hit a boy who
considered himself absolutely safe.

But we had no time for vain regrets. The battle raged. Already there
were two bad cases of black eye, and one of nose-bleed, in the
hospital.

It was glorious excitement, those pell-mell onslaughts and
hand-to-hand struggles. Twice we were within an ace of being driven
from our stronghold, when General Harris and his staff leapt
recklessly upon the ramparts and hurled the besiegers heels over head
down hill.

At sunset the garrison of Fort Slatter was still unconquered, and the
South-Enders, in a solid phalanx, marched off whistling "Yankee
Doodle," while we cheered and jeered them until they were out of
hearing.

III

ON RETURNING FROM EUROPE[59]

This page will be wafted possibly through a snow-storm to the reader's
hand; but it is written while a few red leaves are still clinging to
the maple bough, and the last steamer of the year from across the
ocean has not yet discharged on our shores the final cargo of
returning summer tourists. How glad they will be, like those who came
over in previous ships, to sight that fantomish, white strip of Yankee
land called Sandy Hook! It is thinking of them that I write.

[Footnote 59: From Chapter IX of "From Ponkapog to Pesth." Copyright,
1883, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published by Houghton, Mifflin
Company.]

Some one--that anonymous person who is always saying the wisest and
most delightful things just as you are on the point of saying them
yourself--has remarked that one of the greatest pleasures of foreign
travel is to get home again. But no one--that irresponsible person
forever to blame in railway accidents, but whom, on the whole, I
vastly prefer to his garrulous relative quoted above--no one, I
repeat, has pointed out the composite nature of this pleasure, or
named the ingredient in it which gives the chief charm to this getting
back. It is pleasant to feel the pressure of friendly hands once more;
it is pleasant to pick up the threads of occupation which you dropt
abruptly, or perhaps neatly knotted together and carefully laid away,
just before you stept on board the steamer; it is very pleasant, when
the summer experience has been softened and sublimated by time, to sit
of a winter night by the cheery wood fire, or even at the register,
since one must make one's self comfortable in so humiliating a
fashion, and let your fancy wander back in the old footprints; to form
your thoughts into happy summe