The Scarlet Letter

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection--for,

slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards

him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might

not improperly be termed so,--I could discern the main points of

his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic qualities

which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right,

that he had won a distinguished name. His spirit could never, I

conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity; it

must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to set

him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome,

and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to

give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his

nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind

that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red

glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness--this

was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had

crept untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I

could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which

should go deeply into his consciousness--roused by a trumpet's

peal, loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not

dead, but only slumbering--he was yet capable of flinging off

his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of

age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a

warrior. And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have

still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be

pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I

saw in him--as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old

Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile--was

the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might

well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of

integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a

somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable

as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he

led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of

quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the

polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his

own hand, for aught I know--certainly, they had fallen like

blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to

which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy--but, be that as

it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would

have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known

the man to whose innate kindliness I would more confidently make

an appeal.

Many characteristics--and those, too, which contribute not the

least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch--must have

vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All merely

graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does

nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that

have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and

crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined

fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and

beauty, there were points well worth noting. A ray of humour,

now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim

obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of

native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after

childhood or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness

for the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be

supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here

was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the

floral tribe.