The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864

AND THE ORIGIN op ALL GLOBES, NEBULÆ, AND COMETIC MATTER

If space were wholly devoid of matter, all globes, or other masses of matter, would be dissipated into it, or à priori could not have been formed from it. The material interchange, passing through space, between globes, in all stages of formation, such as light, heat, and gravitation, could not be conducted through a vacuum, as their very presence would be destructive of vacuity. Materiality would be dissipated or absorbed in an attempted passage through vacuity; therefore, as we know that light, heat, and gravitation are, necessarily, material, space is but diffused materiality, at its minimum of etheriality. Globes moving in their orbits and on their axes must thus meet with resistance: this, together with the internal motion of their contained elements, necessarily excites the constant production of electricity, in its dual character of attraction and repulsion, according to its well-known laws; and this double character, alone possessed by electricity, when concentrated produces material affinity, with reciprocal attraction and repulsion, in all its atoms, thus forever preventing entire solidity or entire separation of its parts. Such condensation of matter by electric action, is the origin of heat and the variety produced by incandescence, which, therefore, accounts for the formation of globes from the materials in space, and their sustentation in orbit.

As motion is the normal condition of matter, and is the producer of electricity, therefore electric actions, concentrated in space, necessarily gathers cometic and nebulous matter from space, the materials, through incandescence, for future globes, with orbits contracting in proportion to condensation, its maximum of attraction. As material space is boundless, so the creation of globes is endless therein, through electric action, by producing gradual centres of material condensation, the mere whirlpool specks in infinite space.

Revolving bodies, gaseous, fluid, or solid, thus impress or charge the centres of their motion, by superinduced attraction, with electricity, as their Leyden jars. So, too, the central body, or primary of a system, so overcharged with electricity by its revolving secondaries, becomes positively electrified or repellant to all such revolving bodies; and thus the producers and accumulator are mutually attractive and repellant of each other.

The planets, by their lightning speed in orbits and on their axes, being producers, and the sun the recipient or accumulator of electricity; the latter, as the centre of our revolving system, is the Leyden jar, and thus becomes the overcharged positive source and dispenser of electric light and heat to the surrounding planets.

The planets, as producers, are always negatively electric, tending toward the accumulator, the sun; while the latter, as the accumulator, being overcharged, is positively electric, and repels. The sun being the greater body, the planets' negative electric attraction for it must always yield to the greater mass and tend toward the sun; while that great body, overcharged with accumulated positive electricity, is fully capable of repelling such tendency of the lesser revolving planets toward it. Attraction or gravitation with the planets, and repulsion (instead of centrifugal force) with the sun, forever and inexhaustibly retain the various bodies, of each system, in their respective orbits. As motion is the normal condition of matter, eternally producing electric action, and when centralized evolving light and heat; so light and heat are as inexhaustibly eternal as motion, and may thus be demonstrated as electric. The same principle of action applies to all individual globes of each separate system, conjointly; and collectively, the different systems mutually attract and repel each other, proportionate to mass and the weakened forces of distance, thus preserving a cosmical harmony throughout creation, forever forbidding collision or destruction of individual globes.

This theory will be found to correspond with the well-known laws of positive and negative electric action; as well as illustrative of the influence of electric light on vegetable production—the only artificially produced light, capable of imparting a healthy growth, and color—which, I think, clearly proves it to be of the same character as solar light. It is also corroborative of much that is inexplicable, except in the identity of electricity with solar effulgence, as the source of light, heat, and gravitation, as well as substituting repulsion for centrifugal force, and must forever disprove the theory of solar light being the result of mere metallic incandescence, or any other equally exhausting combustion. The latter theory, with such supposed expedients in nature, to carry out the mighty design of creation, belittles the subject by its transitoriness, and is, therefore, unworthy the conception of modern generations.

PHENOMENA OF HAZE, FOGS, AND CLOUDS

The predominant haze, which generally envelops the landscape and reddens the sun and moon during long droughts, is usually ascribed to smoke from burning woods and forests, pervading the air. I have observed a similar prevalent haze, connected with other extensive droughts than the one from which the country is now (August) suffering, and have invariably heard the same vague and inadequate cause assigned. Observation proves conclusively, that the assigned is not the true general cause (although it has its purely local effect), as with winds, for days together, in opposite quarters from local fires on mountain or plain, such widespread districts remain enveloped in haze, although hundreds of miles distant. Neither over such districts was there any odor as from smoke pervading the atmosphere (except temporarily from some neighboring chimneys, which the then heavy air kept near the earth), nor felt by the eyes, which very perceptibly smart when exposed to smoke. It is impossible, with varying winds, that mere local fires should spread smoke so uniformly as to comprise most of the area of the drought, which on this occasion extended from our great western lakes to the Atlantic seacoast; and anomalously, too, that it should have continued so long after a rain had extinguished those fires.

