stiff blue uniform coat creased awkwardly. "I guess I'm about as fit to
command a regiment as Grant is."

"That man's forty years old, if he's a day," put in another. "I remember
when he came here to St. Louis in '54, played out. He'd resigned from the
army on the Pacific Coast. He put up a log cabin down on the Gravois
Road, and there he lived in the hardest luck of any man I ever saw until
last year. You remember him, Joe."

"Yep," said Joe. "I spotted him by the El Sol cigar. He used to bring a
load of wood to the city once in a while, and then he'd go over to the
Planters' House, or somewhere else, and smoke one of these long fellows,
and sit against the wall as silent as a wooden Indian. After that he came
up to the city without his family and went into real estate one winter.
But he didn't make it go. Curious, it is just a year ago this month than
he went over to Illinois. He's an honest fellow, and hard working enough,
but he don't know how. He's just a dead failure."

"Command a regiment!" laughed the first, again, as of this in particular
had struck his sense of humor. "I guess he won't get a regiment in a
hurry, There's lots of those military carpet-baggers hanging around for
good jobs now."

"He might fool you fellows yet," said the one caller, though his tone was
not one of conviction. "I understand he had a first-rate record an the
Mexican War."

Just then an aide rode up, and the Colonel gave a sharp command which put
an end to this desultory talk. As the First Regiment took up the march,
the words "Camp Jackson" ran from mouth to mouth on the sidewalks.