the beginning of the war, speculating on the probable futures of the
boys who had been under his care, "There's Barlow, now he'll go in
and come out at the top." Barlow had been a sad puzzle to the faculty,
good men, often perplexed to know what to do with him or what would
become of him. Dr. Walker's astuteness divined well the outcome. As
I review those early years I can see now that Barlow then gave plain
signs of the qualities which he was later to display. I remember
sleeping with him once in a room in the top story of Stoughton in
our sophomore year and he talked for a great part of the night
about Napoleon. The Corsican was the hero who beyond all others had
fascinated him, whose career he would especially love to emulate.
We were a pair of boys in a peaceful college, living in a time which
apparently would afford no opportunity for a soldier's career. I have
often thought of that talk. Barlow was really not unlike the youthful
Napoleon, in frame he was slender and delicate, his complexion verged
toward the olive, his face was always beardless. I never saw him
thrown off his poise in any emergency. The straits of course are not
great in which a college boy is placed, but such as they were, Barlow
was always cool, with his mind working at its best in the midst of
them. He was never abashed, but had a resource and an apt one in
every emergency. He was absolutely intrepid before the thrusts of
our sharpest examiners and as I have said could bluff it boldly and
dexterously where his knowledge failed; then the odd cynicism with
which he turned down great pretentions and sometimes matters of
serious import, had a Napoleonic cast. In '61 he enlisted as a private
but rose swiftly through the grades to the command of a regiment. At
Antietam he had part of a brigade and coralled in a meteoric way on
Longstreet's front line some hundreds of prisoners. His losses were
great but he was in the thick of it himself, his poise unruffled
until he was borne desperately wounded from the field. The surgeon who