I should assign a very different cause for this phenomenon. Rain drops are negatively electric, while suspended moisture, such as fog, displays itself in the form of vesicles or globules, distended by the presence and prevalence of positive electricity, which refracts the rays of light from so many myriad surfaces, that all objects are thus, necessarily, obscured to the eye. During droughts, when haze prevails, positive electricity in the air becomes in excess, which is heating, and therefore serves still more to subdivide, as well as to expand or distend the floating moisture in the atmosphere (of which it is never entirely deprived) into infinitesimal vesicles, or globules, like minute soap bubbles, and thus from such an infinite number of refracting surfaces is produced the haze, as well as the obscuration of the landscape and the reddened disks of the sun and moon, by the absorption of their heat or red rays, so characteristic of great droughts. This same infinitesimal vesicular condition of suspended moisture, is also the sufficient cause of there being no deposition of dew on such occasions, except where a local change of electric condition cools the air, thus temporarily clearing the atmosphere, and permitting a local deposition of the previously suspended moisture, in the form of dew.

All fogs are due to this same cause, as well as that which, in extreme wintry cold, overhangs the open water, as it yields its comparative heat to the air. The formation and suspension of clouds, in all their varied characteristics, have the same origin. That highly attenuated haze which invests the distant landscape, particularly mountains, with its magical purple hue, is due to the same, but still more ethereal interposition of infinitesimal globules of suspended moisture. In corroboration of this being the true explanation of the phenomena of haze, fogs, etc., is the fact, that as soon as clouds prevail, denoting an electric change in the atmosphere, all haze immediately disappears, or becomes embraced in the larger vesicles or globules, forming clouds.

FLY LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER

PART II.—CHEVRONS

She sewed them on upside down. Please to remember that this was in May, 1861 (or was it 1851? it seems a long time ago), when a young lady of the most finished education, polished to the uttermost nine, could not reasonably be expected to know what a sergeant-major was, much less the particular cut and fashion of his badge of rank. I told her, exultingly, that I was appointed sergeant-major of our battalion. 'What's that?' she inquired, simply enough. I explained. The dignity and importance of the office was scarcely diminished in her mind by my explanation; and, indeed, I thought it the grandest in the army. Who would be a commissioned officer, when he could wear our gorgeous gray uniform, trimmed with red, the sleeves wellnigh hidden behind three broad red stripes in the shape of a V, joined at the top by as many broad red arcs, all beautifully set off by the lithe and active figure of Sergeant-Major William Jenkins? As for Mary, who protested that she never could learn the difference between all these grades, or make out the reason for them, she was for her part convinced that not even the colonel himself, certainly not that fat Major Heavysterne, could be grander, or handsomer, or more important than her William. So I forgave her for sewing on my chevrons upside down, although it was at the time an infliction grievous to be born, inasmuch as the fussy little quartermaster-sergeant was thereby enabled to get a day's start of in the admiration and envy of our old company. How they envied us, to be sure! But I had one consolation: Oates' were all straight; mine were arched. And she sewed mine on. His were done by Cutts & Dunn's bandy-legged foreman.

There never was such a uniform as ours. Not even the 'Seventh' itself—incomparable in the eyes of the three-months'—could vie in grand and soldierly simplicity, we thought, with the gray and red of the 9th Battalion, District of Columbia Volunteers. Gray cap, with a red band round it, letters A S, for 'American Sharpshooters' (Smallweed used to say he never saw it spelt in that way before, and to ask anxiously for the other S), gray single-breasted frock coat, with nine gilt buttons, and red facings on the collar and cuffs. Gray pantaloons, with a broad red stripe down the outer seam. The drummers sported the most gorgeous red stomachs ever seen, between two rows of twenty little bullet buttons. The color rendered us liable to be mistaken for the rebels, it is true; but this source of anxiety to the more nervous among us was happily prevented from leading to any unfavorable results by the fatherly care displayed by poor old General Balkinsop, under whose protection, we were sent into the field, in always keeping at least a day's march from the enemy!

