Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/179

 rise in old age from nothing to fortune in a new country and an untried sphere ? Even in his formal and official correspondence you catch little glimpses of the easy, devil-may-care fashion in which he took responsibilities that would have crushed others. Thus, he ends a long letter of difficulty and trouble to his predecessor in the War Office : *' What a bed of roses you have bequeathed me!" ^2 Or he writes to Sidney Johnston — of all men : " In Mississippi and Tennessee your unlucky offer to re- ceive unarmed men for twelve months has played the deuce with our camps." ^^ Fancy Lee or Davis writing that!

For a man armed with a smile of this kind religion is a superfluity and it appears that Benjamin had none. He practically dropped his own and never had the interest to pick up any other. He did, indeed, — unless he has been confused with Disraeli, — tell a sneerer at Judaism that his ancestors were receiving the law from Deity on Mount Sinai when the sneerer's were herding swine in the forests of Saxony ; ^^ but this was to make a point for the gallery, just as his burial in Paris with Catholic rites v^'diS potcr plaire aux dameSy unless it was wholly the ladies' doing. His religion would not have been worth alluding to but for the delightful anecdote of Daniel Webster's assuring him and Maury, the scientist, that they were all three Unitarians together. Benjamin denied this, and invited Webster to dine with him to prove it. They dined and argued, but Benjamin would not be con-

�� �