the line was formed in the Plaza, Zagonyi noticed the bugler, and approaching him, said: In the midst of battle you disobeyed my order. You are unworthy to be a member of the Guard. I dismiss you.' The bugler showed his bugle to his indignant commander- -the mouth-piece of the instrument was shot away. He said: The mouth was shoot off. I could not bugle viz mon bugle, and so I bugle viz mon pistol and sabre.' It is unnecessary to add, the brave Frenchman was not dismissed. "I must not forget to mention Sergeant Hunter, of the Kentucky company. His soldierly figure never failed to attract the eye in the ranks of the Guard. He had served in the regular cavalry, and the Body Guard had profited greatly from his skill as a drill-master. He lost three horses in the fight. As soon as one was killed, he caught another from the rebels; the third horse taken by him in this way he rode into St. Louis. "The Sergeant slew five men. 'I won't speak of those I shot,' said he; ‘another may have hit them; but those I touched with my sabre I am sure of, because I felt them.' "At the beginning of the charge, he came to the extreme right, and took position next to Zagonyi, whom he followed closely through the battle. The Major, seeing him, said: "Why are you here, Sergeant Hunter? Your place is with your company on the left.' 'I kind o' wanted to be in the front,' was the answer. "What could I say to such a man?' exclaimed Zagonyi, speaking of the matter afterwards. "There was hardly a horse or rider among the survivors that did not bring away some mark of the fray. I saw one animal with no less than seven wounds, none of them serious. Scabbards were bent, clothes and caps pierced, pistols injured. I saw one pistol from which the sight had been cut as neatly as it could have been done by machinery. A piece of board a few inches long was cut from a fence on the field, in which there were thirty-one shot-holes. "It was now nine o'clock. The wounded had been carried to the hospital. The dismounted troopers were placed in charge of them—in the double capacity of nurses and guards. Zagonyi expected the foe to return every minute. It seemed like madness to try and hold the town with his small force, exhausted by the long march and desperate fight. He therefore left Springfield, and retired before morning twenty-five miles on the Bolivar road. 66 Captain Fairbanks did not see his commander after leaving the column in the lane, at the commencement of the engagement. About dusk he repaired to the prairie, and remained there within a mile of the village until midnight, when he followed Zagonyi, rejoining him in the morning. "I will now return to Major White. During the conflict upon the hill, he was in the forest, near the front of the rebel line. Here his horse was shot under him. Captain Wroton kept careful watch over him. When the flight began he hurried White away, and, accompanied by a squad of eleven men, took him ten miles into the country. They stopped at a farm-house for the night. White discovered that their host was a Union man. His parole having expired, he took advantage of the momentary absence of his captor to speak to the farmer, telling him who he was, and asking him to send for assistance. "The countryman mounted his son upon his swiftest horse, and sent him for succor. The party lay down by the fire, White being placed in the midst. The rebels were soon asleep, but there was no sleep for the Major. He listened anxiously for the footsteps of his rescuers. After long, weary hours, he heard the tramp of horses. He arose, and walking on tiptoe, cautiously stepping over his sleeping guard, he reached the door, and silently unfastened it. The Union men rushed into the room, and took the astonished Wroton and his followers prisoners. At daybreak White rode into Springfield, at the head of his captives and a motley band of Home Guard. He found the Federals still in possession of the place. As the officer of highest rank, he took command. His garrison consisted of twenty-four men. stationed twenty-two of them as pickets in the outskirts of the village, and held the other two as a reserve. At noon the enemy sent a flag of truce, and asked permission to bury their dead. Major White received the flag with proper ceremony, but said that General Siegel was in command, and the request would have to be referred to him. Siegel was then forty miles away. In a short time, a written communication, purporting to come from General Siegel, saying that the rebels might send a party, under certain restrictions, to bury their dead. White drew in some of his pickets, stationed them about the field, and under their surveillance, the Southern dead were buried. 