"Let's sing, boys." "Oh! Get out, or I'll belt you over the snout." "Halloo! Pardner, is there water over there?" "Three groans for old Jeff!" "Hip-hip—hoo-roar! Hi! Hi!"

A continual explosion of small arms, in the shape of epithets, jests, imitations of the cries of sheep, cows, mules, and roosters, and snatches of songs, enlivened the march. If something interposed, or a halt was ordered, the men would throw themselves in the dust, wipe their foreheads, drink from their canteens, gossip, grin, and shout confusedly, and some sought opportunities to straggle off, so that the regiments were materially decimated before they reached the field. The leading officers maintained a dignity and a reserve, and reined their horses together in places, to confer. At one time, a private soldier came out to me, presenting a scrap of paper, and asked me to scrawl him a line, which he would dictate. It was as follows:—

"My dear Mary, we are going into action soon, and I send you my love. Kiss baby, and if I am not killed I will write to you after the fight." The man asked me to mail the scrap at the first opportunity; but the same post which carried his simple billet, carried also his name among the rolls of the dead.

At five o'clock I overtook Crawford's brigade, drawn up in front of a fine girdle of timber, in a grass field, and on the edge of Cedar Creek. Their ambulances had been unhitched, and ranged in a row against the woods and the soldiers were soon formed in line of battle, extending across the road, with their faces toward the mountain. In this order they moved through the creek, and disappeared behind the ridge of a cornfield. The hill towered in front, but with the naked eye I could distinguish only a speck of floating something above the roof of Slaughter's white house. This was said to be a flag, though I did not believe it; and as there were no evidences of any enemy, which I could determine, I turned my attention to the immediate necessities of myself and my horse. A granary lay at a little distance, and as I was hastening thither, a trooper came along with a blanket full of corn. Fortuitously, he dropped about a dozen ears, which I secured, and hitched my animal to a tree, where he munched until I had fallen asleep. The latter event happened in this wise.

I had observed a slight person in the uniform of a surgeon. He was dividing a large lump of pork at the time, and three great crackers lay before him. I approached and introduced myself, and in a few minutes I was a partial proprieter of the meat, and he a recipient of some drink. The same person directed me to occupy a shelf of the ambulance, and when we lay down together he narrated some of his experiences in Martinsburg, when the Confederates occupied the place after Banks's retreat. He had charge of a hospital at that time, and witnessed the entrance of the Confederate army. The wildness of the people was unbounded, he said, and all who had given so much as a drop of cold water to the invaders were pointed out and execrated. The properties of a few, said to be Unionists, were endangered; and ruffianly soldiers climbed to the windows of the hospital, hooting and taunting the sick. Not to be outdone in bitterness, the tenants flung up their crutches and cheered for the "Union,"—that darling idea, which has marshalled a million of men and filled hecatombs with its champions. In a few days the Federals took possession of the town anew, and the Southern element was in turn oppressed. This is Civil War,—more cruel than the excesses of hereditary enemies. A year before these people of the Shenandoah were fellow-countrymen of the soldiery they contemned.



CHAPTER XXIV

CEDAR MOUNTAIN.

There being nothing to eat in the vicinity of the ambulances, I mounted anew at five o'clock and rode back toward Culpepper. No portion of the troops of Crawford were visible now, and only some gray smoke moved up the side of the mountain. A few stragglers were bathing their faces in Cedar Creek, and some miles in the rear lay several of McDowell's brigades under arms. Their muskets were stacked along the sides of the road, the men lay sleepily upon the ground,—company by company, each in its proper place,—the field-officers gossiping together, and the colors upright and unfurled. I was stopped, all the way along the lines, and interrogated as to what was happening in front.

"Any Reb-bils out yonder?" asked a grim, snappish Colonel.

"Guess they don't mean to fight before breakfast!" blurted a Captain.

"Wish they'd cut away, anyway, if they goin' to!" muttered a chorus of privates.

At the village there was nothing to be purchased, although some sutlers' stores lay at the depot, guarded by Provost officers. I persuaded a negro to give me a mess of almost raw pork, and a woman, with a child at the breast, cooked me some biscuit. There were many civilians and idle officers in the town, and the streets were lined with cavalry. Mr. Paine, the landlord, was losing the remnant of his wits, and the young ladies were playing the "Bonnie Blue Flag," and laughing satirically at some young officers who listened. The correspondents began to show themselves in force, and a young fellow whom I may call Chitty, representing a provincial journal, greatly amused me, with the expression of fears that there might be no engagement after all. Chitty was an attorney, who had forsaken a very moderate practice, for a press connection, and he informed me, in confidence, that he was gathering materials for a history of the war. By reason of his attention to this weighty project, he failed to do any reporting, and as his mind was not very well balanced, he was commonly taken to be a simpleton. As there was nobody else to talk to, I amused myself with Chitty during the forenoon, and he narrated to me some doubtful intrigues which had varied his career in Piedmont. But Chitty had mingled in no battles, and now that a contest was about to take place, his heart warmed in anticipation. He asked me if the hottest fighting would not probably occur on the right, and intimated, in that event, his desire to carry despatches through the thickest of the fray. Death was welcome to Chitty if he could so distinguish himself. Between Chitty and a nap in a wagon, I managed to loiter out the morning, and at three o'clock, a cannon peal, so close that it shook the houses, brought my horse upon his haunches. For awhile I did not leave the village. Cannon upon cannon exploded; the young ladies ceased their mirth; the landlord staggered with white lips into the air, and after a couple of hours, I heard the signal that I knew so well—a volley of musketry. Full of all the old impulses, I climbed into the saddle, and spurred my horse towards the battle-field.

The ride over six miles of clay road was a capital school for my pony. Every hoof-fall brought him closer to the cannon, and the sound had become familiar when he reached the scene. At four o'clock, the musketry was close and effective beyond anything I had known, and now and then I could see, from secure places, the spurts of white cannon-smoke far up the side of the mountain. The action was commenced by emulous skirmishers, who crawled from the woodsides, and annoyed each other from coverts of ridge, stump, and stone heap. A large number of Southern riflemen then threw themselves into a corner of wood, considerably advanced from their main position. Their fire was so destructive that General Banks felt it necessary to order a charge. Two brigades, when the signal was given, marched in line of battle, out of a wood, and charged across a field of broken ground toward the projecting corner. As soon as they appeared, sharpshooters darted up from a stretch of scrub cedars on their right, and a battery mowed them down by an oblique fire from the left. The guns up the mountain side threw shells with beautiful exactness, and the concealed rifle-men in front poured in deadly showers of bullet and ball. As the men fell by dozens out of line, the survivors closed up the gaps, and pressed forward gallantly. The ground was uneven, however, and solid order could not be observed throughout. At length, when they had gained a brookside at the very edge of the wood, the column staggered, quailed, fell into disorder, and then fell back. Some of the more desperate dashed singly into the thicket, bayoneting their enemies, and falling in turn in the fierce grapple. Others of the Confederates ran from the wood, and engaged hand to hand with antagonists, and, in places, a score of combatants met sturdily upon the plain, lunging with knife and sabre bayonet, striking with clubbed musket, or discharging revolvers. But at last the broken lines regained the shelter of the timber, and there was a momentary lull in the thunder.

For a time, each party kept in the edges of the timber, firing at will, but the Confederates were moving forward in masses by detours, until some thousands of them stood in the places of the few who were at first isolated. Distinct charges were now made, and a large body of Federals attempted to capture the battery before Slaughter's house, while separate brigades charged by front and flank upon the impenetrable timber. The horrible results of the previous effort were repeated; the Confederates preserved their position, and, at nightfall, the Federals fell back a mile or more. From fifteen hundred to two thousand of the latter were slain or wounded, and, though the heat of the battle had lasted not more than two hours, nearly four thousand men upon both sides were maimed or dead. The valor of the combatants in either cause was unquestionable. But no troops in the world could have driven the Confederates out of the impregnable mazes of the wood. It was an error to expose columns of troops upon an open plain, in the face of imperceptible sharpshooters. The batteries should have shelled the thickets, and the infantry should have retained their concealment. The most disciplined troops of Europe would not have availed in a country of bog, barren, ditch, creek, forest, and mountain. Compared to the bare plain of Waterloo, Cedar Mountain was like the antediluvian world, when the surface was broken by volcanic fire into chasms and abysses. In this battle, the Confederate batteries, along the mountain side, were arranged in the form of a crescent, and, when the solid masses charged up the hill, they were butchered by enfilading fires. On the Confederate part, a thorough knowledge of the country was manifest, and the best possible disposition of forces and means; on the side of the Federals, there was zeal without discretion, and gallantry without generalship.

During the action, "Stonewall" Jackson occupied a commanding position on the side of the mountain, where, glass in hand, he observed every change of position, and directed all the operations. General Banks was indefatigable and courageous; but he was left to fight the whole battle, and not a regiment of the large reserve in his rear, came forward to succor or relieve him. As usual, McDowell was cursed by all sides, and some of Banks's soldiers threatened to shoot him. But the unpopular Commander had no defence to make, and said nothing to clear up the doubts relative to him. He exposed himself repeatedly, and so did Pope. The latter rode to the front at nightfall,—for what purpose no one could say, as he had been in Culpepper during the whole afternoon,—and he barely escaped being captured. The loss of Federal officers was very heavy. Fourteen commissioned officers were killed and captured out of one regiment. Sixteen commissioned officers only remained in four regiments. One General was taken prisoner and several were wounded. A large number of field-officers were slain.

