The colonel's daughter

Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson is responsible for the statement that “Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints, and gods use a short and positive speech.” This may account for the fact that there are no conversations worth reading in this entire story.

The spontaneous wisdom and eloquence that animate the characters of Bulwer and Disraeli to the habitual and familiar use of language outrivalling the diction of Richelieu; the colossal attainments of the natives neighboring Chattanooga, as set forth in St. Elmo, and discovered (by aid of the unabridged) in their off-hand chats; the wit and sparkle of that phenomenally delicious couple, Tom and Bessie, who irradiate not only “One Summer,” but every season in which they may be encountered,—all will be found wanting herein. My people simply talk, as people in the line of the army will talk,—most prosaically.

When it comes to portraying life in the staff, as opposed to existence in the fighting force, needless to say some other pen must be employed than that of THE AUTHOR. November, 1882.

THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER;

OR,

WINNING HIS SPURS.

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CHAPTER I.

“Sergeant-Major!”

“Sir-r-r!” and the rasp and rattle of a hastily-moved chair preceded but an instant the appearance of a soldierly form in the doorway.

“That Prescott mail’s late again to-day?”

“Yes, sir; been late every time last three trips.”

The sergeant-major clips his words as close as his cropped hair and uses no superfluities. Having said so much he waits, mutely “standing attention,” for his superior’s next remark. The latter is dreamily contemplating a pair of rather shapely feet perched on the desk in front of him, and tapping the boot-toes thereof with a long ruler. Finally he queries,—

“Think that man Finnegan’s been drinking again?”

“Looks like it, sir; but can’t say. Horse shows hard riding every night when he gets in; but you can see him for six miles up the valley, and he comes at an easy lope all the way from the Point.”

The adjutant slowly lets down his long legs, quits his chair, takes from its case a signal-service binocular and saunters to the open doorway leading to the parade. His subordinate remains a moment, in his invariable attitude, at the door of the inner office, then, finding himself addressed no further, steps back quickly as he came.

Leaning against the post of the narrow piazza in front, the adjutant blinked his eyes in unwilling deference to the blazing sunlight and gazed out towards the north.

Before him, straight away, lay a level barren of gravelly earth, brown and desolate: no sprig of grass, no sign of shrub or tree; the parade of Camp Sandy, in the year of our Lord 187-, was as bald as the head of the commanding officer. Midway between the office and the glistening white line of picket-fence that spanned the northern limit of the garrison a lance-like staff shot upward into the burning vault of heaven, and from its summit hung motionless the heavy folds of blue and scarlet and white, the symbol of Yankee supremacy in the midst of surrounding desolation. It hung aloft as though paralyzed with wonderment at its unlovely companionship,—

“It hung in the heat like some bright dead bird, And the air was so still you could hear the tramp Of the pacing sentry all over the camp.”

Bounding this arid surface on right and left were two long lines of adobe buildings. Those on the eastern side, with their broad piazzas and mansard-roofs, indicating in greater pretence the homes of the officers of the command; those on the left, low, one-storied, and colorless as the dun hue of the parade itself, the quarters of the men.