66 He The loss of the enemy, as reported by some of their working party, was one hundred and sixteen killed. The number of wounded could not be ascertained. After the conflict had drifted away from the hill-side, some of the foe had returned to the field, taken away their wounded, and robbed our dead. The loss of the Guard was fifty-three, out of one hundred and forty-eight actually engaged, twelve men having been left by Zagonyi in charge of his train. The Prairie Scouts reported a loss of thirty-one out of one hundred and thirty: half of these belonged to the Irish Dragoons. In a neighboring field an Irishman was found stark and stiff, still clinging to the hilt of his sword, which was thrust through the body of a rebel who lay beside him. Within a few feet a second rebel lay, shot through the head. - - Major Dorsheimer. LETTERS FROM SOLDIERS. - One of the agents of the Sanitary Commission in Washington said: "As an evidence of the literary capacity of our soldiers, I may mention that our boys are to-day stamping over ten thousand letters I brought up from the front, from soldiers wounded but slightly, or not at all, telling their friends of their condition after the fights." THE DEAD CAVALIER - GENERAL J. E. BY J. MARSHALL HANNA. THE drums came back muffled, that, beating aloud, Then beat the drums muffled, and play the fife low, Who saw him that morning as gayly he rode Thought to look on to-night the visage that showed dim? A truer cavalier we shall ne'er sce again. Who can forget how the hireling horde Ran blating for mercy when he did command? At the North though they mock, and rejoice at his fall, With grief-laden flowers will we cover his pall. O, how like the besom of fate in their rear Came the wave of his plume and the flash of his blade. When, bursting from covert, to his troopers' wild cheer, The bugle it sounded the charge in the raid. Now his plume is at rest, his sword in its sheath, And the hand that should grasp it is nerveless in death. Make his grave where he fought, nigh the field where he fell, EXPERIENCE ON A GUNBOAT. A pilot on the gunboat Louisiana, the most formidable and effective of any which Farragut encountered in his battle at the forts below New Orleans, came stealthily creeping into the city two or three days after its occupation by Butler. nights but a few green berries, which he found in the swamps. Only a week before he had left New Orleans on that gunboat in perfect health, and hoping for a speedy and easy victory over the Federal fleet. He described his three days' experience on the vessel before she was blown up as the nearest approach to a sojourn in the infernal regions of anything he had ever experienced or thought possible in this world. Shut up in a stifling atmosphere of hot gunpowder smoke, with the incessant clatter and thunder and hiss of shells and round shot just over his head, pounding against the plating of railroad iron, with the tide of battle turning against them, and the chances for success, and finally for escape with life, growing less and less every hour, it is not strange that in referring to it he exclaimed, "I thought I was in hell." When all hope of victory was gone, and the Admiral had passed the forts, the commanding officer of the Louisiana determined to blow her up rather than to allow her to fall into the hands of the Federals. She was run ashore on the right bank, about fifty miles below the city. The officers and crew, escaping to the shore, betook themselves to the swamp for concealment. Here they waded, sometimes up to their necks in water, sometimes coming in where the land was higher, and then striking out into deep swamp again. At Chalmette, Jackson's old battle-ground, they went far into the swamp in order to flank the fortifications there erected; and finally most of them reached the city in the miserable plight above described. The pilot was among the earliest of those who professed themselves ready to take the oath. A LITERAL TRANSLATION.-As the Twentyfourth Massachusetts regiment was about leaving Washington, N. C., in 1862, an incident occurred which reflected credit upon the acumen of one of its officers. A pretty mulatto slave girl, belonging to a citizen of the town, had been acting as house servant to Lieutenant Turner, and when marching orders were received, expressed great anxiety to go with the regiment to Newbern, and escape bondage. She took refuge on board one of the steamers on which the Twenty-fourth had embarked; but just before the time for starting, her owner appeared with an order, which read as follows: John Doe has permission to search for his slave girl Henrietta, and will be protected in so doing." This he presented to Quartermaster William V. Hutchings, and demanded the girl. Mr. Hutchings, seeing the trepidation and anxiety manifested in the countenance of Henrietta, asked her, "Are you willing to return to your master ? He was covered with mud from head to foot." O, no, sir!" she said; please don't give me His clothes were hanging in tatters; his face and up to him!" "Let me see that order, sir," said hands swollen by the poison of mosquitoes and he to the owner; and reading it aloud, he reblistered by the fierce rays of an almost tropical marked, "This gives you authority to search for sun, and he had eaten nothing for three days and your girl; you have searched for her, and there she is. You are to be protected in making your search; you have been protected. This gives you no authority to take her against her will. She does not wish to return to you, and you can't take her. And now, the sooner you get off this boat, the better it will be for your skin." As