During the progress of the fight I galloped from point to point along the rear, but could nowhere obtain a panoramic view. The common sentiment of civilians, that it is always possible to see a battle, is true of isolated contests only. Even the troops engaged, know little of the occurrences around them, and I have been assured by many soldiers that they have fought a whole day without so much as a glimpse of an enemy. The smoke and dust conceal objects, and where the greatest execution is done, the antagonists have frequently fired at a line of smoke, behind which columns may, or may not have been posted.

It was not till nightfall, when the Federals gave up the contested ground, and fell back to some cleared fields, that I heard anything of the manner of action and the resulting losses. As soon as the firing ceased, the ambulance corps went ahead and began to gather up the wounded. As many of these as could walk passed to the rear on foot, and the spectacle at eight o'clock was of a terrible character. The roads were packed with ambulances, creaking under fearful weights, and rod by rod, the teams were stopped, to accommodate other sufferers who had fallen or fainted on the walk. A crippled man would cling to the tail of a wagon, while the tongue would be burdened with two, sustaining themselves by the backs of the horses. Water was sought for everywhere, and all were hungry. I met at sundry times, friends who had passed me, hopeful and humorous the day before, now crawling wearily with a shattered leg or dumb with a stiff and dripping jaw. To realize the horror of the night, imagine a common clay road, in a quiet, rolling country, packed with bleeding people,—the fences down, horsemen riding through the fields, wagons blocking the way, reinforcements in dark columns hurrying up, the shouting of the well to the ill, and the feeble replies,—in a word, recall that elder time when the "earth was filled with violence," and add to the idea that the time was in the night.

I assumed my old role of writing the names of the wounded, but when, at nine o'clock, the 10th Maine regiment—a fragment of the proud column which passed me in the morning—returned, I hailed Colonel Beale, and reined with him into a clover-field, the files following wearily. Tramping through the tall garbage, with few words, and those spoken in low tones, we stopped at length in a sort of basin, with the ground rising on every side of us. The men were placed in line, and the Company Sergeants called the rolls. Some of the replies were thrilling, but all were prosaic:—

"Smith!"

"Smith fell at the first fire, Sergeant. Bill, here, saw him go down."

"Sturgis!"

"Sam's in the ambulance, wi' his thigh broke. I don't believe he'll live, Sergeant!"

"Thompson!"

"Dead."

"Vinton!"

"Yar! (feebly said) four fingers shot off!"

In this way, the long lists were read over, while the survivors chatted, laughed, and disputed, talking of the incidents of the day. Most of the men lay down in the clover, and some started off in couples to procure water. The field-officers gave me some items relative to the conflict, and as they were ordered to remain here, I resolved to pass the night with them. Obtaining a great fence-rail, I lashed my horse to it by his halter, and, removing his saddle and bridle, left him free to graze in the vicinity. Then I unfolded my camp-bed, covered myself with a rubber blanket, and continued to listen to the conversation. Of course, accusations, bitter mutterings, moodiness, and melancholy, prevailed. I heard these for some time, interspersed with sententious eulogies upon particular persons, and references to isolated events. The evening was one of the pleasantest of the year, in all that nature could contribute; a fine starlight, a transparent atmosphere, a coolness, and a fragrance of sweet-clover blossoms. I had laid my head upon my arm, and shut my eyes, and felt drowsiness come upon me, when something hurtled through the air, and another gun boomed on the stillness. A shell, describing an arc of fire, fell some distance to our left, and, in a moment, a second shell passed directly over our heads.

"——!" said an officer; "have they moved a battery so close? See! it is just at the end of this field!"

I looked back! At the top of the basin in which we lay, something flashed up, throwing a glare upon the woody background, and a shell, followed by a shock, crashed ricochetting, directly in a line with us, but leaped, fortunately, above us, and continued its course far beyond.

"They mean 'em for us," said the same voice; "they see these lights where the fools have been warming their coffee. Halloo!"

Another glare of fire revealed the grouped men and horses around the battery, and for a moment I thought the missile had struck among us. There was a splutter, as of shivering metal flying about, and, with a sort of intuition, the whole regiment rose and ran. I started to my feet and looked for my horse. His ears were erect, his eyeballs distended, and his nostrils were tremulous with fright. A fifth shell, so perfectly in range that I held my breath, and felt my heart grow cold, came toward and passed me, and, with a toss of his head, the nag flung up the rail as if it had been a feather. He seemed literally to juggle it, and it flitted here and there, so that I dared not approach him. A favorable opportunity at length ensued, and I seized the animal by his halter. He was now wild with panic, and sprang toward me as if to trample me. In vain I endeavored to pull him toward the saddle. Fresh projectiles darted beside and above us, and the last of these seemed to pass so close that I could have reached and touched it. The panic took possession of me. I grasped my camp-bed, rather by instinct than by choice, and, holding it desperately under my arm, took to my heels.

It was a long distance to the bottom of the clover-field, and the swift iron followed me remorselessly. At one moment, when a shell burst full in my face, half blinding me, I felt weak to faintness, but still I ran. I had wit enough to avoid the high road, which I knew to be packed with fugitives, and down which, I properly surmised, the enemy would send his steady messengers. Once I fell into a ditch, and the breath was knocked out of my body, but I rolled over upon my feet with marvellous sprightliness, till, at last, when I gained a corn-field, my attention was diverted to a strange, rattling noise behind me. I turned and looked. It was my horse, the rail dangling between his legs, his eyes on fire in the night. As we regarded each other, a shell burst between us. He dashed away across the inhospitable fields, and I fell into the high road among the routed. Expletives like these ensued:—

"Sa-a-ay! Hoss! Pardner! Are you going to ride over this wounded feller?"

"Friend, have you a drop of water for a man that's fainted here?"

"Halloo! Buster! Keep that bayonit out o' my eye, if you please!"

"Where's Gen. Banks? I hearn say he's a prisoner."

"I do' know!"

"Was we licked, do you think?"

"No! We warn't nothin' o' the kind. Siegel's outflanked 'em and okkepies the field. A man jus' told me so."

"Huzza! Hearties, cheer up! Siegel's took the field, and Stonewall Jackson's dead."

"Three cheers for Siegel."

"Hoorooar, hoor—"

"Oh! Get out! That's all blow. Don't try stuff me! We're lathered; that's the long and shawt of it."

"Is that so? Boys, I guess we're beat!"

Such was the character of exclamations that ran here and there, and after a little volley of them had been let off, a long pause succeeded, when only the sighs of the injured and the tramp of men and nags broke the silence. Overhead the starlight and the blue sky; on either side the rolling, shadowy fields; and wrapping the horizon in a gray, grisly girdle, the reposing woods plentiful with dew. Nature was putting forth all her still, sweet charms, as if to make men witness the damned contrast of their own wrath, violence, and murder. Even thus, perhaps,—I reasoned,—in the days of old, did the broken multitudes of Xerxes return by the shores of the golden Archipelago; and the Hellespont shone as peacefully as these silvernesses of earth and firmament. The dulness of history became invested with new intelligence. I filled in the details of a thousand routs conned in school-days, when only the dry outlines lay before me. They were mysteries before, and lacked the warmness of life and truth; but now I saw them! The armor and the helmets fell away, with all other trappings of custom, language, and ceremony. This pale giant, who walked behind the ambulance, leaning upon the footboard, was the limping Achilles, with the arrow of Paris festering in his heel. This ancient veteran, with his back to the field, was the fugitive AEneas, leaving Troy behind. And these, around me, belonged to the columns of Barbazona, scattered at Legnano by the revengeful Milanese. Cobweb, and thick dust, and faded parchment had somewhat softened those elder events; but in their day they were tangible, practical, and prosaic, like this scene. Years will roll over this, as over those, and folks will read at firesides, half doubtfully, half wonderingly, the story of this bafflement, when no fragment of its ruin remains. It was a profound feeling that I should thus be walking down the great retreat of time, and that the occurrences around me should be remembered forever!

There were a few prisoners in the mass, walking before cavalry-men. Nobody interfered with them, and they were not in a position to feel elated. Now and then, when we reached an ambulance, the fugitives would press around it to inquire if any of their friends were within. Rough recognitions would ensue, as thus:—

"Bobby, is that you, back there?—Bobby Baker?"

"Who is it?" (feebly uttered.)

"Me, Bobby—Josh Wiggins. Are you shot bad, Bobby?"

"Shot in the thigh; think the bone's broke. You haven't got a drop of water, have you?"

"No, Bobby; wish I had. Have anymore of our boys been hurt that you know of?"

"Switzer is dead; Bill Cringle and Jonesy are prisoners; 'Pud' White is in the ambulance ahead; 'Fol' Thompson's lost an arm; that's all I know."

When we had gone two miles or more, we found a provost column drawn across the road, and a mounted officer interrogating all who attempted to pass:—

"Stop there! You're not wounded."

"Yes, I am."

"Pass on! Halt boy! Go back. Men, close up there. Stop that boy."

"I am sun-struck, Major."

"You lie! Drive him back. Go back, now!"

Beyond this the way was comparatively clear; but as I knew that other guards held the road further on, I passed to the right, and with the hope of finding a rill of water, went across some grass fields, keeping toward the low places. The fields were very still, and I heard only the subdued noises wafted from the road; but suddenly I found myself surrounded by men. They were lying in groups in the tall grass, and started up suddenly, like the clansmen of Roderick Dhu. At first I thought myself a prisoner, and these some cunning Confederates, who had lain in wait. But, to my surprise, they were Federal uniforms, and were simply skulkers from various regiments, who had been hiding here during the hours of battle. Some of these miserable wretches asked me the particulars of the fight, and when told of the defeat, muttered that they were not to be hood-winked and slaughtered.

