uced anything but these prose tales, his right to a
place high in American letters would nevertheless be secure, and of all
his work, serious or otherwise, here is his greatest claim to popular
and permanent recognition. No stories for which the Civil War has
furnished such dramatic setting surpass these masterpieces of short
fiction, either in power of description, subtlety of touch or literary
finish. It is deeply to be regretted that he has not given us more such
prose.

W. C. Morrow.

A SON OF THE GODS

A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and left
and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the open
but not venturing into it, long lines of troops halted. The wood is
alive with them, and full of confused noises: the occasional rattle
of wheels as a battery of artillery goes into position to cover
the advance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking; a sound of
innumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among the
trees; hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are well
in front--not altogether exposed--many of them intently regarding the
crest of a hill a mile away in the direction of the interrupted advance.
For this powerful army, moving in battle order through a forest, has met
with a formidable obstacle--the open country. The crest of that gentle
hill a mile away has a sinister look; it says, Beware! Along it runs a
stone wall extending to left and right a great distance. Behind the
wall is a hedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees in rather
straggling order. Among the trees--what? It is necessary to know.

Yesterday, and for many days and nights previously, we were fighting
somewhere; always there was cannonading, with occasional keen rattlings
of musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the enemy's, we seldom
knew, attesting some temporary advantage. This morning at daybreak the
enemy was gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks, across
which we have so often vainly attempted to move before, through the
debris of his abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, into the
woods beyond.

How curiously we regarded everything! How odd it all seemed! Nothing
appeared quite familiar; the most commonplace objects--an old saddle,
a splintered wheel, a forgotten canteen everything related something of
the mysterious personality of those strange men who had been killing
us. The soldier never becomes who