[127] and his morsel, who got the nearest glimpses through the portals of that reserve, which no man might enter, who watched closely, and he may even venture to affirm, intelligently, the outworkings of the secret power within. This so reasonable desire of yours I propose to satisfy, not by presuming to name and catalogue his attributes, analytically, by my judgment, or conceit, as may be—for this would be to regard you as pupils, rather than patrons—nor yet, by studying the cumulation of superlative, laudatory epithets,—for this would imply that I deemed you not only pupils, but gullible—but by painting before you some select, significant action of Jackson's own, wherein you may judge for yourselves as freely as other spectators, what manner of man this was. And I exhort you to expect in this description no grace, save the homely one of clear truth: homely it may be and most ungarnished, yet truly what my eyes saw and my ears heard. For is not this the quality most worthy of him who would portray Jackson? And should the narrative have, with its other unskilfulness, that of a certain egotism, I pray you bear in mind, that the necessity of this emerges in a manner from my task. For what is my qualification therefor? save that it was my fortune, along with many worthier men in the ranks to behold (not my merit to do) some of these wonders whereof you would fain hear; and when you ask for the testimony of the eye-witness, the humble Ego must needs speak in the egotistical first person.
And first, that I should ever have been invited to be next his person at all, was characteristic of Jackson. He, who was an alumnus of the military academy at West Point, and nothing but a professional military man all his life, was least bound in professional trammels. This trait he signified, in part, by his selection of successive chiefs for his staff, none of whom had even snuffed the classical air of West Point or Lexington, my intended predecessor and actual successor (J. A. Armstrong and C. J. Faulkner), and the next successor (A. S. Pendleton), but chiefly by the selection of me, a man of peace, and soldier of the Prince of Peace, innocent, even in youth, of any tincture of military knowledge. Herein was indeed a strange thing; that I, the parson, tied to him by no blood tie, or interest, and by acquaintanceship only slightest and most transient; that I, at home nursing myself into partial convalescence from tedious fever, contracted in the performance of my spiritual functions among the soldiers of the previous campaign; that I, conscious only of unfitness, in body and mind, for any direct help to the cause, save a most sore apprehension of its need of all righteous help, and true
