have done anything against
us in a fair hand-to-hand fight, and you never can.'

(_You_ on this occasion may be supposed to be cavalry, personified in a
long, lantern-jawed attorney from Iowa, while _us_ stands for infantry,
represented by an ex-drover from Indiana.)

'Never done anything, eh?' replies the attorney, who, on the strength of
a commission and mustache of at least six months' date, ranks as quite a
veteran in the party; 'what did you do at Borodino? Pretty show you made
there when we came charging down upon you!'

'Oh, that was all somebody's fault--what's his name's, you know, that
commanded there. Didn't find those charges work so well at Waterloo, did
you?' Thus the ex-drover, fresh from the perusal of Halleck on Military
Science.

'Ah, but you see they could not stand our grape and canister,'
interposes artillery (Major Phelim O. Malley, now of the 99th Peoria
Battery, till last month real-estate and insurance broker, No.----
Dearborn street, basement).

'If we ploy into a hollow square'--

'Yes, but you see we come down obliquely and cut off your corners'--

'All they want then is a couple of field pieces; zounds, sir!'--(the
major has found this expletive in Lever's novels, and adopted it as
particularly becoming to a military man.)

'Echelon--charge--right guides--Buny Visty--Austerlitz'--

Meanwhile old Brazos and the Swiss major sit grimly silent, one nursing
his lame shin, where the Mexican bullet struck him, the other drawing
hard on his pipe and puffing out wreaths of smoke that hang like
Linden's 'sulphurous canopy' over the combatants. I have no doubt a
great deal of excellent tactics was displayed in these discussions;
still less, if possible, that the zeal of the disputants was all the
more creditable to them for their peaceful antecedents during their
whole lives; but the ludicrous side of the scene was brought out all the
more strongly by the silence of these old soldiers, who alone out of the
whole party had ever seen what men actually could and did do on the
battle field.

Sometimes these conversations took a high range, and dwelt upon the
causes and the policy of the contest in which we were engaged. I do not
think, however, that these were half so much talked or thought of among
the officers as in the barracks of the men; and it is only justice to
add, that among a large class of the privates I have heard them
discussed with a clearness, a freedom from all prejudices and p