When I turned out on the next morning I found the fogs and mists of the day before departed and blown aside, and a bright sky overhead. There was no frost; but on the contrary a fine spring promise in the air that smelled in one's nostril like the breath of budding trees. The roads, too, were more in the way of reform, and here and there a dry spot showed in profert of what would be. Altogether it was quite an April rather than a February morning. I finished shaving and dressing and called Jim to brush my coat. A hostler before he became a valet, Jim was used to accompany these brush-labors with an aspiration like unto the escape of steam; a sound held sovereign by him for giving a horse's coat a gloss, and therefore good for mine. I had gone forth in an earlier day to break Jim of these stable tricks, but, making no headway, wisely gave it up, and Jim hissed on unchecked. There be things your African won't learn; there be things he will learn; and effort to suppress in the one direction or excite enterprise in the other, is thrown away. Aware on these points, I had taken years before the bridle of restraint off Jim, and to give him his due he went the better with his head free. When brushed to fit Jim's notion of the spic and span, I settled my chin in my black stock and went to call upon the General. I would know how he held himself on the back of his bleedings and his wraths against Duff Green. I found him over a bowl of coffee and with a pipe going; he had been up and breakfasted an hour before. Also, he had gotten letters to please him and was in top spirits. I recall looking at him as I entered his chamber, and thinking, as I noted his quick, game-cock air, full of life and resolution, how little he seemed that invalid who but the evening before was opening veins and lying ill with old wounds. The difference would have amazed any save myself, who had seen too much of him to be now astonished. The General could pull himself together like a watch-spring. Moreover, he fed on sensation, and a glow at his heart's roots was better for him than a meal of victuals. I've borne witness as he rode into the wilderness to conquer Weatherford and his Creeks, with a month-old bullet in his shoulder and its fellow in his arm. He was so feeble and nigh death that he must be handed to his saddle like a sack of bran, and each hour the surgeons must bathe him over with sugar-of-lead water to keep life in his body. And yet, from the outset, and on bad food and with the ground for his bed, he began to mend. The man lived on sensation, I say, like a babe on milk. He would walk up and down a line of battle and be as drunk on rifle smoke as any other on brandy.