on Johnston or Lee ; yet there was no reason for calling him a common malefactor and enemy of the human race, any more than them. It is true, further, that his tongue often belied his real feeling, as it occasionally showed itself, for instance when, long after the war, he replied
- very gently" to Mrs. Kell, who asked him to help re-
concile her husband, *'He has fifteen years or more longer to live to feel as I do. I am fifteen years his senior. Give him that long to grow reconciled to things as they are." 37 Finally, it is true that the ugly violence of expression does not appear in the earlier Mexican book, which is a model of dignity, sanity, and self-re- straint. In short, a nervous, sensitive, high-strung na- ture was irritated beyond control of itself by the long strain of toil and hardship and exposure. As Semmes himself admirably expresses it, speaking of his own an- tagonist, Winslow : ** I had known, and sailed with him, in the old service, and knew him then to be a humane and Christian gendeman. What the war may have made of him, it is impossible to say. It has turned a great deal of the milk of human kindness to gall and wormwood." ^s Certainly Semmes's human kindness had been gravely aflected in that fashion, and none of the above expla- nations will serve to excuse a manner of speech which would have been impossible not only for Lee or Stephens, but even, under any circumstances, for Beauregard, or Johnston, or Longstreet.
Such a charge must be supported by illustrations,
�� �
