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In other words, Nevins has skipped." Just what an officer's actual rank might be in the days that followed close on the heels of the war was a matter no man could tell from either his dress or address. Few indeed were they who escaped the deluge of brevets that poured over the army and soaked some men six deep. We had colonels by title whose functions were purely those of the file-closer.
I could not shake off my sadness for a long time, when a voice near me said: "Good-morning, Joseph." I was awakened, and looking at the man who spoke to me, I recognized the son of Martin the tanner, our neighbor at Pfalzbourg; he was corporal of the Sixth, and the file-closer, marching with arms at will. We shook hands. It was a real consolation for me to see some one from our own place.
These active, hard-riding, straight-shooting, open-order men are doing real work, and are not being stupefied by drill-ground routine, or rendered listless by file-closer prompting or sleepy reiteration. By the time the command dismounts in front of stables we turn longingly to the thoughts of breakfast.
Especially as we had very few invitations when we were High School boys in this same old town." "You received one from Susie: Sharp, of course?" "Yes," Greg assented. "And I'm going -not!" "You are going -yes!" Dick retorted. "Oh!" nodded Greg. "Am I entitled to any explanation?" "Laura wishes it." "That's a whole platoon of reasons boiled down into one file-closer," grinned Greg.
Commissioned a first lieutenant of a regiment that had had a proud record in the regular division of the Army of the Potomac, and had been hurried at the close of the war to the Pacific coast, Nevins had joined at Fort Yuma and served a few weeks' apprenticeship as a file-closer, just long enough to demonstrate that he knew nothing whatever about soldiering and too much about poker.
Glen, standing in the rear of his company in his place as file-closer, listened to these words, and saw in the dim distance and on the darkling heights the throngs of fierce enemies and avalanches of impeding dangers as are likely to oppress the imagination of a young soldier at such unfavorable moments.
Pennsylvania's pavilion, costing forty thousand dollars, or half as much as the United States building, plays the leading grenadier well; but little Delaware, not content with the obscure post of file-closer, swells at the opposite end of the line into dimensions of ninety by seventy-five feet, with a cupola that, if placed at Dover, would be visible from half her territory.
A picture very little different from that just presented, though taller and lanker in figure, was to be found in Bob Webster, John Crawford's comrade and file-closer, who went into the charge that evening at his side.
A remembrance that stood out above the others was that of someone calling a good-bye to the Major, of the choke in the officer's voice as he answered. He was an older man, and his expression of feeling nearly upset Tom. He trudged on, file-closer for the front rank and six-feet-one of target, and wondered if he had been a fool after all.
"There'll be no trouble, I repeat," promised Senator Corson, making himself file-closer. "North has been sticking too close to politics on Capitol Hill, and he has let it make him nervous. But we'll put festivity ahead of everything else on Corson Hill, to-night, and the girls will be on hand to make the boys all sociable. Come early, Stewart!"
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