ind, and two three-inch Parrotts, all
captured. The men were as pleased with them as children with new toys.
The care and attention needed to keep them in prime order broke the
monotony of camp life. They soon had abundant opportunities to
test their power. They worked admirably, carried far, and were
extraordinarily accurate in their aim. The men from admiration of their
guns grew to have first a pride in, and then an affection for, them, and
gave them nicknames as they did their comrades; the four Napoleons being
dubbed "The Evangelists", and the two rifles being "The Eagle", because
of its scream and force, and "The Cat", because when it became hot from
rapid firing "It jumped," they said, "like a cat." From many a hill-top
in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania "The Evangelists" spoke their
hoarse message of battle and death, "The Eagle" screamed her terrible
note, and "The Cat" jumped as she spat her deadly shot from her hot
throat. In the Valley of Virginia; on the levels of Henrico and Hanover;
on the slopes of Manassas; in the woods of Chancellorsville; on
the heights of Fredericksburg; at Antietam and Gettysburg; in the
Spottsylvania wilderness, and again on the Hanover levels and on the
lines before Petersburg, the old guns through nearly four years roared
from fiery throats their deadly messages. The history of the battery was
bound up with the history of Lee's army. A rivalry sprang up among
the detachments of the different guns, and their several records were
jealously kept. The number of duels each gun was in was carefully
counted, every scar got in battle was treasured, and the men around
their camp-fires, at their scanty messes, or on the march, bragged
of them among themselves and avouched them as witnesses. New recruits
coming in to fill the gaps made by the killed and disabled, readily fell
in with the common mood and caught the spirit like a contagion. It was
not an uncommon thing for a wheel to be smashed in by a shell, but if it
happened to one gun oftener than to another there was envy. Two of the
Evangelists seemed to be especially favored in this line, while the Cat
was so exempt as to become the subject of some derision. The men stood
by the guns till they were knocked to pieces, and when the fortune of
the day went against them, had with their own hands oftener than once
saved them after most of their horses were killed.

This had happened in turn to every gun, the men at times working like
b