"I was sick, anyway," said one fellow, "and felt like droppin' on the road."

"I didn't trust my colonel," said another; "he ain't no soldier."

"I'm tired of the war, anyhow," said a third, "and my time's up soon; so I shan't have my head blown off."

As I progressed, dozens of these men appeared; the fields were strewn with them; a true man would rather have been lying with the dead on the field of carnage, than here, among the craven and base. I came to a spring at last, and the stragglers surrounded it in levies. One of them gave me a cup to dip some of the crystal, and a prayerful feeling came over me as the cooling draught fell over my dry palate and parched throat. Regaining the road, I encountered reinforcements coming rapidly out of Culpepper, and among them was the 9th New York. My friend Lieutenant Draper, recognized me, and called out that he should see me on the morrow, if he was not killed meantime. Culpepper was filling with fugitives when I passed up the main street, and they were sprinkled along the sidewalks, gossiping with each other. The wounded were being carried into some of the dwellings, and when I reached the Virginia Hotel, many of them lay upon the porch. I placed my blanket on a clean place, threw myself down exhaustedly, and dropped to sleep directly.



CHAPTER XXV.

OUT WITH A BURYING PARTY.

When I rose, at ten o'clock on the morning of Sunday, August 10, the porch was covered with wounded people. Some fierce sunbeams were gliding under the roof, shining in the poor fellows' eyes, and they were stirring wearily, though asleep. Picking my way among the prostrate figures, I resorted to the pump in the rear of the tavern for the purpose of bathing my face. A soldier stood there on guard, and he refused to give me so much as a draught of water. The wounded needed every drop, and there were but a few wells in the town. I strolled through the main street, now crowded with unfortunates, and pausing at the Court House, found the seat of justice transmuted to a headquarters for surgeons, where amputations were being performed. Continuing by a street to the left, I came to the depot, and here the ambulances were gathered with their scores of inmates. A tavern contiguous to the railway was also a hospital, but in the basement I found the transportation agents at breakfast, and they gave me a bountiful meal.

It was here arranged between myself and an old friend—a newspaper correspondent who had recently married, and whose wife awaited him at Willard's in Washington—that he should proceed at once to New York with the outline of the fight, and that I should follow him next day (having, indeed, to report for duty and fresh orders at Head-quarters of the army in Washington,) with particulars and the lists of killed. I commenced my part of the labors at once, employing three persons to assist me, and we districted Culpepper, so that no one should interfere with the grounds of the other. My own part of the work embraced both hotel-hospitals, the names and statements of the prisoners of the Court House loft, and interviews with some of the generals and colonels who lay at various private residences. The business was not a desirable one; for hot hospital rooms were now absolutely reeking, and many of the victims were asleep. It would be inhuman to awaken these; but in many cases those adjacent knew nothing, and with all assiduity the rolls must be imperfect. I found one man who had undergone a sort of mental paralysis and could not tell me his own name. However, I groped through the several chambers where the bleeding littered the bare floors. Some of them were eating voraciously, and buckets of ice-water were being carried to and fro that all might drink. Some male nurses were fanning the sleeping people with boughs of cedar; but the flies filled the ceiling, and, attracted by the wounds, they kept up a constant buzzing. I imagined that mortification would rapidly ensue in this broiling atmosphere. A couple of trains were being prepared below, to transport the sufferers to Washington, and from time to time individuals were carried into the air and deposited in common freight-cars upon the hard floors. Here they were compelled to wait till late in the evening, for no trains were allowed to leave the village during the day. At the Virginia Hotel, I visited, among others, the room in which I had lodged when I first came to Culpepper. Eight persons now occupied it, and three of them lay across the bed. I took the first man's name, and as the man next to him seemed to be asleep, I asked the first man to nudge him gently.

"I don't think he is alive," said the man; "he hasn't moved since midnight. I've spoken to him already."

I pulled a blanket from the head of the figure, and the tangled hair, yellow skin, and stiffened jaw told all the story. The other man looked uneasily into the face of the corpse and then lay down with his back toward it.

"I hope they'll take it out," said he, "I don't want to sleep beside it another night."

The guard at the Court House allowed me to ascend to the loft, and the prisoners—forty or fifty in number—clustered around me. They had received, a short time before, their day's allotment of crackers and bread, and some of them were sitting in the cupola, with their bare legs hanging over the rails. They were anxious to have their names printed, and I learned from the less cautious the names of the brigades to which they belonged. Before I left the room I had obtained the number of regiments in Jackson's command and the names of his brigadier-generals. Some prisoners arrived while I was noting these matters. They had been sent to pick up arms, canteens, cartridge-boxes, etc., from the battle-field, and some of our cavalry had ridden them down and captured them. They were a little discomposed, but said, for the most part, that they were weary of the war and glad to be in custody. As a rule, Northern and Southern troops have the same general manners and appearances. These were more ragged than any Federals I had ever known, and their appetites were voracious.

I found General Geary, a Pennsylvania brigade Commander, in the dwelling of a lady near the end of the town. He had received a bullet in the arm, and, I believe, submitted to amputation afterward. He was a tall, athletic man, upwards of six feet in height, and a citizen of one of the mountainous interior counties of the Quaker State. His life had been marked by much adventure, and he had been elevated to many important civil positions in various quarters of the Republic. He occupied a leading place, in the Mexican war, and was afterward Mayor of San Francisco and Governor of Kansas. He acted with the Southern wing of the Democratic party, and was discreetly ambitious, promoting the agricultural interests of his commonwealth, and otherwise fulfilling useful civil functions. He was a fine exemplar of the American gentleman, preserving the better individualities of his countrymen, but discarding those grosser traits, which have given us an unenviable name abroad. Geary could not do a mean thing, and his courage came so naturally to him that he did not consider it any cause of pride. The bias of party, which in America diseases the best natures, had in some degree affected the General. He was prone to go with his party in any event, when often, I think, his fine intelligence would have prompted him to an independent course. But I wish that all our leading men possessed his manliness, for then more dignity and self-respect, and less "smartness," might be apparent in our social and political organizations.

He was lying on his back, with his shattered arm bandaged, and resting on his breast. Twitches of keen pain shot across his face now and then, but he received me with a simple courtesy that made his patience thrice heroic. He did not speak of himself or his services, though I knew both to be eminent; but McDowell had insulted him, as he rode disabled from the field, and Geary felt the sting of the word more than the bullet. He had ventured to say to McDowell that the Reserves were badly needed in front, and the proud "Regular" had answered the officious "Volunteer," to the effect that he knew his own business. Not the least among the causes of the North's inefficiency will be found this ill feeling between the professional and the civil soldiery. A Regular contemns a Volunteer; a Volunteer hates a Regular. I visited General Augur—badly wounded—in the drawing-room of the hotel, and paused a moment to watch Colonel Donnelly, mortally wounded, lying on a spread in the hall. The latter lingered a day in fearful agony; but he was a powerful man in physique, and he fought with death through a bloody sweat, never moaning nor complaining, till he fell into a blessed torpidity, and so yielded up his soul. The shady little town was a sort of Golgotha now. Feverish eyes began to burn into one's heart, as he passed along the sidewalks. Red hospital flags, hung like regalia from half the houses. A table for amputations was set up in the open air, and nakedness glared hideously upon the sun. How often have they brought out corpses in plain boxes of pine, and shut them away without sign, or ceremony, or tears, driving a long stake above the headboard. The ambulances came and went, till the line seemed stretching to the crack of doom; while, as in contemplation of further murder, the white-covered ammunition-teams creaked southward, and mounted Provosts charged upon the skulkers, driving them to a pen, whence they were forwarded to their regiments. Old Mr. Paine, the landlord, tottered up to me, with a tear in his eye, and said—

"My good Lord, sir! Who is responsible for this?"

He did not mean to suggest argument. It was the language of a human heart pitying its brotherhood.

At twelve o'clock I started anew for the field, and fell in with Captain Chitty on the way. He stated that his courage during the fight surpassed his most heroic expectations, and added, in an undertone, that he was deliberating as to whether he should allow his name to be mentioned officially, since several military men were urging that honor upon him. I dissuaded Chitty from this intent, upon the ground that his reputation for modesty might be sacrificed. Chitty at once said that he would take my advice. We encountered Surgeon Ball, of Ohio, after a time, and he informed us that a day's armistice had been agreed upon, to allow for the burial of the dead. The work of interment was already commenced in front, and the surgeon had been ordered to see to the wounded, some of whom still lay on the places where they fell. He allowed us to accompany him in the capacity of cadets, but we first diverged a little from the road, that he might obtain his portmanteau of instruments. I fell into a little difficulty here, by unwittingly asking aloud of the 28th Pennsylvania regiment, if that was not the organization which hid itself during the fight? The 28th had been ordered, on the morning of Saturday, to occupy Telegraph Mountain,—an elevation in the rear of Cedar Mountain,—which was used for a Federal signal-post. Nobody having notified the 28th to return to camp, they remained on the mountain, passively witnessing the carnage, and came away in the night. But although my remark was jestingly said, the knot of soldiers who heard it were intensely excited. They spoke of taking me "off that hoss," and called me a New York "Snob," who "wanted his head punched." This irate feeling may be attributed to the rivalry which exists between the "Empire" and the "Keystone" States, the latter being very jealous of the former, and claiming to have sent more troops to the war than any other commonwealth. The 28th volunteers doubtless expected a terrific onslaught from the next issue of the Philadelphia papers.

