[238]
brightest fire and walls decked with holly and vines.
They play whist a good deal, but the baby eats up the cards so fast, it is hard to keep a pack full.
Pretty little thing—she lies in the hammock on the piazza with her little scarlet hood and cloak and little fat arms coming out through the meshes .. A little hen roosts there at night. . . . The baby cements everybody and goes from one pair of arms to another all day; she is a darling.
A proposition that
Colonel Higginson should write
Senator Sumner and present his claims to be appointed
Brigadier-General in command of colored troops—this appeal to be fortified by an urgent letter from
General Saxton, himself,—was thus noted in the
War Journal:—
I told him [General Saxton] with some indignation that if I could be made a Major General by writing a note ten words long to a Congressman I certainly would not do it; that I never yet had asked for any position in life and never expected to; that a large part of the pleasure I had had in commanding my regiment grew out of the perfect unexpectedness of the promotion. . .. Emerson says no man can do anything well who does not feel that what he is doing is for the time the centre of the universe—I thank heaven that I never yet have supposed for a moment that any brigade or division in the army was so important a trust as my one regiment—at least until the problem of Negro soldiers was conclusively solved before all men's eyes.