"General will do," said the President, with a smiling glance at the tall
senator beside him, "I like to be called General."

"You've growed some older, General," said Ephraim, scanning his face with
a simple reverence and affection, "but you hain't changed so much as I'd
a thought since I saw you whittlin' under a tree beside the Lacy house in
the Wilderness."

"My duty has changed some," answered the President, quite as simply. He
added with a touch of sadness, "I liked those days best, Comrade."

"Well, I guess!" exclaimed Ephraim, "you're general over everything now,
but you're not a mite bigger man to me than you was."

The President took the compliment as it was meant.

"I found it easier to run an army than I do to run a country," he said.

Ephraim's blue eyes flamed with indignation.

"I don't take no stock in the bull-dogs and the gold harness at Long
Branch and--and all them lies the dratted newspapers print about
you,"--Ephraim hammered his umbrella on the pavement as an expression of
his feelings,--"and what's more, the people don't."

The President glanced at the senator again, and laughed a little,
quietly.

"Thank you; Comrade," he said.