Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection--for,
slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards
him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might
not improperly be termed so,--I could discern the main points of
his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic qualities
which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right,
that he had won a distinguished name. His spirit could never, I
conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity; it
must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to set
him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome,
and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to
give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his
nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind
that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red
glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness--this
was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had
crept untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I
could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which
should go deeply into his consciousness--roused by a trumpet's
peal, loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not
dead, but only slumbering--he was yet capable of flinging off
his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of
age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a
warrior. And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have
still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be
pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I
saw in him--as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old
Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile--was
the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might
well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of
integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a
somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable
as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he
led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of
quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the
polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his
own hand, for aught I know--certainly, they had fallen like
blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to
which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy--but, be that as
it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would
have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known
the man to whose innate kindliness I would more confidently make
an appeal.
Many characteristics--and those, too, which contribute not the
least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch--must have
vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All merely
graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does
nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that
have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and
crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined
fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and
beauty, there were points well worth noting. A ray of humour,
now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim
obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of
native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after
childhood or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness
for the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be
supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here
was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the
floral tribe.