of the white socks
might amuse him, I told him that. It did amuse him.

"Well, now," he said, "any man that has a nickname like that is all
right. That's the best recommendation you can give the General--just say
'Uncle Billy.'" He put one lip over the other. "You've given 'Uncle
Billy' a good recommendation, Steve," he said. "Did you ever hear the
story of Mr. Wallace's Irish gardener?"

"No, sir."

"Well, when Wallace was hiring his gardener he asked him whom he had been
living with.

"'Misther Dalton, sorr.'

"'Have you a recommendation, Terence?'

"'A ricommindation is it, sorr? Sure I have nothing agin Misther Dalton,
though he moightn't be knowing just the respict the likes of a
first-class garthener is entitled to.'"

He did not laugh. He seldom does, it seems, at his own stories. But I
could not help laughing over the "ricommindation" I had given the
General. He knew that I was embarrassed, and said kindly:-- "Now tell me
something about 'Uncle Billy's Bummers.' I hear that they have a most
effectual way of tearing up railroads."

I told him of Poe's contrivance of the hook and chain, and how the
heaviest rails were easily overturned with it, and how the ties were
piled and fired and the rails twisted out of shape. The President
listened to every word with intense interest.

"By Jing!" he exclaimed, "we have got a general. Caesar burnt his bridges
behind him, but Sherman burns his rails. Now tell me some more."

He helped me along by asking questions. Then I began to tell him how the
negroes had flocked into our camps, and how simply and plainly the
General had talked to them, advising them against violence of any kind,
and explaining to them that "Freedom" meant only the liberty to earn
their own living in their own way, and not freedom from work.

"We have got a general, sure enough," he cried. "He talks to them
plainly, does he, so that they understand? I say to you, Brice," he went
on earnestly, "the importance of plain talk can't be overestimated. Any
thought, however abstruse, can be put in speech that a boy or a negro can
grasp. Any book, however deep, can be written in terms that everybody can
comprehend, if a man only tries hard enough. When I was a boy I used to
hear the neighbors talking, and it bothered me so because I could not
understand them that I used to sit up half the night thinking things out
for myself. I remember that I did not know what the word demonstrate
meant. So I stopp