When we non-commissioned staff officers were first promoted, we felt badly about leaving our companies; wanted to drill with them still, and so on. But this soon wore off under the pressure of new duties. For my part, I soon found that the adjutant, Lieutenant Harch, regarded it as quite a natural arrangement that the sergeant-major should attend to the office duties, while the adjutant occupied himself exclusively with what he was pleased to style the military part of the business; meaning thereby, guard mounting every morning and Sunday morning, inspection once a week, making an average of, say, twenty minutes work per diem for the adjutant, and leaving the poor sergeant-major enough to occupy and worry him for ten or eleven hours. 'Sergeant-major, publish these orders,' Lieutenant Harch would say, in tones of authority exceeding in peremptory curtness anything I have ever heard since from the commander of a grand army; and then, scraping a match—my match—upon the wall, he would begin attending to his 'military duties' by lighting a cigar—my cigar—and strolling up the avenue, on exhibition, preparatory to going home to dine, while the fag remained driving the pen madly, kindly assisted sometimes by Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, until long after the dinner hour of the non-commissioned staff. I think the company commanders must sometimes have doubted (unless they carefully refrained from reading orders, as I have sometimes thought probable) whether the adjutant could write his name; for all our orders used to be signed:

    'By order of Major Johnson Heavysterne:
    Frederick Harch,
    1st Lieutenant and Adjutant,
    By William Jenkins, Sergeant-Major.'

Now, if the printer sets this up properly, you will see that, even at that early day, we knew too much to adopt the sensation style of signing orders which some officers have since learned from the New York Herald, thus:

By command of

    Major-General BULGER!
    Washington Smith, A. A.-G.

In those days there was but little of that distinction of ranks which has come to be better observed now that our volunteers have grown into an army. You see, the process of forming an army out of its constituent element follows pretty much the fashion set by that complex machine the human animal: the materials go through all the processes of swallowing, digestion, chylifaction, chymifaction, absorption, alteration, and excretion; bone, muscle, nerve, sinew, viscera, and what not, each taking its share, and discarding the useless material that has only served, like bran in horse feed, to give volume and prehensibility to the mass. Our non-commissioned staff messed with the major, who was as jolly a bachelor as need be, of some forty-nine years of growth, and thirty of butchering, that being his occupation. The adjutant, being newly married to a gaunt female, who, I hope, nagged him as he us, preferred to take his meals at home. Smallweed, who had somehow got made quartermaster, couldn't go old Heavysterne, he said, and so kept as long as he could to his desultory habits of living as a citizen and a bachelor. So our mess consisted of the major, who exercised a paternal care over the rest of us, superintending, indeed often joining in, our amusements and discussions, our quarrels and makings up; of Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, who knew all about everything and everybody better than anybody, and was always ready to ventilate his superior knowledge on the slightest provocation, and who, as Smallweed, now Lieutenant Smallweed, used to say, 'would have made a d–d elegant quartermaster-sergeant, if he hadn't had a moral objection to issuing anything;' of Chaplain Bender, a sanctified-looking individual of promiscuous theology and doubtful morals (the funny men used to speak of him irreverently as Hell Bender); of the battalion commissary, Lieutenant Fippany, an unmitigated swell; of Commissary-Sergeant Peck, a stumpy little fellow, full of facts and figures, and always quiet and ready; of the writer, Sergeant-Major Jenkins, or Jinkens as my name used to be mispronounced, infinitely to my disgust; and lastly, semi-occasionally, of the sutler, Mr. Cann. The surgeon, old Doctor Peacack, ran a separate mess, consisting of himself, the assistant surgeon, Dr. Launcelot Cutts, and hospital steward Spatcheloe.

