WHEN General Field came to Cairo, Illinois, after the war, I welcomed him with especial heartiness.
I was a little bit lonely, lacking comrades in sympathy with me.
General Field had been my drillmaster at Ashland, at the war’s beginning. Later, after he became a great general, I had many times been of his following in raids and scouts, and other military expeditions.
Like all the rest of us at the end of the war, General Field was very poor. He had come to Cairo to engage in business, and had not been able to bring his family with him. So he rented a bachelor room in the bank building in which my office was situated, and we two used to spend the evenings together in front of my office fire.
At that time General Don Carlos Buell was operating a coal mine in Kentucky, some distance up the Ohio River. He sold his coal through the commission house for which I was attorney.
When he came to Cairo, he, also, usually spent his evenings in my office.
One evening General Field was smoking a long pipe before my fire, and he and I were chatting about war times—we hadn’t yet got far enough away from the war to regard any other topic as worthy of intelligent conversation.
“The saddest part of it all, to us of the old army at least,” said General Field, “is the breaking up of old friendships. There’s Buell, now. He and I once tented together, messed together, slept under the same blankets together, and, without any blankets at all, under the same frozen sky; marched together, fought together, suffered together, and endured together. Once we thought of each other as brothers might. Now, if we should meet, he would refuse even to shake my hand. He would regard me as a rebel—to him anathema maranatha.”
At this moment came a knock at the door. I opened it, and to my consternation there stood General Buell.
My first impulse was to say to him that I was overengaged that evening, and couldn’t see him. My second was to invite him to my bedroom for a special conference, for which I could profess to have been longing. My third was to fabricate the story of a telegram, which should call him immediately to the house of the head of the firm.
Feeling that none of these devices would answer the purpose, I thought of the coal-shed below; but I remembered that there was no gas-burner there, and the night was rather a dark one.
Meantime, General Buell was catching cold in the hall. So at last I invited him in, taking pains to call him only by his title, not mentioning his name. As he entered, Field, who was always scrupulous in attention to the little niceties of courtesy, arose to receive the stranger.
When the two gentlemen had bowed to each other,—for it was no part of my purpose to introduce them, if I could help it,—I turned to General Buell and said: “General, I’m afraid there is a little discrepancy in the measurement of those last coal barges. If you have your memorandum book with you, we’ll go to the outer office and straighten the thing up. The book-keepers are bothered about it.”
Alas! My little device came to nothing. Buell had caught sight of Field, and Field had looked upon Buell. Though years of hard campaigning had intervened since they had last met, each recognized the other instantly, and after a moment’s hesitation each threw himself into the other’s arms.
“Why, it’s Buell!”
“Why, it’s Field!”
I can’t tell the rest of this story, because I didn’t stay to see it. I don’t like to see two men hugging each other with tears in their eyes.