“A million men, a mighty host--and one word of mine would bring the million sleeping boys to their feet--send them without a word to their guns--they would fall in rank--regiment on regiment, brigade on brigade, corps on corps, a word more and they would march steady, quiet, a million men in step straight ahead, over fields, through forests, across rivers. Nothing could stop them--cannons might tear holes in their ranks, and they would fill them up, a half million might be bled out of them, and a word of mine would bring a half million more to fill their place. Oh, God, my God,” he groaned, under his breath, “what am I that Thou shouldst ask this of me! What am I that Thou shouldst trust me so!” Well, I just dropped my head in my hands--seemed as if I oughten to look at him--and the next thing I knew Mr. Lincoln’s arm was over my shoulder and he was saying in that smilin’ kind of voice he had: “Don’t mind me, Billy. The Lord generally knows what He’s about and He can get rid of me quick enough if He sees I ain’t doin’ the job--quicker than the Copperheads can.” Just like him to change so. Didn’t want anybody to feel bad. But I never forgot that, and many a time in my sleep I’ve heard Abraham Lincoln’s voice crying out: “Oh, God, my God, what am I that Thou shouldst ask this of me!” and I’ve groaned to think how often through them four awful years he must have lifted up his face with that look on it and asked the Lord what in the world he was doing that thing for. “After all, Billy,” he went on, “it’s surprisin’ what a happy army it is. In spite of bein’ so dead in earnest and havin’ so much trouble of one kind and another, seems sometimes as if you couldn’t put ’em anywhere that they wouldn’t scare up some fun. Greatest chaps to sing on the march, to cut up capers and play tricks you ever saw. I reckon the army’s a little like me, it couldn’t do its job if it didn’t get a good laugh now and then--sort o’ clears up the air when things are lookin’ blue. Anyhow the boys are always gettin’ themselves into trouble by their pranks. Jokin’ fills the guard-house as often as drunkenness or laziness. That and their bein’ so sassy. A lot of ’em think they know just as much as the officers do, and I reckon they’re right pretty often. It takes some time to learn that it ain’t good for the service for them to be speakin’ their minds too free. At the start they did it pretty often--do now sometimes. Why, only just this week Stanton told me about a sergeant, who one day when the commanding officer was relieving his mind by swearing at his men, stepped right out of the ranks and reproved him and said he was breaking the law of God. Well, they clapped him in the guard-house and now they want to punish him harder--say he ain’t penitent--keeps disturbin’ the guard-house by prayin’ at the top of his voice for that officer. I told Stanton we better not interfere, that there wasn’t nothing in the regulations against a man’s prayin’ for his officers.