The drum-major, Musician Tappit, having refused to be mustered in, and the War Department having presently refused to let us have any musicians at all, used to appear only on parades, gorgeous in his gray uniform and ornamental red stomach, disappearing with exemplary regularity, and diving into his upholsterer's cap and baize apron upon the slightest prospect of work or danger. I don't think it was ever my bad fortune to eat more unpleasant meals than those eaten at our mess table. The officers, excepting the major, but specially including the chaplain, used to insist on being helped first and excessively to everything; also on inviting their friends to dine on our plates, there being no extra ones; also on giving us the broken chairs, one in particular, that was cracked in a romp between the chaplain and the adjutant, and that pinched you when you sat on it. Then Lieutenant Harch was always playing adjutant at the dinner table, settling discussions ex cathedra in a sharp tone, and ordering his companions to help him to dishes, as thus: 'Sergeant-Major, p'tatoes!' 'Oates, beef!' 'Hurry up with those beans!' To be monosyllabic, rude to his superiors and equals, and overbearing to his inferiors in rank, this fledgling soldier—our comrade of a few days since, and presently the subordinate of most of us, through standing still while we went ahead—used to think the perfection and essence of the military system. And then that smug-faced, smooth-tongued, dirty-looking chaplain, with his second-hand shirt collars and slopshop morality—was it whiskey or brandy that his breath smelt oftenest of? He was the first chaplain I had seen, and I confess his rank breath, dirty linen, and ranker and dirtier hypocrisy, gave me a disgust toward his order that it took long months and many good men to obliterate.

The best part of May we spent in drilling and idling and grumbling, and some of us, not so hard worked as Sergeant-Major Jenkins, in the true military style of conviviality, usually terminating in an abrupt entry in the orderly book, opposite the name of the follower of Bacchus, 'Drunk; two extra tours guard duty;' or 'Drunk again; four extra tours knapsack drill.' Now, the knapsack drill, as practised by well-informed and duty-loving sergeants of the guard, simply consists in requiring the delinquent to shoulder, say, for two hours in every six, a knapsack filled with stones, blankets, or what not, until it weighs twenty, thirty, or perhaps forty pounds, according to the nature of the case and the officer who orders the punishment.

Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates and I went up, one afternoon, with Lieutenant Smallweed, Corporal Bledsoe of our old company, and two or three others, to see the famous 'Seventh' drill, out at Camp Cameron, which I suppose nearly everybody knows is situated about a mile and a half north of the President's house, on the 14th-street road, and just opposite to a one-horse affair that used to call itself 'Columbian College,' but which, after passing through a course of weak semi-religio-secessionism, gradually dried up, leaving its skin to the surgeon-general for a hospital. The afternoon we selected to visit Camp Cameron turned out to be an extra occasion. General Thomas, the adjutant-general of the army, was to present a stand of colors to the 'Seventh' on behalf of Mr. Secretary Cameron, on behalf of some ladies, I think. Ladies! I admire you very much, for the very many things wherein you are most admirable, but why, oh! why, in the name of the immortals, will you, why will you present flags? Don't do it any more, please. They are always packed up in a box and left somewhere almost as soon as your handkerchiefs have ceased waving, your soprano hurrahs ceased ringing; or else they are given to some pet officer for a coverlet. They cost a great deal of money; they oblige the poor soldiers to endure a mort of flatulent oratory at a parade rest; and they force the poor colonel, in a great perspiration, to stumble through a few feeble, ineffectual, and disjointed words of thanks, which he committed to memory last night from the original, written for him by the adjutant or the young regimental poet, but of which he has forgotten almost every other word. The wise old Trojan says, speaking of the horse (I get my quotations from the newspapers, you may be sure):

'Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes;'

implying that he is opposed to going into that speculation in wooden horseflesh, because he fears the Greeks, even when they bring gifts. Just so, I fear the ladies, especially when they present flags. Remember Punch's advice to young persons about to be married? 'Don't!'

The Seventh, after going through the usual evening parade, and a few simple manœuvres, formed square, facing inward, with General Thomas and the oil-skin sausage that contained the new colors, and all the regimental officers, in the centre. General Thomas's feeble pipes sounded faintly enough for about half an hour, during which time no man in the ranks heard more than a dozen words. Then Colonel Lefferts responded in a few inaudible, but no doubt very appropriate remarks. Then 'the boys,' seeing that the time had come, cheered lustily, after the hypothetical manner of the rocket. But there was one thing we did hear, standing on tiptoe, and straining every ear. The Seventh was to go somewhere. The crisis of the war had come. The Seventh was going to shoot at it. Their thirty days were almost out; but they were going to be shot at, just like any of us three-months men.

