the entire war, first as captain, then as major, and so
acquired a thorough knowledge of military tactics and the psychology of
our war which enabled him, on his return to civil life, to write the
best war stories of his generation. Of these "The Brigade Commander" is
Mr. De Forest's masterpiece. Solidly grounded on experience, and
drawing its emotive power from our greatest national cataclysm, like a
Niagara dynamo the story sends us a thrill undiminishing with the
increasing distance of its source._

THE BRIGADE COMMANDER
BY J. W. DEFOREST
[Footnote: 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' worrshipt it. It wasn't the bussh he worrshipt; it was his God
that was in it. An' I worr-ship 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
urn. 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 their feet and pour
out the red light and harsh roar of combat. There were tw