.

Up the St.Mary's.
If Sergeant Rivers was a natural king among my dusky soldiers, Corporal Robert Sutton was the natural prime-minister.

If not in all respects the ablest, he was the wisest man in our ranks.

As large, as powerful, and as black as our good-looking Color-Sergeant, but more heavily built and with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more meditative and systematic intellect.

Not yet grounded even in the spelling-book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid, and accurate; and he yearned and pined for intellectual companionship beyond all ignorant men whom I have ever met.