At no time during the Peninsular campaign has the commanding General so fully commanded the confidence of the soldiers, as during all those severe battles afterwards to be known as the Seven Days. His calm and collected action had been of the very character to inspire that confidence, and could not have wrought more effectually to that end had it had no other purpose. Some men, jubilant and light-hearted when all their plans are progressing favorably, permit their words to become few and their manner sombre and abstracted when difficulties thicken, creating fear and distrust in the minds of those around them, even when they themselves have not lost confidence and are only absorbed in thought. McClellan, always a silent man, displayed the very opposite. One of his staff officers said of him on that terrible Friday afternoon of the first conflict, when the result certainly seemed a most threatening one for the Union arms: "Little Mac seems to have woke up! I have not seen him look so happy before, since he received the news of McDowell's falling back on Washington." And there had not been wanting those to circulate throughout the army his confident and self-possessed action on the morning before--that of White Oak Swamp, when he sat on horseback at the cross-roads, with aid-de-camps dashing up with unfavorable reports, and heads of divisions a little embarrassed if not dispirited around him. "Gentlemen, take it easy! Only obey me, and I will bring you out of all this without the loss of a man or a gun, God willing!" Such words had been like the pause of the Bruce to cut his armor-strap when flying before the English enemy--they had inspirited the whole command. He had remained, too, the whole of Monday, in the neighborhood of the White Oak Swamp, personally superintending everything and hastening the passage of the immense trains onward towards the James. Nothing had seemed to discourage him, and no exposure in the terrible heat had seemed to fatigue him beyond endurance. All these facts had crept out to every division of the army, as they will do through the subtle and unaccountable telegraphism of comrade-ry; and when regiment after regiment heard of the incident since made memorable by De Joinville, of his rising from his momentary rest on the piazza of a house near White Oak and going out with a smile to prevent his soldiers picking and eating the cherries belonging to his pretty hostess, they had burst out into laughs and cheers more complimentary to the young General's pluck than his devotion to Nelly Marcy, and fancied that he might have been engaged in picking other cherries for himself, that grew on red lips instead of on the tree!