shot we would blaze away. At last one got up very close, and passed
right between Tom and I. I don't think I was ever more scared in my
life. My hair stood on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine;
I could not imagine what on earth it was. I took it to be some hellish
machination of a Yankee trick. I did not know whether to run or stand,
until I heard Tom laugh and say, "Well, well, that's a jack o'lantern."

COLONEL FIELD

Before proceeding further with these memoirs, I desire to give short
sketches of two personages with whom we were identified and closely
associated until the winding up of the ball. The first is Colonel
Hume R. Field. Colonel Field was born a soldier. I have read many
descriptions of Stonewall Jackson. Colonel Field was his exact
counterpart. They looked somewhat alike, spoke alike, and alike were
trained military soldiers. The War Department at Richmond made a
grand mistake in not making him a "commander of armies." He was not
a brilliant man; could not talk at all. He was a soldier. His
conversation was yea and nay. But when you could get "yes, sir," and "no,
sir," out of him his voice was as soft and gentle as a maid's when she
says "yes" to her lover. Fancy, if you please, a man about thirty years
old, a dark skin, made swarthy by exposure to sun and rain, very black
eyes that seemed to blaze with a gentle luster. I never saw him the
least excited in my life. His face was a face of bronze. His form was
somewhat slender, but when you looked at him you saw at the first glance
that this would be a dangerous man in a ground skuffle, a foot race,
or a fight. There was nothing repulsive or forbidding or even
domineering in his looks. A child or a dog would make up with him on
first sight. He knew not what fear was, or the meaning of the word fear.
He had no nerves, or rather, has a rock or tree any nerves? You might as
well try to shake the nerves of a rock or tree as those of Colonel Field.
He was the bravest man, I think, I ever knew. Later in the war he was
known by every soldier in the army; and the First Tennessee Regiment,
by his manipulations, became the regiment to occupy "tight places."
He knew his men. When he struck the Yankee line they felt the blow.
He had, himself, set the example, and so trained his regiment that all
the armies in the world could not whip it. They might kill every man in
it, is true, but they would die game to the last man. His men all