f a whole penny to buy a top?

Josephine Harris, painfully correct in her general estimation of the
character of Egbert Crawford, had pronounced him, in addition to his
other vices, "a coward," and "amounting to nothing, as a soldier, except
his shoulder-straps and sword-belts." She "did not believe that he would
ever go to the war." How very easily, seeing one half the truth, we can
overleap too much intervening space and falsify the remaining half!
Egbert Crawford _did_ "go to the war," and under such circumstances that
his "shoulder-straps" and "sword-belts" counted for very little in
comparison with himself. Three days after he left New York, he joined
the army at Harrison's Landing, as a volunteer aid-de-camp to any
officer who needed rough-riding and sharp fighting. He was a dashing
rider--thanks to the education received many years before in the
country, and the steadiness with which he had since kept up the habit of
riding, at an expenditure of time and money which he could ill afford.
He bore excellent endorsements from Albany and New York, and he had
lately held a commission as Colonel. Besides these advantages, Hooker
saw something in the dark face of the lawyer--something in the set lips
and clouded brow, which while it might not have commanded confidence in
the selection of an agent to be specially trusted in matters of delicate
issue, told that there was desperation and _fight_. He joined the staff
of that General, with the honorary rank of Captain.

Then followed that terrible blunder which removed the Army of the
Potomac from the James River, unloosed the grasp of the Federals from
the very throat of the rebel power, and re-opened the Pandora's Box of
incursion which had been almost closed by the investiture of Richmond.
Then followed the still more terrible blunder of the appointment of Pope
to the leading command, and the commencement of that chain of disasters
which culminated in the disgraceful retreat of the Union forces towards
Washington, after the second battle of Bull Run, on the twenty-ninth of
August--a retreat which was only checked by the momentary return of the
"young Napoleon" from his temporary Elba, and a demoralization which was
only forgotten when the Potomac army, once more re-organized under the
old commander, moved up into Maryland to break the threatened invasion
of the Middle States.

The young aid-de-camp proved himself a man and a soldier, however raw
and unaccustomed, in the