who expected again the coming of the Little Corporal.  It takes time to develop a character, and to throw the glamour of romance over what may be essentially commonplace.  A quarter of a century has not sufficed to separate the great body of the surviving volunteers in the war for the Union from the body of American citizens, notwithstanding the organization of the Grand Army of the Republic, the encampments, the annual reunions, and the distinction of pensions, and the segregation in Soldiers’ Homes.  The “old soldier” slowly eliminates himself from the mass, and begins to take, and to make us take, a romantic view of his career.  There was one event in his life, and his personality in it looms larger and larger as he recedes from it.  The heroic sacrifice of it does not diminish, as it should not, in our estimation, and he helps us to keep glowing a lively sense of it.  The past centres about him and his great achievement, and the whole of life is seen in the light of it.  In his retreat in the Home, and in his wandering from one Home to another, he ruminates on it, he talks of it; he separates himself from the rest of mankind by a broad distinction, and his point of view of life becomes as original as it is interesting.  In the Homes the battered veterans speak mainly of one thing; and in the monotony of their spent lives develop whimseys and rights and wrongs, patriotic ardors and criticisms on their singular fate, which are original in their character in our society.  It is in human nature to like rest but not restriction, bounty but not charity, and the tired heroes of the war grow restless, though every physical want is supplied.  They have a fancy that they would like to see again the homes of their youth, the farmhouse in the hills, the cottage in the river valley, the lonesome house on the wide prairie, the street that ran down to the wharf where the fishing-smacks lay, to see again the friends whom they left there, and perhaps to take up the occupations that were laid down when they seized the musket in 1861.  Alas! it is not their home anymore; the friends are no longer there; and what chance is there of occupation for a man who is now feeble in body and who has the habit of campaigning?  This generation has passed on to other things.  It looks upon the hero as an illustration in the story of the war, which it reads like history.  The veteran starts out from the shelter of the Home.  One evening, towards sunset, the comfortable citizen, taking the mild air on his piazza, sees an interesting figure approach.  Its dress is half military, half that of the wanderer whose attention to his personal appearance is only spasmodic.