he said this with the determination of a man who was not to be trifled with, the discomfited owner beat a precipitate retreat, amid the jeers and shouts of the bystanders. THE PRESIDENT'S CHOICE. During a conversation on the approaching election, in 1864, a gentleman remarked to President Lincoln that nothing could defeat him but Grant's capture of Richmond, to be followed by his nomination at Chicago and acceptance. Well," said the President, "I feel very much like the man who said he didn't want to die particularly, but if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he would like to die of." 66 THE TRAITOR'S "COAT-OF-ARMS." Joseph Schofield an Englishman by birth, but an adopted citizen of the United States, residing in Iowa, who justly boasted of having two sons in the army, one of whom had reënlisted to fight for the flag of his country-sent his annual subscription to the Scientific American, for another year, and closed his letter with the following pungent remarks: "The traitor's 'coat-of-arms' consists of a flea, a fly, a magpie, and a side of bacon. Explanation: A flea will bite either the quick or the dead; so will a traitor. A flyblows,' corrupts, and contaminates, all it comes in contact with; so will a traitor. A magpie is always chattering, talking, and lying; so is a traitor. A side of bacon is never cured' till it is hung; neither is a traitor." WHISKEY IN CAMP. When the war first broke out, Bragg was in command of about ten thousand troops, stationed at Pensacola. He remained there for more than a year, until Grant drew all eyes away from the Southern border by his vigorous and successful campaign in the upper Mississippi Valley. Bragg made the long semicircular shore bristle with sand batteries, that bore upon the defiant and loyal Fort Pickens, but his infantry had nothing to do. Month after month passed, and they neither attacked nor were attacked. The true point of strategy and of interest was elsewhere. Bragg soon found scope for his peculiar genius in keeping up the morals of his army. The war has not developed a more vigilant police officer than Braxton Bragg: yet his abilities in that line were taxed to their utmost to check the gross drunkenness that prevailed in his camp; for "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," and the soldiers employed their time and talents in circumventing his strict general order excluding intoxicating drinks from the camp, or any place within the distance of ten miles in every direction. About a mile back of his main force, in the woods, lay a long, narrow lake. It would take a soldier seven or eight hours to walk around to the other side, but a good swimmer could reach it in twenty minutes' time. During the hot months of that long, dull summer the men discovered a commendable zeal for personal cleanliness. Every evening the lake was alive with swimmers, for in the South swimming and horsemanship are accomplishments equally necessary and universal. Yet Bragg's inspectors found some mysterious and constant connection between swimming and intoxication. The best swimmers were often quarrelsome and noisy, and found their way into the guard-house for drunkenness. But with all his vigilance, the mystery was no nearer solution than at first how the men got their whiskey. There was a puzzle, too, among the butchers. There arose an astonishing demand for bladders among the soldiers. Whenever a beef was killed, half a dozen eager fellows stood by and bid against each other for this part of the animal. Bragg heard of this, but he could see no connection between it and the solution of the whiskey question; and he never learned the secret till the army had left Pensacola, and the disclosure could do no harm. A poor, inoffensive fisherman lived on the opposite side of the lake. Some of the men swam across, made his acquaintance, and persuaded him to open an account with a liquor dealer in Mobile, saying he would lose nothing by the operation, and might make a great deal. He accordingly kept himself well supplied with the genuine article, and had the satisfaction every evening of seeing platoons of naked customers come swimming across the lake, with bladders around their necks, which they filled from his barrel, and paid for in hard money, which they brought over in their mouths. Emboldened by their success in smuggling by the bladder full, they managed at length to get a barrel of the coveted liquor across the lake. But they were like the man who bought the elephant. They did not know what to do with it. At length a genius brighter than the rest hit upon a happy expedient. The spring where most of their drinking water was obtained, rose from a sandy soil, in which a pit could be easily excavated. In the darkness of a rainy night this was done, and the barrel buried close to the spring. Of course, nothing could be more natural than that soldiers in the month of August, and in that latitude, should go often to the spring. But the water seemed to have a strange effect upon them. After leaning over to quaff from the cooling fountain, they grew chatty, then boisterous, noisy, and quarrelsome, and ended the day in the guardhouse. There