"
Blinks nodded gravely. Anybody who has seen the Grand
Duke Nicholoevitch quietly accepting the advice of General
Ruski under heavy artillery fire, will realize Blinks'
manner to a nicety.
And, oddly enough, neither of them, I am certain, has
ever had any larger ideas about the history of the Civil
War than what can be got from reading Uncle Tom's Cabin
and seeing Gillette play Secret Service. But this is part
of the mania. Jinks and Blinks had suddenly developed
the hallucination that they knew the history of all wars
by a sort of instinct.
They rose soon after that, dusted off their waistcoats
with their napkins and waddled heavily towards the door.
I could hear them as they went talking eagerly of the
need of keeping the troops in hard training. They were
almost brutal in their severity. As they passed out of
the door,--one at a time to avoid crowding,--they were
still talking about it. Jinks was saying that our whole
generation is overfed and soft. If he had his way he
would take every man in the United States up to forty-
seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and train him
to a shadow.
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