were his humanities and not any study of
grammar. He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and
righted up a falling man.

He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most
part, see nothing at all,--the Puritans. It would be in vain to kill
him. He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Why
should he not? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have come over and
settled in New England. They were a class that did something else than
celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat parched corn in remembrance
of that time. They were neither Democrats nor Republicans, but men of
simple habits, straightforward, prayerful; not thinking much of rulers
who did not fear God, not making many compromises, nor seeking after
available candidates.

"In his camp," as one has recently written, and as I have myself heard
him state, "he permitted no profanity; no man of loose morals was
suffered to remain there, unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. 'I would
rather,' said he, 'have the small-pox, yellow-fever, and cholera, all
together in my camp, than a man without principle.... It is a mistake,
sir, that our people make, when they think that bullies are the best
fighters, or that they are the fit men to oppose these Southerners.
Give me men of good principles,--God-fearing men,--men who respect
themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose any hundred such men
as these Buford ruffians.'" He said that if one offered himself to be a
soldier under him, who was forward to tell what he could or would do,
if he could only get sight of the enemy, he had but little confidence in
him.

He was never able to find more than a score or so of recruits whom he
would accept, and only about a dozen, among them his sons, in whom he
had perfect faith. When he was here, some years ago, he showed to a
few a little manuscript book,--his "orderly book" I think he called
it,--containing the names of his company in Kansas, and the rules by
which they bound themselves; and he stated that several of them had
already sealed the contract with their blood. When some on