It was while I was walking with him in Greenwich Park one afternoon about this time that I first realized that he had any literary ambition. He acknowledged a constant temptation to use his pen. I had thought of him as a reader, but hardly as a writer, although he had published his soldiers' _Pocket-Book for Field Service_ some twenty years before. I learned afterwards, from Andrew Lang, that Lord Wolseley had produced a novel, under a feigned name; this I had never seen, and Lang did not encourage me to hunt for it. But now, with considerable leisure, he was ready to be encouraged to write on matters at the fringe of his daily occupation. He did not, however, see any particular theme lying in wait for him. During a visit I had lately paid to the United States I had enjoyed a good deal of conversation with two of the leading generals of the Civil War, with Philip Henry Sheridan and with William Tecumseh Sherman. It was Sherman who made the celebrated march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah at the end of 1864; his tenacity and clairvoyance delighted Wolseley, who was nevertheless inclined to blame Sherman for an excess of ruthlessness in his methods. He laughed when I told him that I had heard Sherman, when teased at a supper-party for destroying some town, first deny the charge, and then, when it was daringly repeated, turn round on the railer like an old snow-leopard, and cry: "Next time I'll burn the whole darned city to the ground." With Sheridan, Wolseley was in much more complete sympathy. He set him on the very summit as a fighting general, and he said that he had contrived a mobility of cavalry in action which was unprecedented. I think he had known Sheridan personally in his early days on the frontier. I remember his saying that, if he himself were conducting a great battle, he should like nothing better than to have the victor of Opequam on a camp-stool by his side. His memory took fire at what I was able to recall of the conversation of the two great American generals. His chief hero, however, was Lee, and I remember that he put the Confederate general by the side of Marlborough and far above Wellington. I used the occasion to suggest to him that he should write down his ideas regarding the strategic careers of these Americans. He liked the notion, and Mr. Rice, who was then editing the _North American Review_, having been communicated with, an invitation came to Wolseley which he accepted, and wrote, in 1889, one or perhaps several articles, which have never, I think, been reprinted. The life at Ranger's House was very quiet; the Wolseleys rarely dined in town, and the General's existence was almost that of a recluse. I remember we were all very much amused when his valet, a dashing character, suddenly gave warning, his sole cause of complaint being that he was losing caste by remaining in the service of "so very quiet a nobleman, who does not even go to the races!"