To leave their canned fruits, and milk, and fresh eggs, and board floors, and a stroll on the avenue in the afternoon, and go where glory waited for them! Happy, happy gray-breasts! We wandered enviously round the excited camp, and talked with our friends. Many were the rumors, appalling to us in those days, when we were yet unused to camp 'chin.' The regiment was to go to Harper's Ferry. Johnston was there. They would hang him if they took him. They were to march straight to Richmond, One man of the 'Engineer Company' was going to resign, he said, because his company had to remain to guard the camp. They were to take two days' rations and forty rounds of cartridges per man—ball cartridges. Forty rounds of ball cartridges and two days' work! Surely, we thought, the days of the rebellion are numbered. And then, chewing the bitter cud of the reflection that the war would almost certainly be ended before we got a chance at the enemy, we wandered sadly back to our quarters, Smallweed growling horribly all the way. Our 'headquarters' we find in a great state of excitement. We find the orderly and Major Heavysterne discussing the prospects of the rebels being able to hold out a month, and Color-Sergeant Hepp and the adjutant both trying to decide the dispute. Hepp thinks they can't do without leather, and the adjutant thinks the want of salt must fetch them in a few weeks. Thinks? Decides! Whatever may be doubtful, this is certain. Everybody seems strangely excited. We tell them our news. 'Tell us some'n do'n know!' rasps Lieutenant Harch; 'our b'ttalion's goin', too; get ready, both of, quick! Smallweed, where in the h— have you been? I've had to do all your work.' We were to go at nine o'clock at night. It was then eight. Whither? No one knew. The chaplain comes in, with symptoms of erysipelas in his nose, and a villanous breath, to tell us, while we—the quartermaster-sergeant and I—are packing our knapsacks and leaving lines of farewell for those at home and at other people's homes, that the major has imparted to him in confidence the awful secret that we are bound for Mount Vernon, to remove the bones of Washington. This gives us something terrible to think of as we march down, in quick time (a suggestion of that adjutant, I know), to the Long Bridge, and during the long delay there, spent by commanding officers in pottering about and gesticulating. By commanding officers? There is one there who does not potter, standing erect—that one with the little point of fire between his fingers that marks the never-quenched cigarette—talking to Major Heavysterne in low and earnest tones, but perfectly cool and clear the while. That is our splendid Colonel Diamond, as brave and good a soldier as ever drew sword, as noble and true a Christian as ever endured persecution and showed patience. They are discussing a plan for crossing the river in boats, landing at a causeway where the Alexandria road crosses Four Mile Run, and so cutting off the impudent picket of the enemy's cavalry that holds post at the Virginia end of the Long Bridge. The battalion commanders are evidently dazzled by the brilliancy of the moonlight and the colonel's scheme, for it soon becomes apparent that they haven't the pluck and dash necessary to render such an operation successful. Even we young soldiers, intent upon the awful idea of resurrecting Washington's bones, and little dreaming then of becoming the pioneers of the great invasion, could see the hitch. Presently the major got a definite order, and beckoning to us of the battalion staff, began to cross the bridge. Dusky bodies of troops, their arms glistening in the moonlight, had been silently gliding past us while the discussion progressed. Most of them seemed to have halted on the bridge, we found as we passed on, and to have squatted down in the shade of the parapet, gassing, smoking, or napping. It was nearly midnight. We had got to the middle of the causeway, and found ourselves alone, bathed in silence and moonlight and wonder, when up dashed a horseman from the direction of the Virginia side. He stopped, and peered at us over his horse's neck. 'O'Malley, is that you?' says the major, seeing it is an Irish officer belonging to Colonel Diamond's staff. 'Yes,' says the captain, 'and who the devil are you?' 'Major Heavysterne. Won't you please ride back and send my battalion forward? You'll find the boys standing on the draw. Cap'n Bopp, of the Fisler Guards, is the senior officer, I believe.' But the Irishman was off, with an oath at the major's stupidity in forgetting to order his men forward. Presently the battalion came creeping up, silently enough, I thought, but the adjutant made the excuse of a casual 'ouch' from a man on whose heels Hrsthzschnoffski had casually trodden, to shriek out his favorite 'Stop 'at talken'!' 'Do you command this battalion?' asks Captain Pipes, sternly; and straightway there would have been a dire altercation, but for the major's gentle interference. The bridge began to sway and roar under our steps. We were on the draw. Clinging to the theory of Washington's bones, I peered over the draw, in the hope of seeing a steamer; there was nothing there but the sop and swish of the tide. Perhaps we were not going to Mount Vernon at all! 'Halt! Who are these sleeping beauties on the draw? Ah! these are the Bulgers. 'Say, Bulger,' I ask of one of them, 'who's ahead of you?' 'A'n't nobody,' he replied indignantly, as who should say, Who can be ahead of the invincible Bulger Guards. Nobody! Here was great news. ''Orr'd H'RCH!' drones the major, in low tones; and 'Owa'' H'MP,' sharply, ''Orrrr 'RRRCH,' gruffly, repeat the captains. On we go, breaking step to save the bridge, surprise and fluttering in our hearts. A'n't nobody ahead! Now we are on the hard dirt, the sacred soil, of the pewter State, mother of Presidents, the birthplace of Washington, the feeding ground of hams, but otherwise the very nursery and hive of worthlessness, humbug, sham, and superstition. Virginia, that might have been the first, and proudest, and most enlightened State in the Union, that is the last and most besodden State in or half out of it—But while my apostrophe runs on, the bit between its teeth, the head of our little column muffles its tread on the sacred soil itself, dirtying its boots in the sacred mud, the roar of the bridge ceases, the last files and the sergeant-major run after them to close up, in obedience to the sharp mandate of the major, and the invasion is begun. No man spoke a word; no sound was audible save the distant hum and cracking of the city, the cry of a thousand frogs, and the muffled tramp of our advancing footsteps. I thought the enemy, if any were near, must surely hear the cartridges rattle in my cartridge box as we double-quicked to close up, and I put my hand behind me to stop the clatter. If any enemy were near, indeed! There seemed an enemy behind every bush, a rebel in every corner of the worm fence. I am in the rear of the column, I thought, and my heart went thump, bump, and my great central nervous ganglion ached amain. 'Sergeant-major,' whispers Major Heavysterne; 'Sergeant-major,' barks the adjutant. 'Fall out four files and keep off to the right, and about fifty paces in advance of the battalion, and examine the ground thoroughly. Report any signs of the enemy.' The ache grew bigger, and I perspired terribly as I inquired, in tones whose tremor I hoped would be mistaken for ardor, whether any one was ahead of us. 'No one except the enemy,' laughed the major, quietly. No one except the enemy! Fifty paces from any one except the enemy, by my legs, each pace a yard! 'The ground to the right is all water, and about seven feet deep,' I reported joyfully, having ascertained the fact. 'Then go fifty yards ahead, as far to the right as you can get, and keep out of sight,' were our new orders. I thought we would keep out of sight well enough! We were going up hill—up the hill on which Fort Runyon now stands. Here is a shanty. What if it should be full of the enemy, and we but four poor frightened men, with our battalion hidden by the turn in the road. Mechanically I cocked my rifle and opened the door, and strained my eyes into the darkness. Nobody. I let down the hammer again.