The reserve, which had lain some miles in the rear the previous evening, were now massed close to the field, but in the woods, that the enemy might not count their numbers from his high position. Stopping at times to chat with brother officers, at last I reached the meadow whence I had been driven the previous evening. I looked for my nag in vain. One soldier told me that he had seen him at daylight limping along the high road; but after sundry wild-goose chases, I gave up the idea of recovering him.

At last I passed the outlying batteries, with their black muzzles scanning the battle-ground, and ascending the clover field, came upon the site of the battery which had so discomfited us the previous night. A signal vengeance had overtaken it. Some splinters of wheel and an overturned caisson, with eight horses lying in a group,—their hoofs extended like index boards, their necks elongated along the ground, and their bodies swollen—were the results of a single shell trained upon the battery by a cool artillerist. Beyond, the road and fields were strown with knapsacks, haversacks, jackets, canteens, cartridge-boxes, shoes, bayonets, knives, buttons, belts, blankets, girths, and sabres. Now and then a mule or a horse lay at the roadside, with the clay saturated beneath him; and some of the tree-tops, in the depth of the woods, were scarred, split, and barked, as if the lightning had blasted them. Now passing a disabled wagon, now marking a dropped horseshoe, now turning a capsized ambulance, now regarding a perfect wilderness of old clothes, we emerged from the timber at last, and came to the place where I had slept on the eve of the battle. A hurricane had apparently swept the country here, and the fences had been transported bodily. Sometimes the ground looked, for limited areas, as if there had been a rain of kindling-wood; and there were furrows in the clay, like those made by some great mole which had ploughed into the bowels of the earth. All the tree boles were pierced and perforated, and boughs had been severed so that they littered the way. Cedar Creek ran merrily across what had been the road,—the waters limpid and cool as before,—and when I passed beyond, I entered the region of dead men. Some poisonous Upas had seemingly grown here, so that adventurers were prostrated by its exhalations. A tributary rivulet formed with the creek a triangular enclosure of ground, where most of the Federals had fallen. To the left of the road stood a cornfield; to the right a stubble-field, dotted with stone heaps: deep woods formed the background to these, and scrub-timber, irregularly disposed, the foreground. On the right of the stubble lay a great stretch of "barren," spotted with dwarf cedars, and on the left of the cornfield stood a white farm-house, with orchards and outbuildings; beyond, the creek had hollowed a ravine among the hills, and the far distance was bounded by the mountains on the Rapidan. In the immediate front, towered Cedar Mountain, with woods at its base; and the roadway in which I stood, lost itself a little way on in the mazes of the thicket. Looking down one of the rows of corn, I saw the first corpse—the hands flung stiffly back, the feet set stubbornly, the chin pointing upward, the features losing their sharpness, the skin blackening, the eyes great and white—

"A heap of death—a chaos of cold clay."

Turning into the cornfield, we came upon one man with a spade, and another man lying at his feet. He was digging a grave, and when we paused to note the operation, he touched his cap:—

"Pardner o' mine," he said, indicating the body; "him and I fit side by side, and we agreed, if it could be done, to bury each other. There ain't no sich man as that lost out o' the army, private or officer,—with all respect to you."

It was a eulogy that sounded as if more deserved, because it was homely. There are some that I have read, much finer, but not as honest. At little distances we saw parties of ten or twenty, opening trenches, the tributary brook, only, dividing the Confederate and Federal fatigue parties. Close to this brook, in the cornfield, lay a fallen trunk of a tree, and four men sat upon it. Two of them wore gray uniforms, two wore blue. The latter were Gens. Roberts and Hartsuff of the Federal army. They were waiting for Gens. Stuart and Early, of the Confederate army: and the four were to define the period of the armistice. The men in gray were Major Hintham of Mississippi, and Lieut. Elliott Johnston of Maryland. Hintham was a lean, fiery, familiar man, who wore the uniform of several field-marshals. An ostrich feather was stuck in his soft hat and clasped by a silver star upon a black velvet ground. A golden cord formed his hat-band, and two tassels, as huge as those of drawing-room curtains, fell upon his back. His collar was plentifully embroidered as well as his coat-sleeves, and a black seam ran down his trousers. He wore spurs of prodigious size, and looked, in the main, like a tragedian about to appear upon the stage. The other man was young, stout, and good humored; and he talked sententiously, with a little vanity, but much courtesy. The Federals had nothing to say to these, they dealt only with equals in rank. It became a matter of professional ambition, now, to obtain the greatest amount of information from these Confederates, without appearing to depart from any conventionality of the armistice. I got along very well till Chitty came up, and his interrogatives were so pert and pointed that he very nearly spoiled the entire labor. Young Johnston was a Baltimorean, and wished his people to know something of him; he gave me a card, stated that he was one of Gen. Garnett's aids, and had opened the armistice, early in the day, by riding into the Federal lines with a flag of truce. By detachments, new bodies of Confederate officers joined us, most of them being young fellows in gray suits: and at length Gen. Early rode down the hillside and nodded his head to our party.

It was the custom of our newspapers to publish, with its narrative of each battle, a plan of the field; and in furtherance of this object, having agreed to act for my absent friend, I moved a little way from the place of parley, and laying my paper on the pommel of my saddle proceeded to sketch the relative positions of road, brook, mountain, and woodland. While thus busily engaged, and congratulating myself upon the fine opportunities afforded me, a lithe, indurated, severe-looking horseman rode down the hill, and reining beside me, said—

"Are you making a sketch of our position?"

"Not for any military purpose."

"For what?"

"For a newspaper engraving."

"Umph!"

The man rode past me to the log, and when I had finished my transcript, I resumed my place at the group. The new comer was Major General J. E. B. Stuart, one of the most famous cavalry leaders in the Confederate army. He was inquiring for General Hartsuff, with whom he had been a fellow-cadet at West Point; but the Federal General had strolled off, and in the interval Stuart entered into familiar converse with the party. He described the Confederate uniform to me, and laughed over some reminiscences of his raid around McClellan's army.

"That performance gave me a Major-Generalcy, and my saddle cloth there, was sent from Baltimore as a reward, by a lady whom I never knew."

Stuart exhibited what is known in America as "airiness," and evidently loved to talk of his prowess. Directly Gen. Hartsuff returned, and the forager rose, with a grim smile about his mouth—

"Hartsuff, God bless you, how-de-do?"

"Stuart, how are you?"

They took a quiet turn together, speaking of old school-days, perhaps; and when they came back to the log, Surgeon Ball produced a bottle of whiskey, out of which all the Generals drank, wishing each other an early peace.

"Here's hoping you may fall into our hands," said Stuart; "we'll treat you well at Richmond!"

"The same to you!" said Hartsuff, and they all laughed.

It was a strange scene,—this lull in the hurricane. Early was a North Carolinian, who lost nearly his whole brigade at Williamsburg. He wore a single star upon each shoulder, and in other respects resembled a homely farmer. He kept upon his horse, and had little to say. Crawford was gray and mistrustful, calmly measuring Stuart with his eye, as if he intended to challenge him in a few minutes. Hartsuff was fair and burly, with a boyish face, and seemed a little ill at ease. Stuart sat upon a log, in careless posture, working his jaw till the sandy gray beard brushed his chin and became twisted in his teeth. Around, on foot and on horse, lounged idle officers of both armies; and the little rill that trickled behind us was choked in places with corpses. A pleasanter meeting could not have been held, if this were a county training. The Surgeon told Gen. Stuart that some of his relatives lived near the Confederate Capital, and as the General knew them, he related trifling occurrences happening in their neighborhoods, so that the meeting took the form of a roadside gossip, and Stuart might have been a plain farmer jaunting home from market. The General, who was called "JEB" by his associates, so far relented finally as to give me leave to ride within the Confederate outer lines, and Lieut. Johnson accompanied me. The corpses lay at frequent points, and some of the wounded who had not been gathered up, remained at the spots where they had fallen. One of these, whose leg had been broken, was incapable of speaking, and could hardly be distinguished from the lifeless shapes around him. The number of those who had received their death wound on the edge of the brook, while in the act of leaping across was very great. I fancied that their faces retained the mingled ardor and agony of the endeavor and the pang. There seemed to be no system in the manner of interment, and many of the Federals had thrown down their shovels, and strolled across the boundary, to chaff and loiter with the "Butternuts." No one, whom I saw, exhibited any emotion at the strewn spectacles on every side, and the stories I had read of the stony-heartedness during the plague, were more than rivalled by these charnel realities. Already corruption was violating the "temples of the living God." The heat of the day and the general demoralizing influences of the climate, were making havoc with the shapely men of yesterday, and nature seemed hastening to reabsorb, and renew by her marvellous processes, what was now blistering and burdening her surface. Enough, however, of this. Satiated with the scenes of war, my ambition now was to extend my observations to the kingdoms of the Old World.



CHAPTER XXVI.

OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT IN ENGLAND.

The boy's vague dream of foreign adventure had passed away; my purpose was of a tamer and more practical cast; it was resolved to this problem: "How could I travel abroad and pay my expenses?"

