The departure of General Burnside and his staff for active service
in the field was quite an event in Cincinnati society. The young men
were a set of fine fellows, well educated and great social
favorites. There was a public concert the evening before they left
for Lexington, and they were to go by a special train after the
entertainment should be over. They came to the concert hall,
therefore, not only booted and spurred, but there was perhaps a bit
of youthful but very natural ostentation of being ready for the
field. Their hair was cropped as close as barber's shears could cut
it, they wore the regulation uniform of the cavalry, with trim
round-about jackets, and were the "cynosure of all eyes." Their
parting words were said to their lady friends in the intervals of
the music, and the pretty dramatic effect of it all suggested to an
onlooker the famous parting scene in "Belgium's capital" which
"Childe Harold" has made so familiar.
It was quite an anti-climax, however, when the gay young officers
came back, before a week was over, crestfallen, the detaching of the
Ninth Corps having suspended operations in Kentucky. They were a
little quizzed about their very brief campaign, but so
good-humoredly that they bore it pretty well, and were able to seem
amused at it, as well as the fair quizzers.
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