MY COUSIN THE COLONEL

I

Mrs. Wesley frequently embarrasses me by remarking in the presence of other persons—­our intimate friends, of course—­“Wesley, you are not brilliant, but you are good.”

From Mrs. Wesley’s outlook, which is that of a very high ideal, there is nothing uncomplimentary in the remark, nothing so intended, but I must confess that I have sometimes felt as if I were paying a rather large price for character.  Yet when I reflect on my cousin the colonel, and my own action in the matter, I am ready with gratitude to accept Mrs. Wesley’s estimate of me, for if I am not good, I am not anything.  Perhaps it is an instance of my lack of brilliancy that I am willing to relate certain facts which strongly tend to substantiate this.  My purpose, however, is not to prove either my goodness or my dulness, but to leave some record, even if slight and imperfect, of my only relative.  When a family is reduced like ours to a single relative, it is well to make the most of him.  One should celebrate him annually, as it were.

One morning in the latter part of May, a few weeks after the close of the war of the rebellion, as I was hurrying down Sixth Avenue in pursuit of a heedless horse-car, I ran against a young person whose shabbiness of aspect was all that impressed itself upon me in the instant of collision.  At a second glance I saw that this person was clad in the uniform of a Confederate soldier—­an officer’s uniform originally, for there were signs that certain insignia of rank had been removed from the cuffs and collar of the threadbare coat.  He wore a wide-brimmed felt hat of a military fashion, decorated with a tarnished gilt cord, the two ends of which, terminating in acorns, hung down over his nose.  His butternut trousers were tucked into the tops of a pair of high cavalry boots, of such primitive workmanship as to suggest the possibility that the wearer had made them himself.  In fact, his whole appearance had an impromptu air about it.  The young man eyed me gloomily for half a minute; then a light came into his countenance.

“Wesley—­Tom Wesley!” he exclaimed.  “Dear old boy!”

To be sure I was Thomas Wesley, and, under conceivable circumstances, dear old boy; but who on earth was he?

“You don’t know me?” he said, laying a hand on each of my shoulders, and leaning back as he contemplated me with a large smile in anticipatory enjoyment of my surprise and pleasure when I should come to know him.  “I am George W. Flagg, and long may I wave!”

My cousin Flagg!  It was no wonder that I did not recognize him.