“General, this is Major Brice of General Sherman’s staff.  He has brought despatches from Goldsboro,” said Rankin.

He nodded, took off his hat and laid it on the table, and reached out for the despatches.  While reading them he did not move, except to light another cigar.  I am getting hardened to unrealities,—­perhaps I should say marvels, now.  Our country abounds in them.  It did not seem so strange that this silent General with the baggy trousers was the man who had risen by leaps and bounds in four years to be general-in-chief of our armies.  His face looks older and more sunken than it did on that day in the street near the Arsenal, in St. Louis, when he was just a military carpet-bagger out of a job.  He is not changed otherwise.  But how different the impressions made by the man in authority and the same man out of authority!

He made a sufficient impression upon me then, as I told you at the time.  That was because I overheard his well-merited rebuke to Hopper.  But I little dreamed that I was looking on the man who was to come out of the West and save this country from disunion.  And how quietly and simply he has done it, without parade or pomp or vainglory.  Of all those who, with every means at their disposal, have tried to conquer Lee, he is the only one who has in any manner succeeded.  He has been able to hold him fettered while Sherman has swept the Confederacy.  And these are the two men who were unknown when the war began.

When the General had finished reading the despatches, he folded them quickly and put them in his pocket.

“Sit down and tell me about this last campaign of yours, Major,” he said.

I talked with him for about half an hour.  I should rather say talked to him.  He is a marked contrast to Sherman in this respect.  I believe that he only opened his lips to ask two questions.  You may well believe that they were worth the asking, and they revealed an intimate knowledge of our march from Savannah.  I was interrupted many times by the arrival of different generals, aides, etc.  He sat there smoking, imperturbable.  Sometimes he said “yes” or “no,” but oftener he merely nodded his head.  Once he astounded by a brief question an excitable young lieutenant, who floundered.  The General seemed to know more than he about the matter he had in hand.

When I left him, he asked me where I was quartered, and said he hoped I would be comfortable.

Jack Hancock was waiting for me, and we walked around the city, which even has barber shops.  Everywhere were signs of preparation, for the roads are getting dry, and the General preparing for a final campaign against Lee.  Poor Lee!  What a marvellous fight he has made with his material.  I think that he will be reckoned among the greatest generals of our race.

Of course, I was very anxious to get a glimpse of the President, and so we went down to the wharf, where we heard that he had gone off for a horseback ride.  They say that he rides nearly every day, over the corduroy roads and through the swamps, and wherever the boys see that tall hat they cheer.  They know it as well as the lookout tower on the flats of Bermuda Hundred.  He lingers at the campfires and swaps stories with the officers, and entertains the sick and wounded in the hospitals.  Isn’t it like him?