cavalry." When he is riding off, as it were into the mouth of hell, his adjutant asks, "How long?" and he answers, as Touchstone might, with a bit of old ballad, " It maybe for years and it may be for ever." ss His clear laughter, in the sternest crises, echoes through dusty war books, like a silver bell. As he sped back from his Pen- insular raid, the Union troops were close upon him and the swollen Chickahominy in front, impassable, it seemed. Stuart thought a moment, pulling at his beard. Then he found the remains of an old bridge and set his men to rebuild it. "While the men were at work upon it, Stuart was lying down on the bank of the stream, in the gayest humor I ever saw, laughing at the prank he had played
It is needless to enlarge on the effect of such a temper, such exuberant confidence and cheerfulness in danger, on subordinates. It lightened labor, banished fatigue, warmed chill limbs and fainting courage. " My men and horses are tired, hungry, jaded, but all right," ^0 was the last despatch he ever wrote. So long as he was with them, they were all right. His very voice was like music, says Fitz Lee, " like the silver trumpet of the Archangel." It sounded oblivion of everything but glory. His gayety, his laughter, were infectious and turned a raid into a revel. " That summer night," writes Mosby of the Mc- Clellan expedition, " was a carnival of fun I can never forget. Nobody thought of danger or sleep, when cham- pagne bottles were bursting and wine was flowing in
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