Sleepy or asleep he may have seemed, but let some small darkey imp of mischief tweak his patient ear, then note how swiftly that magnetic hoof will lift the tweaker to a pearly seat amidst the celestial cherubim--direct and speedy circuit of nerve-telephone here manifest, without the intervention of any dilatory central office. His drooping lids were thus but the token of a measureless content, which craved not the mere bric-a-brac and gumdrops of existence. But it was liable to shift its specific gravity, if any misfit perfume came between the wind and his nobility, and explode in a sudden touch-and-go style, rocket-like, trigger-like, flashing. He could smile like a heavenly blessing. His expressive yawn was widely eminent; without it no Mule was genuine. His bray, opening clear and sonorous, like the report of a judiciary committee, rapidly shaded off into a succession of disembodied shrieks and disemboweled groans, that sent thrills of suicidal delirium through all the encircling camps. No further seek his general merits to disclose. They developed constantly on the sensitive plate of our regard, and we have waited long for somebody to take off a blue-print of his ground plan and front elevation. The possessor of many virtues, poor but honest, with a large circulation but small political influence, sagacious and serene he stood, thick of head, tough of hide, hard of heel, the proffered hero of the expressive army shibboleth, "Here's your Mule." The plutonic, speechless quadruped, Mule, like the platonic featherless biped, man, after being inspected on the hoof, was obliged to graduate through the three military degrees of Recruit, Soldier and Veteran. We all remember those recruiting days; those first companies of picked men, mostly picked before they were ripe; when the fray was curtained behind song and hurrah, the cataract obscured by the rainbow. Who can forget the wrathful buzz and ferment, the wild tossing and writhing and moaning of an aroused people; the fierce uprising; the keen razor-edge of fervor. Then the enrolling and drilling and marching and evoluting in the moonlit squares and streets; the nocturnal visitations, with fife and drum, to the verandas of oratorical patriots for a "night-cap" of glowing speech, alternated with raids on suspected disloyalists to demand the prompt uphoisting of the star spangled banner. Saxon and Norman and Dane were we, or Celt or Teuton in birth or descent, but all of us then crystallized in the alembic of patriotism into the first generation of unadulterated Americans.