I was then forty-one years of age, while my medical director was gray-haired and probably twelve or more years my senior.

The crowds would generally swarm around him, and thus give me an opportunity of quietly dismounting and getting into the house.

It also gave me an opportunity of hearing passing remarks from one spectator to another about their general.

Those remarks were apt to be more complimentary to the cause than to the appearance of the supposed general, owing to his being muffled up, and also owing to the travel-worn condition we were all in after a hard day's ride.

I was back in Nashville by the 13th of January, 1864.
When I started on this trip it was necessary for me to have some person along who could turn dispatches into cipher, and who could also read the cipher dispatches which I was liable to receive daily and almost hourly.
Under the rules of the War Department at that time, Mr.Stanton had taken entire control of the matter of regulating the telegraph and determining how it should be used, and of saying who, and who alone, should have the ciphers.