their own admiration make it necessary to warn away those to whom the
allurement would be a peril. So the man of charming personality, while
loved by all the ladies who know him well, yet not too well, must endure
with such fortitude as he may the consciousness that those others who
know him only "by reputation" consider him a shameless reprobate, a
vicious and unworthy man--a type and example of moral depravity. To name
the second disadvantage entailed by his charms: he commonly is.

In order to get forward with our busy story (and in my judgment a story
once begun should not suffer impedition) it is necessary to explain that
a young fellow attached to our headquarters as an orderly was notably
effeminate in face and figure. He was not more than seventeen and had a
perfectly smooth face and large lustrous eyes, which must have been the
envy of many a beautiful woman in those days. And how beautiful the
women of those days were! and how gracious! Those of the South showed in
their demeanor toward us Yankees something of _hauteur_, but, for my
part, I found it less insupportable than the studious indifference with
which one's attentions are received by the ladies of this new
generation, whom I certainly think destitute of sentiment and
sensibility.

This young orderly, whose name was Arman, we persuaded--by what
arguments I am not bound to say--to clothe himself in female attire and
personate a lady. When we had him arrayed to our satisfaction--and a
charming girl he looked--he was conducted to a sofa in the office of the
adjutant-general. That officer was in the secret, as indeed were all
excepting Haberton and the general; within the awful dignity hedging the
latter lay possibilities of disapproval which we were unwilling to
confront.