Fear had oozed out of my fingers' ends, in lifting the latch, just as valor did from those of Bob Acres, and Jenkins was himself again. We jobbed our bayonets under the lager-beer counter, to provide for the case of any lurking foe in that quarter. Just here the road forked. Sending two of us to the right, the rest kept on the Alexandria. 'Look there,' chatters Todd second between his teeth, wafting in my face a mingled odor of fear and gin cocktails. 'Where?' 'Why there! on top of the hill—a horse.' 'Is that a horse?' 'Yes.' 'A man on him, too!' 'Two of 'em!' Click, click, click, from our locks. We creep on and up stealthily. We are scarcely thirty yards distant from the two horsemen, when a man darts out from the left-hand side of the road behind us—two men—three! We are surrounded. Todd second would have fired, but I held him back. 'Who's that?' I whispered; 'speak quick, or I fire!' 'Can't you see, you d—d fool,' barks out our surly adjutant, who, unknown to us, had been leading a similar scout on the opposite side of the road. Click, click, from up the hill. The enemy are going to shoot. An awful moment. We steady our rifles and our nerves; all trace of fear is gone; nothing remains but eagerness for the conflict that seems so near, and with a bound, without waiting for orders, we move quickly up the hill. Lieutenant Harch moves his men out into the road, where the bright moonlight betrays, perhaps multiplies, their number; the horsemen spring to their saddles, and are off at a clattering gallop, to alarm Alexandria. 'Don't shoot!' shrieks the adjutant; our rifles waver; the hill hides the flying picket; the chance is lost; presently all Alexandria will be awake, and a beautiful surprise frustrated. As we peer into the moonlit distance from the top of the hill now almost spaded away and trimmed up into Fort Runyon, feeling the solemnity of the occasion impressed upon us with dramatic force by all the surroundings—by our loneliness, by our character as the harbingers of the advance of the armies of American freedom and American nationality, and by the recent flight of the first squad of the enemy whom we had met with hostile purpose: as we dreamily drink in all these and many other vague ideas, up comes our battalion, and occupies the hill, the major sending off a company to hold the bridge where the road crosses the canal and forks to Arlington and Fairfax Court House. Presently there pass by us regiments from Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and it may be from other States which I forget. Some turn off to the right, to settle on the hill which is now scooped into Fort Albany; others press forward to Alexandria, the bells of which town very soon begin to ring a frightened peal of alarm and confusion. We move out a half mile farther and halt, our night's work being over, and other things in store; the moonlight wanes, and grows insensibly into a chilly daylight, presently reddened by the sun of to-morrow. All this seems to us to have occupied scarcely half an hour, but it is broad day again for certain, and surely we are a mortally tired and aching battalion as we march back listless, hot, sleepy, and gastric, over the Long Bridge, to our armory, there to fall asleep over breakfast in sheer exhaustion, and to spend the remainder of the day in a dry, hard series of naps, not the least refreshing—such as leave you the impression of having slept in hot sand. As we—the quartermaster-sergeant and I—stroll down the avenue that afternoon according to our wont, we hear the news of Ellsworth's death, of the occupation of Alexandria by our forces, and of the flight of the enemy's handful of silly, braggadocio Virginia militia, hastily collected to brag and drink the town safe from the pollution of the vile Yankee's invading foot. Ah! V'ginia; as thou art easily pleased to sing of thy sister-in-law, Ma'yland,

