"It seems to me," sneered a dapper little officer who had been looking and listening, "that the niggers have plenty of advocates here."
Two or three of the men looked at Jim. "You may bet your pile on that, Major!" said he, with becoming gravity; "we love our friends, and we hate our enemies, and it's the dark-complected fellows that are the first down this way."
"Well, they ain't much to look at, that's a fact; but I never heard of anybody saying you was to turn a cold shoulder on a helper because he was homely, except,"--this as the Major was walking away, "except a secesh, or a fool, or one of little Mac's staff officers."
"Homely? what are you gassing about?" objected a little fellow from Massachusetts; "the Fifty-fourth is as fine-looking a set of men as shoulder rifles anywhere in the army."
"Jack's sensitive about the credit of his State," chaffed a big Ohioan. "He wants to crack up these fellows, seeing they're his comrades. I say, Johnny, are all the white men down your way such little shavers as you?"
"For a fellow that's all legs and no brains, you talk too much," answered Johnny. "Have any of you seen the Fifty-fourth?"
"I haven't." "Nor I." "Yes, I saw them at Port Royal." "And I." "And I."
"Well, the Twenty-third was at Beaufort while they were there, and I used to go over to their camp and talk with them. I never saw fellows so in earnest; they seemed ready to die on the instant, if they could help their people, or walk into the slaveholders any, first. They were just full of it; and yet it seemed absurd to call 'em a black regiment; they were pretty much all colors, and some of 'em as white as I am."
"Lord," said Jim, "that's not saying much, you've got a smutty face."
The men laughed, Jack with the rest, as he dabbed at his heated, powder-stained countenance. "Come," said he, "that's no fair,--they're as white as I am, then, when I've just scrubbed; and some of them are first-raters, too; none of your rag, tag, and bobtail. There's one I remember, a man from Philadelphia, who walks round like a prince. He's a gentleman, every inch,--and he's rich,--and about the handsomest-looking specimen of humanity I've set eyes upon for an age."
"Rich, is he? how do you know he's rich?"