“You must know, if you do not, that Georgia boasted of an army and navy in the good old times. The navy was altogether imaginary, picturesque, esthetic, and did not muster nor parade; but the army was a fact, and was mobilized twice a year, not in corpses, or cores, or whatever you call them, but in brigades and regiments, in each county, and as the commander in chief could not be in every county at the same time to review his ‘meelish,’ he had to attend by proxy, therefore he appointed a proxy in every county, with the rank of colonel. This honor when conferred was intended as a kind of mucilage that cemented the donee to the donor, and the donee was expected to cry ‘encore’ if the donor wanted to be re-elected to the gubernatorial chair. Parties were pretty equally balanced in Georgia, and every time we had a new governor we had a new set of colonels, say an hundred or more, on the average, every two or four years. This is how we boasted of so many peace colonels, for when a man once got the title he kept it, no matter if he didn’t keep the office. All this is to explain how Major Smith came to be a colonel under Governor Howell Cobb, and was afterwards reduced to his present rank. He says he really prefers the minor title to the major, for it is based on a war footing, and besides, the ladies have a way of saying ‘major’ with a softer and sweeter inflection than they used to say colonel. “The Major was born and bred as usual, but his singular parentage is to be made a note of. His father was a Massachusetts man, and his mother a native of Charleston. This combination was happy enough in itself, but developed in the ‘boy’ a disposition to fits of passion, on which occasions he used to bite himself and bump his head against the door, but his good mother always said he couldn’t help it, for it was South Carolina fighting Massachusetts. “The Major’s father was a merchant, and as the boy grew up he trained him to trade and traffic behind the counter. Later in life he sent him to a manual labor institute, where the boys were expected to pay for their board by working in the field three hours every day. Presumptuous expectation! It generally took the boys about three hours to find their tools and get ready for work. Link pins were stolen, and by the time the wagon reached the field the wheel came off. When the overseer was watching one squad another slipped off to the creek to go in bathing, and so in due time the school collapsed. The ‘boy’ was next initiated into the mysteries of riding the mail to a neighboring village. This was not considered a very elegant or aristocratic occupation. The steed was a kind of equine dromedary, and jogged along at his leisure without regard to whip or spur. The monotony of this employment became very monotonous to the boy, and gave him abundant leisure for mental exercise.