"
"Pretty-looking set of friends!"
"Well, they ain't much to look at, that's a fact; but I never heard of
anybody saying you was to turn a cold shoulder on a helper because he
was homely, except,"--this as the Major was walking away, "except a
secesh, or a fool, or one of little Mac's staff officers."
"Homely? what are you gassing about?" objected a little fellow from
Massachusetts; "the Fifty-fourth is as fine-looking a set of men as
shoulder rifles anywhere in the army."
"Jack's sensitive about the credit of his State," chaffed a big Ohioan.
"He wants to crack up these fellows, seeing they're his comrades. I say,
Johnny, are all the white men down your way such little shavers as you?"
"For a fellow that's all legs and no brains, you talk too much,"
answered Johnny. "Have any of you seen the Fifty-fourth?"
"I haven't." "Nor I." "Yes, I saw them at Port Royal." "And I." "And I."
"Well, the Twenty-third was at Beaufort while they were there, and I
used to go over to their camp and talk with them. I never saw fellows so
in earnest; they seemed ready to die on the instant, if they could help
their people, or walk into the slaveholders any, first. They were just
full of it; and yet it seemed absurd to call 'em a black regiment; they
were pretty much all colors, and some of 'em as white as I am."
"Lord," said Jim, "that's not saying much, you've got a smutty face.
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