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Military discipline and provost vigilance were at their slackest stage in the rebel lines at this triumphant epoch in the fortunes of the Confederacy. The easily won combat at Bull Run had filled the authorities as well as the rank and file with overweening contempt for the resources of the North, or the enterprise of its soldiers.
Her vitality, her obstinacy, her overweening sense of her own position, might well have beaten down before them his superiorities and his rights. But she fought at a disadvantage; she was, in very truth, no longer her own mistress; a profound preoccupation dominated her, seizing upon her inmost purposes for its own extraordinary ends. She was madly in love.
He says "the President's overweening jealousy would admit of no exercise at arms, or fortifications but the boughs of trees cast together in the form of a half-moon by the extraordinary pains and diligence of Captain Kendall." He also says there was contention between Captain Wingfield and Captain Gosnold about the site of the city.
But there has been here from other countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against us at their coming; and much they got by it after all.
But with whom has the fault been? Certainly not in my department. The fact is, and in this my preface I will not keep the truth back from a discerning public, that no firm on earth, or indeed elsewhere, could be successful in which our Mr. Jones is one of the partners. There is an overweening vanity about that man which is quite upsetting. I confess I have been unable to stand it.
Nothing can be so good for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns you against foes whom you have perhaps considered friends, and it tones down any overweening conceit you may have had concerning your own importance or ability. Listen to everything if you are wise I always do. I am an old and practised listener. And I have never listened in vain.
A noble pride, if not kept within bounds, becomes overweening ambition; the lovely grace of humility degenerates into an indolent sacrifice of opinion and will; high-hearted enterprise into a mad chase after fortune, in which we ride down everything that comes in the way of success. What is nobler than a mother's love, but when she fights for her child she becomes a raving Megaera.
'Therefore, my friends, said he, in conclusion, 'despair not however guilty you may be, despair not however desperate your condition may seem, said he, fixing his eyes upon me, 'despair not. There is nothing more foolish and more wicked than despair; overweening confidence is not more foolish than despair; both are the favourite weapons of the enemy of souls.
Enough to show that, amateur tars that we were, there was the making of good gunners in us. As the "Kid," in his overweening confidence, said, "Ain't we peaches? When we get down south we will have a little target practise, and the 'dagos' will be so scared that they will haul down their colors tight away."
"I should be without all fear," quoth the noble dame, "that any one would take his life in the fray, if he would not follow his overweening mood; then the bold knight and a good were safe." "Lady," spake then Hagen, "an' ye do think that men might wound him, pray let me know with what manner of arts I can prevent this. On foot, on horse, will I ever be his guard."
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