In
such cases he would assume the responsibility for what was done as
cheerfully as if he had given the order. In like manner he was
careless of forms himself, in doing whatever seemed necessary or
proper, and might pass by intermediate officers to reach immediately
the persons who were to act or the things to be done. There was no
intentional slight to any one in this: it was only a characteristic
carelessness of routine. Martinets would be exasperated by it, and
would be pretty sure to quarrel with him. No doubt it was a bad
business method, and had its mischiefs and inconveniences. A story
used to go the rounds a little later that soldiers belonging to the
little army in East Tennessee were sometimes arrested at their homes
and sent back as deserters, when they would produce a furlough
written by Burnside on a leaf of his pocket memorandum-book, which,
as they said, had been given by him after hearing a pitiful story
which moved his sympathies. Such inventions were a kind of popular
recognition of his well-known neglect of forms, as well as of his
kind heart. There was an older story about him, to the effect that,
when a lieutenant in the army, he had been made post-quartermaster
at some little frontier garrison, and that his accounts and returns
got into such confusion that after several pretty sharp reminders
the quartermaster-general notified him, as a final terror, that he
would send a special officer and subject him and his papers to a
severe scrutiny.
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