It was a wonderful sight, George, and not the least wonderful thing in
it was the campfires of the Southern army, burning down there towards
Bull Run."
"Burnin' where they ought not to be," said Whitley--no gulf was yet
established between commissioned and non-commissioned officers in either
army. "Little Mac may be a great organizer, as they say, but you can
keep on organizin' an' organizin', until it's too late to do what you
want to do."
"It's a sound principle that you lay down, Mr. Whitley," said Warner
in his precise tones. "In fact, it may be reduced to a mathematical
formula. Delay is always a minus quantity which may be represented by
y. Achievement is represented by x, and, consequently, when you have
achievement hampered by delay you have x minus y, which is an extremely
doubtful quantity, often amounting to failure."
"I travel another road in my reckonin's," said Whitley, "I don't know
anything about x and y, but I guess you an' me, George, come to the same
place. It's been a full six weeks since Bull Run, an' we haven't done a
thing."
Whitley, despite their difference in rank, could not yet keep from
addressing the boys by their first names. But they took it as a matter
of course, in view of the fact that he was so much older than they and
vastly their superior in military knowledge.
"Dick," continued the sergeant, "what was it you was sayin' about a
cousin of yours from the same town in Kentucky bein' out there in the
Southern army?"
"He's certainly there," replied Dick, "if he wasn't killed in the battle,
which I feel couldn't have happened to a fellow like Harry.
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