'The taäirahnt's foot is awn thaï sho','

and will be likely to remain thar a right tollable peert length of time, I expect.

Nothing but bridge guarding in the festering swamp on the Virginia side of the Potomac, varied by multiplying details for extra duty as clerks in all imaginable offices, falls to our lot until the 10th of June, when, after a number of rumors, and many dark forebodings as to what the District men would do, we are finally ordered into the field as a part of the Chickfield expedition, originally designed for the capture of Dregsville, I believe; an object which may have been slightly interfered with by its detailed announcement about a week beforehand in one of the Philadelphia papers. The expedition consisted of the First, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Battalions of District of Columbia Volunteers, the First New Hampshire, the Ninth New York, and the Seventeenth Pennsylvania, which would call itself the First. I think four other regiments from the same State did the same thing, it being a cardinal principle with them, perhaps, that each regiment was to claim two different names and three different numbers, and that at least four other regiments were fiercely to dispute with it each name and each number: for example, there was the

And for another example there was a regiment which called itself the 'Swishtail Carbines,' after a beastly ornament in the hats of its men; the 'Shine Musketoons,' after their lieutenant-colonel; the '289th Pennsylvania Volunteers,' after the State series of numbers, which began with 280 or thereabout; and the 'First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Reserve Corps, Breech-Loading Carbineers,' and doubtless by other names, though I don't remember them.

Besides this tremendous host—we had never seen so large a force together, and thought it the most invincible of armadas—we had a battery of artillery, composed of three or four different kinds of guns, as the fashion was in the good old days of our company posts, wherefrom we were just emerging in a chrysalis state, and also two companies of cavalry; one a real live company of regulars, commanded by Captain Cautle, of the Third Dragoons, the other led by Captain (he called himself major, and his company a battalion) Cutts, formerly and since an enterprising member of the firm of Cutts & Dunn, who made my uniform, and who will make your clothes, if you wish, my dear reader, and charge you rather less than three times their value, after the manner of Washington tailors; which charge will appear especially moderate when you remember that the clothes will almost fit, and won't wear out so very soon after all, as is the way with Washington clothes. Indeed, as the tactics say, 'this remark is general for all the deployments;' and the same may as well be said of all bills and things made in the great city of sheds, contractors, politicians, dust, and unfinished buildings. But is this a description of Washington? We are at Chickfield, where the loyal Maryland farmers come to us to protect their loyalty, to charge a dollar a panel for old worm fences thrown down by 'the boys,' to sell forage at double prices, to reclaim runaway negroes, and to assure us of the impossibility of subjugating the South. And here, in the peaceful village of Chickfield, the object of our expedition having been happily frustrated by the newspapers, we enjoy our ease for a week or ten days, and our first camp experiences. Oh! that first experience of unboxing tents smelling loudly as of candle grease, of finding the right poles, of vainly endeavoring to pitch them straight, of hot and excited officers rushing hither and thither in a flurry, trying to instruct the different squads in their work, and straightway frustrated by the thick heads, or worse, by the inevitable suggestions of those remarkably intelligent corporals, who seem to consider themselves as having a special mission direct from heaven to know everything except how to do what they are bid. And oh! the first camp cookery, when everything is overdone except what is underdone; when the soup is water, and the coffee grounds, and the tea (we had tea in the three-months!) senna! And after a day of worry, hurry, confusion, and awful cooking, the first rough sleep, with a root running across your ribs, and a sizable gravel indenting the small of your back! How the teamsters talk all night, and the sentinels call wildly, incessantly, for the corporal of the guard! How you dream of being hung on a wire, as if to dry, with your head on a jagged rock; of an army of sentinels pacing your breast, ceaselessly engaged in coming to an 'order arms;' of millions of ants crawling over and through you; of having your legs suddenly thrust into an icehouse, and a brush fire built under your head; of black darkness, in which you fall down, down, down, down—faster, faster, faster!—till crash! you bump against something, and split wide open with a thundering roar, which gradually expands into the sound of a bugle as you awake to renewed misery, and are, as Mr. Sawin says, 'once more routed out of bed by that derned reveille.'

