The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brigade Commander, by J. W. Deforest

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Title: The Brigade Commander

Author: J. W. Deforest

Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23182]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIGADE COMMANDER ***

Produced by David Widger

THE BRIGADE COMMANDER

By J. W. Deforest

By permission of "The New York Times."

The Colonel was the idol of his bragging old regiment and of the
bragging brigade which for the last six months he had commanded.

He was the idol, not because he was good and gracious, not because he
spared his soldiers or treated them as fellow-citizens, but because he
had led them to victory and made them famous. If a man will win battles
and give his brigade a right to brag loudly of its doings, he may have
its admiration and even its enthusiastic devotion, though he be as
pitiless and as wicked as Lucifer.

"It's nothin' to me what the Currnell is in prrivit, so long as he shows
us how to whack the rrebs," said Major Gahogan, commandant of the "Old
Tenth." "Moses saw God in the burrnin' bussh, an' bowed down to it, an'
worr-shipt it. It wasn't the bussh he worrshipt; it was his God that
was in it. An' I worrship this villin of a Currnell (if he is a villin)
because he's almighty and gives us the vict'ry. He's nothin' but a human
burrnin' bussh, perhaps, but he's got the god of war in um. Adjetant
Wallis, it's a------long time between dhrinks, as I think ye was
sayin', an' with rayson. See if ye can't confiscate a canteen of whiskee
somewhere in the camp. Bedad, if I can't buy it I'll stale it. We're
goin' to fight tomorry, an' it may be it's the last chance we'll have
for a dhrink, unless there's more lik'r now in the other worrld than
Dives got."

The brigade was bivouacked in some invisible region, amid the damp,
misty darkness of a September night. The men lay in their ranks, each
with his feet to the front and his head rearward, each covered by his
overcoat and pillowed upon his haversack, each with his loaded rifle
nestled close beside him. Asleep as they were, or dropping placidly into
slumber, they were ready to start in order to t