was no solving the mystery, till, at last, just as they all left Pensacola, they told Bragg's orderly how the whiskey barrel was buried close by the spring, and they kept a straw convenient, so that when they seemed to be drinking from the spring, they were, in fact, sucking from the whiskey barrel. "She burned and sank our merchant-ships All o'er the ocean wide, And Daddy Welles's creeping things' "That boat had such a jolly time, "Our flag was driven from the sea, Our commerce, sir, was floored, And still old Daddy Welles he slept, And snored, and snored, and snored." "Avast, thou sailor-man!" I said, So salty is this throat of mine, "Come hither, then, thou waiter-boy," "Bring us some beer and brandy neat, The cups were set, our lips were wet, To tell his mournful, bitter tale, "In vain the people raved and swore, "The creeping things' beset the coast Of all the rebel land; But nightly still the boats slipped in, With goods called contraband. "Another man this ancient man A sly, and slippery, cunning chap- "So, while this ancient man slept well, His head upon a hawser; tlemen don't steal, as a general thing; but these fellers live by stealin'.' "Lady (whose nose takes an upward tendency) -They never stole nothin' from you, I guess. What did you ever lose by them, I'd like to "And while our ships were burned and sunk, know?' I want to know for what. "Thou knowest, broker of the stocks, How great has been the cost; Thou knowest well what wondrous wealth And though we sought to shake him off, "Must we be bothered four more years "O, think, thou broker of the stocks, If we must still be swayed and spoiled I left that ancient mariner, Swift to the Board I ran ; But stocks were down, and I was then "Soldier-Lose! why the cussed thieves stole three undershirts and two pair of drawers from me at Pittsburg. They stole all our sutler's goods, and all the officers' clothes in our regiment. I'll know my shirts, and if I catch 'em on any butternut, I'll finish him, sure. But you see, misses, I don't want to talk saucy to a woman. I just called to ask you if you had any fresh bread to sell.' "Lady-No, hain't. I ain't no baker, and don't keep no bake shop, neither. I guess you'll have to go North for fresh bread.' "Soldier-Well, it's no use gittin' mad about it. I've got money to pay for what I buy. I intend to go North, after a while, when we whip these runaway fellers, but not before. If they hadn't run off, secesh would have been played out in a week. I guess it's played out anyhow, eh?' "Exit lady unceremoniously, slamming the door, through which she disappears." ROUGH SKETCH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. Senator Sherman of Ohio, in a speech at Sandusky in the fall of 1864, drew this rough but accurate outline of the lamented President's character: "I know Old Abe; and I tell you there is not, at this hour, a more patriotic, or a truer man living than that man, Abraham Lincoln. Some say he is an imbecile; but he not only held his own in his debates with Douglas, whose power is admitted, and whom I considered the ablest intellect in the United States Senate, but got a little the better of him. He has been deliberate and Anthracite Hill (of the Board of Brokers). slow, but when he puts his foot down, it is with INCIDENT OF CORINTH. who visited Corinth after the writes as follows: A correspondent evacuation in 1862 "Among the few inhabitants found in Corinth was an elderly female, decidedly rebellious in her disposition, having all the prominent facial symptoms of the most abhorrent freak of nature an ill-tempered woman. An Illinois soldier advanced towards her as she stood on the doorstep of her residence, and addressed her thus: the determination and certainty with which our generals take their steps; and, like them, when he takes a city he never gives it up. This firm old man is noble and kind-hearted. He is a child of the people. Go to him with a story of woe, and he will weep like a child. This man, so condemned, works more hours than any other President that ever occupied the chair. His solicitude for the public welfare is never-ceasing. I differed from him at first myself, but at last felt and believed that he was right, and shall vote for this brave, true, patriotic, kind-hearted man. All his faults and mistakes you have seen. his virtues you never can know. His patience in labor is wonderful. He works far harder than any man in Erie County. At the head of this great nation-look at it! He has all the bills to sign passed by Congress. No one can be appointed to any office without his approval. No one can be punished without the judgment receives his signature, and no one pardoned without his hand. This man- always right, always "Soldier-Well, I've heard a good deal about just- we propose to reelect now to the Presisecesh gentlemen, but I never saw one. Gen-dency." "Well, misses, them ere fellers got away, eh? Wish we'd caught 'em. We'd gin 'em the wust whippin' they ever got. Which way did the d-d hounds go, anyhow?' "Lady (indignant)-'I reckon you don't know who you're talking to. I've got a son in the Southern army, and he ain't no d-d hound. He's a gentleman, sir.' All |