Northern ears.  It was a mingling of the boyish treble of college cries and the menacing shriek of the wild-cat.  Jack was secretly very much delighted with the review.  More than half the rank and file were mere boys; and he could see that they were unruly, almost to point-blank disregard of their officers commands, or the prescriptions of the manual.  It would take short work for the disciplined hosts the new Northern general was training, to sweep such chaff from the field of war.  Vincent saw something of this in his comrade’s eye, and a good deal nettled himself by the slovenly march and humorous abandon of the men, he said: 

“You must remember, Jack, our army is made up of gentlemen’s sons; the gentry of the South are all in arms, and we can’t at once reduce them to the mere machines a more heterogeneous soldiery can be made.  The men who won Manassas passed in review a day or two before the battle, and they made the same impression upon me—­upon Beauregard himself—­that I see these men have made on you.  Depend upon it, in a fight they will be good soldiers.”

“Let me have the poor comfort of underrating my enemy, the thing above all others that a wise man shuns and a fool indulges.”

“Oh, on that theory revile them if you like.”

“No, indeed; I’m far from reviling them.  The cavalry is magnificent.  I don’t think we have a regiment in our army that can compare with that brigade.  Who commands it?”

“Jeb Stuart—­the Murat of the South,” Vincent said, proudly.  “I’m going to tell the President what you said of the brigade; you know he is passionately fond of the army, and really wanted to be the commander-in-chief, when they made him President at Montgomery.”

At sunset the President and General Lee entered the carriage with Mrs. Atterbury and Mrs. Sprague, Merry driving in a phaeton with Kate, who didn’t enjoy so long a ride on the horse.

“I’m glad we’ve got such important hostages as yourself and son,” Davis said gallantly to Mrs. Sprague, as the carriage passed out of the clamor of acclamation the crowd set up.  “I knew the Senator, your husband, intimately.  If he had lived, I doubt whether we should have been driven out of the Union.  He was, in my mind, one of the most prudent statesmen that came from the North to Congress.”

“He certainly never would have consented to break up the Union,” Mrs. Sprague said, in embarrassment.

“Nor should I, madam, if there had been any further security in it.  The truth is, there was nothing left for us but to go out or be kicked out.  The leaders of the Abolition party long ago proclaimed that.  However, war settles all such problems.  When it is settled by the sword we shall be satisfied.”

Mrs. Atterbury changed the conversation by asking how Mrs. Davis liked Richmond.