This almost excessive faith, and the love of freedom and of their families, all co-operated with their pride as soldiers to make them do their duty.
I could not have spared any of these incentives.

Those of our officers who were personally the least influenced by such considerations, still saw the need of encouraging them among the men.
I am bound to say that this strongly devotional turn was not always accompanied by the practical virtues; but neither was it strikingly divorced from them.

A few men, I remember, who belonged to the ancient order of hypocrites, but not many.

Old Jim Cushman was our favorite representative scamp.

He used to vex his righteous soul over the admission of the unregenerate to prayer-meetings, and went off once shaking his head and muttering, "Too much goat shout wid de sheep." But he who objected to this profane admixture used to get our mess-funds far more hopelessly mixed with his own, when he went out to buy chickens.
And I remember that, on being asked by our Major, in that semi-Ethiopian dialect into which we sometimes slid, "How much wife you got, Jim ?" the veteran replied, with a sort of penitence for lost opportunities, "On'y but four, Sah!" Another man of somewhat similar quality went among us by the name of Henry Ward Beecher, from a remarkable resemblance in face and figure to that sturdy divine.