Evidently no money could be made by home correspondence. The new order of journals had no charity for fine moral descriptions of church steeples, ruined castles, and picture galleries; I knew too little of foreign politics to give the Republic its semi-weekly "sensation;" and exchange was too high at the depreciated value of currency to yield me even a tolerable reward. But might I not reverse the policy of the peripatetics, and, instead of turning my European experiences into American gold, make my knowledge of America a bill of credit for England?

What capital had I for this essay? I was twenty-one years of age; the last three years of my minority had been passed among the newspapers; I knew indifferently well the distribution of parties, the theory of the Government, the personalities of public men, the causes of the great civil strife. And I had mounted to my saddle in the beginning of the war, and followed the armies of McClellan and Pope over their sanguinary battle-fields. The possibility thrilled me like a novel discovery, that the Old World might be willing to hear of the New, as I could depict it, fresh from the theatre of action. At great expense foreign correspondents had been sent to our shores, whose ignorance and confidence had led them into egregious blunders; for their travelling outlay merely, I would have guaranteed thrice the information, and my sanguine conceit half persuaded me that I could present it as acceptably. I did not wait to ponder upon this suggestion. The guns of the second action of Bull Run growled a farewell to me as I resigned my horse and equipments to a successor. With a trifle of money, I took passage on a steamer, and landed at Liverpool on the first of October, 1862.

Among my acquaintances upon the ship was a semi-literary adventurer from New England. I surmised that his funds were not more considerable than my own; and indeed, when he comprehended my plans, he confessed as much, and proposed to join enterprises with me.

"Did you ever make a public lecture?" he asked.

Now I had certain blushing recollections of having entertained a suburban congregation, long before, with didactic critiques upon Byron, Keats, and the popular poets. I replied, therefore, misgivingly, in the affirmative, and Hipp, the interrogator, exclaimed at once—

"Let us make a lecturing tour in England, and divide the expenses and the work; you will describe the war, and I will act as your agent."

With true Yankee persistence Hipp developed his idea, and I consented to try the experiment, though with grave scruples. It would require much nerve to talk to strange people upon an excitable topic; and a camp fever, which among other things I had gained on the Chickahominy, had enfeebled me to the last degree.

However, I went to work at once, inditing the pages in a snug parlor of a modest Liverpool inn, while Hipp sounded the patrons and landlord as to the probable success of our adventure. Opinions differed; public lectures in the Old World had been generally gratuitous, except in rare cases, but the genial Irish proprietor of the Post advised me to go on without hesitation.

We selected for the initial night a Lancashire sea-side town, a summer resort for the people of Liverpool, and filled at that time with invalids and pleasure-seekers. Hipp, who was a sort of American Crichton, managed the business details with consummate tact. I was announced as the eye-witness and participator of a hundred actions, fresh from the bloodiest fields and still smelling of saltpetre. My horse had been shot as I carried a General's orders under the fire of a score of batteries, and I was connected with journals whose reputations were world-wide. Disease had compelled me to forsake the scenes of my heroism, and I had consented to enlighten the Lancashire public, through the solicitation of the nobility and gentry. Some of the latter had indeed honored the affair with their patronage.

We secured the three village newspapers by writing them descriptive letters. The parish rector and the dissenting preachers were waited upon and presented with family tickets; while we placarded the town till it was scarcely recognizable to the oldest inhabitant.

On the morning of the eventful day I arrived in the place. The best room of the best inn had been engaged for me, and waiters in white aprons, standing in rows, bowed me over the portal. The servant girls and gossips had fugitive peeps at me through the cracks of my door, and I felt for the first time all the oppressiveness of greatness. As I walked on the quay where the crowds were strolling, looking out upon the misty sea, at the donkeys on the beach, and at the fishing-smacks huddled under the far-reaching pier, I saw my name in huge letters borne on the banner of a bill-poster, and all the people stopping to read as they wound in and out among them.

How few thought the thin, sallow young man, in wide breeches and square-toed boots, who shambled by them so shamefacedly, to be the veritable Mentor who had crossed the ocean for their benefit. Indeed, the embarrassing responsibility I had assumed now appeared to me in all its vividness.

My confidence sensibly declined; my sensitiveness amounted to nervousness; I had half a mind to run away and leave the show entirely to Hipp. But when I saw that child of the Mayflower stolidly, shrewdly going about his business, working the wires like an old operator, making the largest amount of thunder from so small a cloud, I was rebuked of my faintheartedness. In truth, not the least of my misgivings was Hipp's extraordinary zeal. He gave the townsmen to understand that I was a prodigy of oratory, whose battle-sketches would harrow up their souls and thrill them like a martial summons. It brought the blush to my face to see him talking to knots of old men after the fashion of a town crier at a puppet-booth, and I wondered whether I occupied a more reputable rank, after all, than a strolling gymnast, giant, or dwarf.

As the twilight came on my position became ludicrously unenviable. The lights in the town-hall were lit. I passed pallidly twice or thrice, and would have given half my fortune if the whole thing had been over. But the minutes went on; the interval diminished; I faced the crisis at last and entered the arena.

There sat Hipp, taking money at the head of the stairs, with piles of tickets before him; and as he rose, gravely respectful, the janitor and some loiterers took off their hats while I passed. I entered the little bare dressing-room; my throat was parched as fever, my hands were hot and tremulous; I felt my heart sag. How the rumble of expectant feet in the audience-room shook me! I called myself a poltroon, and fingered my neck-tie, and smoothed my hair before the mirror. Another burst of impatient expectation made me start; I opened the door, and stood before my destiny.

The place was about one third filled with a representative English audience, the males preponderating in number. They watched me intently as I mounted the steps of the rostrum and arranged my port-folio upon a musical tripod; then I seated myself for a moment, and tried to still the beating of my foolish heart.

How strangely acute were my perceptions of everything before me! I looked from face to face and analyzed the expressions, counted the lines down the corduroy pantaloons, measured the heavily-shod English feet, numbered the rows of benches and the tubes of the chandeliers, and figured up the losing receipts from this unremunerative audience.

Then I rose, coughed, held the house for the last time in severe review, and repeated—

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN—A grand contest agitates America and the world. The people of the two sections of the great North American Republic, having progressed in harmony for almost a century, and become a formidable power among the nations, are now divided and at enmity; they have consecrated with blood their fairest fields, and built monuments of bones in their most beautiful valleys," etc.

For perhaps five minutes everything went on smoothly. I was pleased with the clearness of my voice; then, as I referred to the origin of the war, and denounced the traitorous conspiracy to disrupt the republic, faint mutterings arose, amounting to interruptions at last. The sympathies of my audience were, in the main, with the secession. There were cheers and counter cheers; storms of "Hear, hear," and "No, no," until a certain youth, in a sort of legal monkey-jacket and with ponderously professional gold seals, so distinguished himself by exclamations that I singled him out as a mark for my bitterest periods.

But while I was thus the main actor in this curious scene, a strange, startling consciousness grew apace upon me; the room was growing dark; my voice replied to me like a far, hollow echo; I knew—I knew that I was losing my consciousness—that I was about to faint! Words cannot describe my humiliation at this discovery. I set my lips hard and straightened my limbs; raised my voice to a shrill, defiant pitch, and struggled in the dimming horror to select my adversary in the monkey-jacket and overwhelm him with bitter apostrophes. In vain! The novelty, the excitement, the enervation of that long, consuming fever, mastered my overtaxed physique. I knew that, if I did not cease, I should fall senseless to the floor. Only in the last bitter instant did I confess my disability with the best grace I could assume.

"My friends," I said, gaspingly, "this is my first appearance in your country, and I am but just convalescent; my head is a little weak. Will you kindly bear with me a moment while the janitor gets me a glass of water?"

A hearty burst of applause took the sting from my mortification. A bald old gentleman in the front row gravely rose and said, "Let me send for a drop of brandy for our young guest." They waited patiently and kindly till my faintness passed away, and when I rose, a genuine English cheer shook the place.

I often hear it again when, here in my own country, I would speak bitterly of Englishmen, and it softens the harshness of my condemnation.

But I now addressed myself feverishly to my task, and my disgrace made me vehement and combative. I glared upon the individual in the monkey-jacket as if he had been Mr. Jefferson Davis himself, and read him a scathing indictment. The man in the monkey-jacket was not to be scathed. He retorted more frequently than before; he was guilty of the most hardy contempt of court. He was determined not to agree with me, and said so.

"Sir," I exclaimed at last, "pray reserve your remarks till the end of the lecture, and you shall have the platform."

"I shall be quite willing, I am sure," said the man in the monkey-jacket with imperturbable effrontery.

Then, as I continued, the contest grew interesting; explosions of "No, no," were interrupted with volleys of "Ay, ay," from my adherents. Hipp, who had squared accounts, made all the applause in his power, standing in the main threshold, and the little auditory became a ringing arena, where we fought without flinching, standing foot to foot and drawing fire for fire. The man in the monkey-jacket broke his word: silence was not his forte; he hurled denials and counter-charges vociferously; he was full of gall and bitterness, and when I closed the last page and resumed my chair, he sprang from his place to claim the platform.

"Stop," cried Hipp, in his hard nasal tone, striding forward; "you have interrupted the lecturer after giving your parole; we recall our promise, as you have not stood by yours. Janitor, put out the lights!"

The bald old gentleman quietly rose. "In England," he said, "we give everybody fair play; tokens of assent and dissent are commonly made in all our public meetings; let us have a hearing for our townsman."

