correspond. John Noyes, a soldier of a class after us, told me that in
the salient he and Barlow worked like privates in the confusion of the
capture, turning with their own hands against the enemy a cannon that
had just been taken. Barlow was as cool as when he fired off the old
cannon in Cambridge ten years before. This stroke proved futile, but
from no shortcoming of Barlow's. A few weeks later at Cold Harbor
he effected a lodgment within the Confederate works when all others
failed. That too proved futile, but his reputation was confirmed
as one of the most brilliant of division commanders. There is a
photograph in existence portraying Hancock and his division generals
as they appeared during that terrible campaign. It was taken in the
woods in the utmost stress of service. Barlow stands in the group just
as he looked in college, the face thin and beardless, almost that of
a boy, and marked with the nonchalance which always characterised
him. There are no military trappings, a rough checked shirt, trousers,
slouching from the waist to campaign boots, hang loosely about the
attenuated limbs. Soon after that he was carried from the field, not
wounded, but in utter exhaustion after exposures which no power of
will could surmount. A few months' respite and he was at his post
again, intercepting by a swift march Lee's retreating column, almost
the last warlike act of the Army of the Potomac before Appomattox.
In this "Last Leaf" I do not deal with "might-have-beens." I only
remember, but we old classmates of Barlow have a feeling that had
the war continued, if only the bullets to which he was always so
hospitable had spared him, he would have gone on to the command of
a corps, and perhaps even to greater distinctions. The photograph
of Barlow, published after his death in the _Harvard Graduates'
Magazine_, presents him as he was soon after the war was over. He
had recovered from the hardships, the face is fairly well rounded
but still rather that of a beardless, laughing boy than of a man. A