I have already stated that General Order No. 4 carried dismay into many hearts, causing the more timid to withdraw from military service at once. A great many more would have withdrawn at the same time had they not been restrained by pride and the lingering hope that there would be no war after all; but this very day (the 15th) came Special Order No. 14, from Governor Andrew, ordering the Third, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Regiments to assemble on Boston Common forthwith. This was the final test of the militiamen’s actual courage and thirst for glory, and a severe one it proved to many of them, for at this eleventh hour there was another falling-out along the line. But the moment a man’s declination for further service was made known, unless his reasons were of the very best, straightway he was hooted at for his cowardice, and for a time his existence was made quite unpleasant in his own immediate neighborhood. If he had been a commissioned officer, his face was likely to appear in an illustrated paper, accompanied by the statement that he had “shown the white feather,”—another term for cowardice. A reference to any file of illustrated papers of those days will show a large number of such persons. Such gratuitous advertising by a generally loyal, though not always discreet press did some men gross injustice; for, as already intimated, many of the men thus publicly sketched and denounced were among the most worthy and loyal of citizens. A little later than the period of which I am treating, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the following poem, hitting off a certain limited class in the community:— THE SWEET LITTLE MAN. _Dedicated to the Stay-at-Home Rangers._ Now while our soldiers are fighting our battles, Each at his post to do all that he can, Down among Rebels and contraband chattels, What are you doing, my sweet little man? All the brave boys under canvas are sleeping; All of them pressing to march with the van, Far from the home where their sweethearts are weeping; What are you waiting for, sweet little man? You with the terrible warlike moustaches, Fit for a colonel or chief of a clan, You with the waist made for sword-belts and sashes, Where are your shoulder-straps, sweet little man? Bring him the buttonless garment of woman! Cover his face lest it freckle and tan; Muster the Apron-string Guards on the Common,— That is the corps for the sweet little man! Give him for escort a file of young misses, Each of them armed with a deadly rattan; They shall defend him from laughter and hisses, Aimed by low boys at the sweet little man. All the fair maidens about him shall cluster, Pluck the white feather from bonnet and fan, Make him a plume like a turkey-wing duster,— That is the crest for the sweet little man.