"Certainly," I replied, giving him my hand at the top of the stairs, "nothing would afford me more pleasure."

The man in the monkey-jacket then made a sweeping speech, full of loose charges against the Americans, and expressive of sympathy with the Rebellion; but, at the finishing, he proposed, as the sentiment of the meeting, a vote of thanks to me, which was amended by another to include himself. Many of the people shook hands with me at the door, and the bald old gentleman led me to his wife and daughter, whose benignities were almost parental.

"Poor young man!" said the old lady; "a must take care of 'is 'ealth; will a come hoom wi' Tummas and me and drink a bit o' tea?"

I strolled about the place for twenty-four hours on good terms with many townsmen, while Hipp, full of pluck and business, was posting me against all the dead walls of a farther village. Again and again I sketched the war-episodes I had followed, gaining fluency and confidence as by degrees my itinerant profession lost its novelty, but we as steadily lost money. The houses were invariably bad; we had the same fiery discussions every evening, but the same meagre receipts, and in every market town of northwestern Lancashire we buried a portion of our little capital, till once, after talking myself hoarse to a respectable audience of empty benches, Hipp and I looked blankly into each other's faces and silently put our last gold pieces upon the table. We were three thousand miles from home, and the possessors of ten sovereigns apiece. I reached out my hand with a pale smile:—

"Old fellow," I said, "let us comfort ourselves by the assurance that we have deserved success. The time has come to say good by."

"As you will," said Hipp: "it is all the fault of this pig-headed nation. Now I dare say if we had brought a panorama of the war along, it would have been a stunning success; but standing upon high literary and forensic ground, of course they can't appreciate us. Confound 'em!"

I think that Hipp has since had but two notions,—the exhibition of that panorama, or, in the event of its failure, a declaration of war against the British people. He followed me to Liverpool, and bade me adieu at Birkenhead, I going Londonward with scarcely enough money to pay my passage, and he to start next day for Belfast, to lecture upon his own hook, or, failing (as he afterward did), to recross the Atlantic in the steerage of a ship.

My feelings, as the train bore me steadily through the Welsh border, by the clustering smoke-stacks of Birmingham, by the castled tower of Warwick, and along the head waters of the Thames and Avon, were not of the most enthusiastic description. I had no money and no friends; I had sent to America for a remittance, but in the interval of six weeks required for a reply, must eat and drink and lodge, and London was wide and pitiless, even if I dared stoop to beg assistance.

Let no young man be tempted to put the sea between his home and himself, how seductive soever be the experiences of book-makers and poetic pedestrians. One hour's contemplation of poverty in foreign lands will line the boy's face with the wrinkles of years, and burn into his soul that withering dependency which will rankle long after his privations are forgotten.

In truth, my circumstances were so awkward that my very desperation kept me calm. I had a formal letter to one English publisher, but not any friendly line whatever to anybody; and as the possibilities of sickness, debt, enemies, came to mind, I felt that I was no longer the hero of a romance, but face to face with a hard, practical, terrible reality. It was night when I landed at the Paddington Station, and taking an omnibus for Charing Cross, watched the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and the glitter of the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues grouped so rigidly about the column to Nelson.

I walked down Strand with my carpet-bag in my hands, through Fleet Street and under Temple Bar, till, weary at last from sheer exercise, I dropped into a little ale-house under a great, grinning lantern, which said, in the crisp tone of patronage, the one word, "beds." They put me under the tiles, with the chimney-stacks for my neighbors, and I lay awake all night meditating expedients for the morrow: so far from regret or foreboding, I longed for the daylight to come that I might commence my task, confident that I could not fail where so many had succeeded. They were, indeed, inspirations which looked in upon me at the dawn. The dome of St. Paul's guarding Paternoster Row, with Milton's school in the background, and hard by the Player's Court, where, in lieu of Shakespeare's company, the American presses of the Times shook the kingdom and the continent. I thought of Johnson, as I passed Bolt Alley, of Chatterton at Shoe Lane, of Goldsmith as I put my foot upon his grave under the eaves of the Temple.

The public has nothing to do with the sacrifices by which my private embarrassment received temporary relief. Though half the race of authors had been in similar straits, I would not, for all their success, undergo again such self-humiliation. It is enough to say that I obtained lodgings in Islington, close to the home of Charles Lamb, and near Irving's Canterbury tower; and that between writing articles on the American war, and strategic efforts to pay my board, two weeks of feverish loneliness drifted away.

I made but one friend; a young Englishman of radical proclivities, who had passed some years in America among books and newspapers, and was now editing the foreign column of the Illustrated London News. He was a brave, needy fellow, full of heart, but burdened with a wife and children, and too honestly impolitic to gain money with his fine abilities by writing down his own unpopular sentiments. He helped me with advice and otherwise.

"If you mean to work for the journals," he said, "I fear you will be disappointed. I have tried six years to get upon some daily London paper. The editorial positions are always filled; you know too little of the geography and society of the town to be a reporter, and such miscellaneous recollections of the war as you possess will not be available for a mere newspaper. But the magazines are always ready to purchase, if you can get access to them. In that quarter you might do well."

I found that the serials to which my friend recommended me shared his own advanced sentiments, but were unfortunately without money. So I made my way to the counter of the Messrs. Chambers, and left for its junior partner an introductory note. The reply was to this effect. I violate no confidence, I think, in reproducing it:—

"SIR,—I shall be glad to see any friend of——, and may be found," etc., etc. "I fear that articles upon the American war, written by an American, will not, however, be acceptable in this journal, as the public here take a widely different view of the contest from that entertained in your own country, and the feeling of horror is deepening fast."

Undeterred by this frank avowal, I waited upon the publisher at the appointed time,—a fine, athletic, white-haired Scotchman, whose name is known where that of greater authors cannot reach, and who has written with his own hand as much as Dumas pere. He met me with warm cordiality, rare to Englishmen, and when I said—

"Sir, I do not wish the use of your paper to circulate my opinions,—only my experiences," he took me at once to his editor, and gave me a personal introduction. Fortunately I had brought with me a paper which I submitted on the spot; it was entitled, "Literature of the American War," collated from such campaign ballads as I could remember, eked out with my own, and strung together with explanatory and critical paragraphs. The third day following, I received this announcement in shockingly bad handwriting:—

"D'r S'r, "Y'r article will suit us. "The ed. C. J."

For every word in this communication, I afterward obtained a guinea. The money not being due till after the appearance of the article, I anticipated it with various sketches, stories, etc., all of which were largely fanciful or descriptive, and contained no paragraph which I wish to recall. In other directions, I was less successful. Of two daily journals to which I offered my services, one declined to answer my letter, and the other demanded a quarto of credentials.

So I lived a fugitive existence, a practical illustration of Irving's "Poor Devil Author," looking as often into pastry-shop windows, testing all manner of cheap Pickwickian veal-pies, breakfasting upon a chop, and supping upon a herring in my suburban residence, but keeping up pluck and chique so deceptively, that nobody in the place suspected me of poverty.

I went for some American inventors, to a rifle ground, and explained to the Lords of the Admiralty the merits of a new projectile; wrote letters to all the Continental sovereigns for an itinerant and independent embassador, and was at last so poor that my only writing papers were a druggist's waste bill-heads. An article with no other "backing" than this was fortunate enough to stray into the Cornhill Magazine. I found that its proprietor kept a banking-house in Pall Mall, and doubtful of my welcome on Cornhill, ventured one day in my unique American costume,—slouched hat, wide garments, and squared-toed boots,—to send to him directly my card. He probably thought from its face that a relative of Mr. Mason's was about to open an extensive account with him. As it was, once admitted to his presence, he could not escape me. The manuscript lay in his hands before he fully comprehended my purpose. He was a fine specimen of the English publisher,—robust, ruddy, good-naturedly acute,—and as he said with a smile that he would waive routine and take charge of my copy, I knew that the same hands had fastened upon the crude pages of Jane Eyre, and the best labors of Hazlitt, Ruskin, Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray.

Two more weary weeks elapsed; I found it pleasant to work, but very trying to wait. At the end my courage very nearly failed. I reached the era of self-accusation; to make myself forget myself I took long, ardent marches into the open country; followed the authors I had worshipped through the localities they had made reverend; lost myself in dreaminesses,—those precursors of death in the snow,—and wished myself back in the ranks of the North, to go down in the frenzy, rather than thus drag out a life of civil indigence, robbing at once my brains and my stomach.

One morning, as I sat in my little Islington parlor, wishing that the chop I had just eaten had gone farther, and taking a melancholy inventory of the threadbare carpet and rheumatic chairs, the door-knocker fell; there were steps in the hall; my name was mentioned.

A tall young gentleman approached me with a letter: I received him with a strange nervousness; was there any crime in my record, I asked fitfully, for which I had been traced to this obscure suburb for condign arrest and decapitation? Ha! ha! it was my heart, not my lips, that laughed. I could have cried out like Enoch Arden in his dying apostrophe:—

"A sail! a sail! I am saved!"

for the note, in the publisher's own handwriting, said this, and more:—

"DEAR SIR,—I shall be glad to send you fifteen guineas immediately, in return for your article on General Pope's Campaign, if the price will suit you."

But I suppressed my enthusiasm. I spoke patronizingly to the young gentleman. Dr. Johnson, at the brewer's vendue, could not have been more learnedly sonorous.

"You may say in return, sir, that the sum named will remunerate me."

