le, with a
ring attached to the end, to be used during an engagement in drawing
stragglers back into the ranks. He made a drawing of a tremendous battle
during which the Generals and Colonels were thus occupied, and in many
other ways expatiated upon the value of the hook. When Jefferson Davis,
the Secretary of War, saw Derby's designs and read his recommendations,
he felt that his dignity was wounded and the service insulted, and he
immediately issued an order that Derby be court-martialed. William L.
Marcy, then Secretary of State, was told of the transaction and of the
cloud hanging over Derby. He looked over the drawings and saw a
regiment, their backs towards him and drawn up in line, with knapsacks,
blankets and everything appertaining to camp life attached to each
soldier by a hook. Marcy, who saw the humorous side at once, said to
Davis: "It's no use to court-martial this man. The matter will be made
public and the laugh will be upon us. Besides, a man who has the
inventive genius that he has displayed, as well as the faculty of
design, ill-directed though they be, is too valuable to the service to
be trifled with." Derby therefore was not brought to grief, and in time
Davis's anger was sufficiently mollified for him to enjoy the joke. I am
enabled to state, through the courtesy of the present Assistant
Secretary of War, that the drawings referred to are not now to be found
in the files of the War Department; and a picture, which at the time was
the source of untold amusement and of wide-spread notoriety, seems to be
lost to the world.

[Illustration: MINIATURE OF JAMES MONROE, PAINTED IN PARIS IN 1794, BY
SEME.

_Original owned by Mrs. Gouverneur._]

An incident connected with the Indian War of 1856-58, in Washington
Territory, furnished another outlet for Derby's effective wit. A
Catholic priest was taken prisoner by the savages at that time and led
away into captivity, and in caricaturing the scene Derby represented an
ecclesiastic in full canonicals walking between two stalwart and
half-naked Indians, carrying a crook and crozier, with a tooth-brush
attached to one and a comb to the other; while the letters "I. H. S." on
the priest's chasuble were paraphrased into the words, "I hate
Siwashes." It must not be thought, however, that Derby's life was wholly
devoted to fun and frivolity, for he has been pronounced by an
accomplished military writer and critic to have been "an able and
accomplished engineer."