Presently there comes an order for us to march to Billsburg, and there join the army of the Musconetcong, commanded by that dauntless hero, Major-General Robert Balkinsop. Of course we march in a hurry, as much as possible by night, 'without baggage,' as the orders say—meaning with only two wagons to a company. The other battalions of D.C. Vols. stay behind and loaf back to Washington, there to be mislaid by Major-General Blankhed, who is so preoccupied with issuing and affixing his sign manual to passes for milk, eggs, and secessionists, to cross and recross Long Bridge, that the war must wait for him or go ahead without him. We go on to glory, as we suppose (deluded three-months!), and march excitedly, with all our legs, fearing we shall be too late. As we near Billsburg, we can hear the since familiar tick—tack, pip—pop—pop of a rattling skirmish, and the vroom—vroom of volley firing. Anxiously, eagerly—no need for the colonel to cry 'Step out lively!'—we press forward, with all the ardor of recruits. Recruits! Hadn't we been a month in service, and been through one great invasion already? There they are! See the smoke? Where? On top of that hill! Halt! Our battalion deploys as skirmishers with a useless cheer. We close up. We load with ball cartridge, and most of us, on our individual responsibility, fix bayonets; it looks so determined—nothing like the cold steel, we think. Slowly, resolutely, we advance. An aid comes galloping back. We crowd round him. The colonel looks disgustedly handsome. What does he say? Pshaw! It's only the 284th Pennsylvania, part of General Balkinsop's body guard, discharging muskets after rain. Only three soldiers, a negro, a couple of mules, and an old woman, have been hurt so far, and 'the boys' will be through in an hour or so more!

Well, as we were sent for in a hurry, of course we waited a week. How General Balkinsop manœuvred the great army of the Musconetcong; what fatherly, nay, grandmotherly care he took to keep us out of danger; how cautiously he spread, his nets for the enemy, and how rapidly he left them miles behind; how we killed nothing but chickens, wounded nothing but our own silly pride, and captured nothing but green apples and roasting ears; all this, and more, let history tell. The poor old general kept us safe, at all events; and if the enemy, with half our numbers, was left unharmed, and allowed quietly and leisurely to move off and swell his force elsewhere, and so whip us in detail, what of it? Didn't we save our wagon train? And isn't that, as everyone knows, the highest result of strategy?

And then came the battle (the battle!) of Bull Run, with its first glowing, crowing accounts of victory, and its later story of humiliation and shame! Ah! let me shut up the page! My heart grows sick over this mangy, scrofulous period of our national disease; give me air!

Luckily for me, I had a raging fever just after that awful 21st of July, 1861. When I awoke from my delirium, and had got as far as tea, toast, and the door of the hospital, they told me of the great uprising of the people, of General McClellan's appointment to command the Army of the Potomac, of how 'our boys' had reënlisted for the war, and of how I, no longer Sergeant-Major William Jenkins, was to be adjutant of the regiment, and might now take off my chevrons, and put on my SHOULDER STRAPS.

She sent them to me in a letter. Wait a month, and I'll tell you.

THE FIRST FANATIC

When Noah hewed the timber
Wherewith to build the ark,
Outside the woods one shouted—
'That wild fanatic!—hark!'

And when he drew the beams
And laid them on the plain,
One said,'He has no balance,
He surely is insane.'

And when he raised the frame,
One clear, sunshiny day,
'Poor fool of one idea,'
A smiling man did say.