At the same time the instinct was intense to seize the youth by the throat, and tell him that if the remittance was delayed beyond the morning, I would have his heart's-blood! I should have liked to thrust him into the coal-hole as a hostage for its prompt arrival, or send one of his ears to the publishing house with a warning, after the manner of the Neapolitan brigands.

That afternoon I walked all the way to Edmonton, over John Gilpin's route, and boldly invested two-pence in beer at the time-honored Bell Inn. I disdained to ride back upon the omnibus for the sum of threepence, but returned on foot the entire eight miles, and thought it only a league. Next day my check came duly to hand,—a very formidable check, with two pen-marks drawn across its face. I carried it to Threadneedle Street by the unfrequented routes, to avoid having my pockets picked, and presented it to the cashier, wondering if he knew me to be a foreign gentleman who had written for the Cornhill Magazine. The cashier looked rather contemptuous, I thought, being evidently a soulless character with no literary affinities.

"Sir," he said, curtly, "this check is crossed."

"Sir!"

"We can't cash the check; it is crossed."

"What do you mean by crossed?"

"Just present it where you got it, and you will find out."

The cashier regarded me as if I had offered a ticket of leave rather than an order for the considerable amount of seventy-five dollars. I left that banking-house a broken man, and stopped with a long, long face at a broker's to ask for an explanation.

"Yesh, yesh," said the little man, whose German silver spectacles sat upon a bulbously Oriental nose; "ze monish ish never paid on a crossed shequc. If one hash a bank-account, you know, zat ish different. Ze gentleman who gif you dis shequc had no bishness to crosh it if you have no banker."

I was too vain to go back to Cornhill and confess that I had neither purse nor purser; so I satisfied the broker that the affair was correct, and he cashed the bill for five shillings.

That was the end of my necessities; money came from home, from this and that serial; my published articles were favorably noticed, and opened the market to me. Whatever I penned found sale; and some correspondence that I had leisure to fulfil for America brought me steady receipts.

Had I been prudent with my means, and prompt to advantage myself of opportunities, I might have obtained access to the best literary society, and sold my compositions for correspondingly higher prices. Social standing in English literature is of equal consequence with genius. The poor Irish governess cannot find a publisher, but Lady Morgan takes both critics and readers by storm. A duchess's name on the title-page protects the fool in the letter-press; irreverent republicanism is not yet so great a respecter of persons. I was often invited out to dinner, and went to the expense of a dress-coat and kids, without which one passes the genteel British portal at his peril; but found that both the expense and the stateliness of "society" were onerous. In this department I had no perseverance; but when, one evening, I sat with the author of "Vanity Fair," in the concert rooms at Covent Garden, as Colonel Newcome and Clive had done before me, and took my beer and mutton with those kindly eyes measuring me through their spectacles, I felt that such grand companionship lifted me from the errantry of my career into the dignity of a renowned art.

I moved my lodgings, after three months, to a pleasant square of the West End, where I had for associates, among others, several American artists. Strange men were they to be so far from home; but I have since found, that the poorer one is the farther he travels, and the majority of these were quite destitute. Two of them only had permanent employment; a few, now and then, sold a design to a magazine; the mass went out sketching to kill time, and trusted to Providence for dinner. But they were good fellows for the most part, kindly to one another, and meeting in their lodgings, where their tenure was uncertain, to score Millais, or praise Rosetti, or overwhelm Frith.

My own life meantime passed smoothly. I had no rivals of my own nationality; though one expatriated person, whose name I have not heard, was writing a series of prejudiced articles for Fraser, which he signed "A White Republican." I thought him a very dirty white. One or two English travellers at the same time were making amusingly stupid notices of America in some of the second-rate monthlies; and Maxwell, a bustling Irishman, who owns Temple Bar, the Saint James, and Sixpenny Magazine, and some half dozen other serials, was employing a man to invent all varieties of rubbish upon a country which he had never beheld nor comprehended.

After a few months the passages of the war with which I was cognizant lost their interest by reason of later occurrences. I found myself, so to speak, wedged out of the market by new literary importations. The enforcement of the draft brought to Europe many naturalized countrymen of mine, whose dislike of America was not lessened by their unceremonious mode of departure from it; and it is to these, the mass of whom are familiarly known in the journals of this country, that we owe the most insidious, because the best informed, detraction of us. Macmillan's Magazine did us sterling service through the papers of Edward Dicey, the best literary feuilletonist in England; and Professor Newman, J. Stuart Mill, and others, gave us the limited influence of the Westminster Review. The Cornhill was neutral; Chambers's respectfully inimical; Bentley and Colburn antagonistically flat; Maxwell's tri-visaged publications grinningly abusive; Good Words had neither good nor bad words for us; Once a Week and All the Year Round gave us a shot now and then. Blackwood and Fraser disliked our form of Government, and all its manifestations. The rest of the reviews, as far as I could see, pitied and berated us pompously. It was more than once suggested to me to write an experimental paper upon the failure of republicanism; but I knew only one American—a New York correspondent—who lent himself to a systematic abuse of the Government which permitted him to reside in it. He obtained a newsboy's fame, and, I suspect, earned considerable. He is dead: let any who love him shorten his biography by three years.

However, I at last concluded a book,—if I may so call what never resulted in a volume,—at which, from the first, I had been pegging away. I called it "The War Correspondent," and made it the literal record of my adventures in the saddle. When some six hundred MS. pages were done I sent it to a publisher; he politely sent it back. I forwarded it to a rival house; in this respect only both houses were agreed. Having some dim recollection of the early trials of authors I perseveringly gave that copy the freedom of the city; the verdict upon it was marvellously identical, but the manner of declension was always soothing. They separately advised me not to be content with one refusal, but to try some other house, though I came at last to think, by the regularity of its transit to and fro, that one house only had been its recipient from the first.

At last, assured of its positive failure, I took what seemed to be the most philosophic course,—neither tossing it into the Thames, after the fashion of a famous novelist, nor littering my floor with its fragments, and dying amidst them like a chiffonnier in his den: I cut the best paragraphs out of it, strung them together, and published it by separate articles in the serials. My name failed to be added to the British Museum Catalogue; but that circumstance is, at the present time, a matter of no regret whatever.

When done with the war I took to story-writing, using many half-forgotten incidents of American police-reporting, of border warfare, of the development of civilization among the pioneers, of thraldom in the South, and the gold search on the Pacific. The majority of these travelled across the water, and were republished. And when America, in the garb of either fact or fiction, lost novelty, I entered the wide field of miscellaneous literature among a thousand competitors.

An author's ticket to the British Museum Reading-room put the whole world so close around me that I could touch it everywhere. I never entered the noble rotunda of that vast collection without an emotion of littleness and awe. Lit only from the roof, it reminded me of the Roman Pantheon; and truly all the gods whom I had worshipped sat, not in statue, but in substance, along its radiating tables, or trod its noiseless floors. Half the literature of our language flows from thence. One may see at a glance grave naturalists knee-deep in ichthyological tomes, or buzzing over entomology; pale zealots copying Arabic characters, with the end to rebuild Bethlehem or the ruins of Mecca; biographers gloating over some rare original letter; periodical writers filching from two centuries ago for their next "new" article. The Marquis of Lansdowne is dead; you may see the Times reporter yonder running down the events of his career. Poland is in arms again, and the clever compiler farther on means to make twenty pounds out of it by summing up her past risings and ruins. The bruisers King and Mace fought yesterday, and the plodding person close by from Bell's Life is gleaning their antecedents. Half the literati of our age do but like these bind the present to the past. A great library diminishes the number of thinkers; the grand fountains of philosophy and science ran before types were so facile or letters became a trade.

The novelty of this life soon wore away, and I found myself the creature of no romance, but plodding along a prosy road with very practical people.

I carried my MSS. into Paternoster Row like anybody's book-keeper, and accused the world of no particular ingratitude that it could not read my name with my articles, and that it gave itself no concern to discover me. Yet there was a private pleasure in the congeniality of my labor, and in the consciousness that I could float upon my quill even in this vast London sea. Once or twice my articles went across the Channel and returned in foreign dress. I wonder if I shall ever again feel the thrill of that first recognition of my offspring coming to my knee with their strange French prattle.

I was not uniformly successful, but, if rejected, my MSS. were courteously returned, with a note from the editor. As a sample I give the following. The original is a lithographed fac-simile of the handwriting of Mr. Dickens, printed in blue ink, the date and the title of the manuscript being in another handwriting.

OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND."

A WEEKLY JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

NO. 26 WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W. C. January 27, 1863.

Mr. Charles Dickens begs to thank the writer of the paper entitled "A Battle Sunday" for having done him the favor to offer it as a contribution to these pages. He much regrets, however, that it is not suited to the requirements of "All the Year Round."

The manuscript will be returned, under cover, if applied for as above.

The prices of miscellaneous articles in London are remunerative. Twenty-four shillings a magazine page is the common valuation: but specially interesting papers rate higher. Literature as a profession, in England, is more certain and more progressive than with us. It is not debased with the heavy leaven of journalism. Among the many serial publications of London, ability, tact, and industry should always find a liberal market. There is less of the vagrancy of letters,—Bohemianism, Mohicanism, or what not,—in London than in either New York or Paris.

I think we have the cleverer fugitive writers in America, but those of England seemed to me to have more self-respect and conscientiousness. The soul of the scribe need never be in pledge if there are many masters.

While a good writer in any department can find work across the water, I would advise no one to go abroad with this assurance solely. My success—if so that can be called which yielded me life, not profit—was circumstantial, and cannot be repeated. I should be loth to try it again upon purely literary merits.

After nine months of experiment I bade the insular metropolis adieu, and returned no more. The Continent was close and beckoning; I heard the confusion of her tongues, and saw the shafts of her Gothic Babels probing the clouds, and for another year I roamed among her cities, as ardent and errant as when I went afield on my pony to win the spurs of a War Correspondent.



CHAPTER XXVII.

SPURS IN THE PICTURE GALLERIES.

Florence, city of my delight! how do I thrill at the recollection of the asylum afforded me by thee in the Via Parione. The room was tiled, and cool, and high, and its single window looked out upon a real palace, where the family of Corsini, presided over by a porter in cocked hat and an exuberance of gold lace, gave me frequent glimpses of gauze dresses and glorious eyes, whose owners sometimes came to the casement to watch the poor little foreigner, writing so industriously.

Every young traveller has two or three subjects of unrest. Mine were girls and art. The copyists in the galleries were more beautiful studies to me than the paintings. The next time I go to Europe, I shall take enough money along to give all the pretty ones an order; this will be an introduction, and I shall know how they live, and how much money they make, and what passions have heaved their beautiful bosoms, to make their slow, quiet lives forever haunted and longing.

Love, love! There are only two grand, unsatiated passions, which keep us forever in freshness and fever,—love and art.

In Italy I breathed the purest atmosphere; all the world was a landscape picture; all the skies were spilling blueness and crimson upon the mountains; all the faces were Madonnas; all the perspectives were storied architecture. Westward the star of Empire takes its way, but that of art shines steadily in the East. Thither look our American young men, no matter at which of its altars they make their devotions,—painting, sculpture, or architecture. And I, who had known some fondness for the pencil till lured into the wider, wilder field of letters, felt almost an artist's joy when I stood in the presence of those solemn masters whose works are inspired and imperishable, like religion.

Having passed the first thrill and disappointment,—for pure art speaks only to the pure by intuition or initiation, and I was yet a novice,—my old newspaper curiosity revived to learn of the successful living rather than of the grand dead.

Correspondents, like poets, are born, not made: the venerable associations around me—monuments, cloisters, palaces, the homes and graves of great men whom I revered, the aisles where every canvas bore a spell name—could not wean me from that old, reportorial habit of asking questions, peeping into private nooks, and making notes upon contemporary things, just as I had done for three years, in cities, on routes, on battle-fields. And as the old world seemed to me only a great art museum, I longed to look behind the tapestry at the Ghobelin weavers, pulling the beautiful threads.

"Where dwell these gay and happy students, who quit our hard, bright skies, and land of angularities, to inhale the dews of these sedative mosses, and, by attrition with masterpieces, glean something of the spirit of the masters?"

Straightway the faery realm opened to me, and two months of Italian rambling were spent in association with the folk I esteemed only less than my own exemplars.

Art, in all ages, is the flowery way. No pursuit gives so great joy in the achieving, none achieved yields higher meed of competence, contentment, and repute. Its ambition is more genial and subdued than that of literature, its rivalry more courteous and exalting; its daily life should be pastoral and domestic, free from those feverish mutations and adventures which cross the incipient author, and it is forever surrounded by bright and beautiful objects which linger too long upon the eye to stir the mind to more than emulation.

Is it harsh to say that artists have been too well rewarded, and thinkers and writers too ill? Vasari dines at the ducal table, while Galileo's pension is the rack; the mob which carries Cimabue's canvas in triumph, drives Dante into exile; Rubens is a king's ambassador, and Grotius is sent to jail; to Reynolds's levees, poor, bankrupt Goldsmith steals like an unwelcome guest, and Apelles's gold is paid to him in measures, while Homer, singing immortal lines, goes blind and begging.

Art students take rank in Italy among the best of travellers, but Bohemianism in art is at one's peril. There are many wasted lives among the clever fellows who go abroad ostensibly for study. I recall Jimman, who was an expert with the pencil, and who colored with excellent discrimination. He went to Dusseldorf at first, and became known to Leutze, who praised his sketches. He began to associate at once with students and tipplers, and dissipated less by drinking than by talking. I have a theory that more men are lost to themselves and the age by a love of "gabbing" than by drinking. It is not hard to eschew cognac and claret, but there is no cure for "buzzing." There is a drunkenness of talk which takes possession of one, and Jimman would have had the delirium tremens in a week, with nobody to listen to him. To my mind the Trappiste takes the severest of monastic vows.

Jimman used to rise in the morning betimes, full of inflexible resolution. Having stretched his canvas, and carefully prepared his pigments, he went to breakfast, pondering great achievements. Here he fell in with a lot of Germans,—the most incurable race of gossipers in the world,—and while they discussed, in a learned way, every subject under the sun, the meal extended into the afternoon, and Jimman concluded that it was then too late to undertake anything. In this way his ambition burnt away, his money was squandered, he lost facility of manipulation, and came back to Paris at the age of twenty-eight, to pursue the same listless, garrulous existence; debts and grisettes, buzzing and brandy, the utterance of resolves which expired in the utterance, and Jimman finally became, perforce, a common apprentice to a moulder, that he might not entirely starve.

I saw him, for the last time, in the Louvre, looking at Zurbaran's "Kneeling Monk."

"Ah, Townsend," he said, "I might have done something like that. All my zeal is gone."

And he began to chat in the same loose, familiar way. Dumbness and deafness would have been endowments rather than deprivations for him.

I had rooms in Florence with Gypsum and Stagg. The former was a young, industrious fellow, of German descent, who worked hard, but not wisely. He spent half a year in copying a face by Paul Veronese, and the other half in sketching an old convent yard. But he did not visit, and an artist, to get orders and take rank, must be seen as well as be earnest. He need not be hail-fellow, but should keep well in the circle of respectable travellers; for these are to be his patrons, if he pleases them. Gypsum was over-modest and too conscientious; he had only a trifle of money, and was careless of his attire. So he disregarded society, and society forgot him. Therefore, at dawn, he betook himself to the old convent-yard, and stood at his easel bravely, never so unhappy as when one of the church's innumerable holy days arrived, for then he was forbidden to work upon the convent premises. With all his conscientiousness he received no orders; while Stagg, who was not more clever, proportioned to his longer experience, was befriended on every hand, because he went to the American chapel regularly and wore a dress-coat at the sociables.

Stagg used the old studio of Buchanan Read, just off the Via Seragli.

I stumbled upon him one morning, and saw more than I anticipated.

A young, plump girl, without so much as a fig-leaf upon her, was posing before his easel, so motionless that she scarcely winked, one hand extended and clasping her loosened tresses, and bending upon one white and dimpled knee.

She had the large dark eyes of the professional modello, and a bosom as ripe as Titian's Venus. Her feet were small, and her hands very white and beautiful. But of me she took no more notice than if I had been a bird alighting upon the window, or a mouse peeping at her from the edge of his knot-hole.

Old Stagg, who was commonly grave as a clergyman, now and then left his easel to alter her position, and when he was done, she gathered up her clothes, which had lain in a heap on the floor, and took her few silver pieces with a "Mille grazie, Signore!" and went home to take dinner with her little brothers.

A studio in Florence costs only fifteen or twenty francs a month,—seldom so much. There are a series of excellent ones in the same Via Seragli, in a very large dismantled convent. There is a well in the centre of its great courtyard, and innumerable ropes lead from it to the various high windows of the building, on which buckets of water are forever ascending. All this of which I speak refers to a year ago, when Florence was not a capital; doubtless, studios command more at present.

The models at Florence were to me strange personages. There was a drawing-school which I sometimes attended, where one old woman kept three daughters, aged respectively twenty, seventeen, and thirteen years. They lived pretty much as they were born, and while they posed upon a high platform, the old woman took her seat near the door and looked on with grim satisfaction. She was very careful of their moral habits, but the second one she lost by an excess of greed. She resolved to make them useful by day, as well as by night, and put them to work at the studios of individual artists. But as no one artist wanted three models, the girls had to separate, and, out of the mother's vigilance, the second one, Orsolo, went to the atelier of a wicked and handsome fellow, and met with the usual romance of her class.

The oldest girl, Luigia, married a man-model, and their nuptials must have been of a most prosaic character.

Among the many men who thus stood for the artists, was one old fellow, tall, and bearded, and massively characterized, who used to remain motionless for hours; until he seemed to be dead. He had been a model in every stage of life, from childhood to the grave, and represented every subject from Garibaldi to Moses.

The walks in and around Florence occupied all my Sabbaths. Stagg and I used to stroll up to Fiesole, by the villa where Boccaccio's party of story-tellers met, and look up old pictures in the village church; we measured the proportions of the chapel on the hill of Saint Miniato, and he endeavored in vain to imitate the hue of the light as it fell through the veined marble of Serravezza; we spent contemplative afternoons in the house of Michael Angelo, and went up to Vallambrosa, at the risk of our necks, to look at a Giotto no bigger than a tea-plate. In Florence there is enough out-of-door statuary to make one of the finest galleries in the world. The majesty of Donatello's "Saint George" arises before me when I would conceive of any noble humanity, and the sweep of Orgagna's great arches give me an idea of vastness like the sea; in the Pitti palace only giants should abide; the Campanile goes up to heaven as beautiful as Jacob's ladder, and in the perpetual twilight of the Duomo I was not of half the stature I believed when roaming under the loftier sky.