ted upon making
history, turning a change of base into a nominal retreat, and begetting
in themselves a brass-bound and untamable spirit which it took vast
wealth and several years to humble. From Gaines's Mill to the awful brow
of Malvern Hill there were thunder and death. Forty thousand men were
somewhat needlessly killed, wounded, or (as one paradoxical account has
it) "found missing."

Aladdin missed the fight at Malvern Hill and became wounded in a
non-bellicose fashion. His general desired to make a remark to another
general, and writing it on a piece of thin yellow paper, gave it to him
to deliver. He rode off to the tune of axes,--for a Maine regiment
was putting in an hour in undoing the stately work of a hundred
years,--trotted fifteen miles peacefully enough, delivered his general's
remark, and started back. Then came night and a sticky mist. Then the
impossibility of finding the way. Aladdin rode on and on, courageously
if not wisely, and came in time to the dimly discernible outbuildings of
a Virginia mansion. They stood huddled dark and wet in the mist, which
was turning to rain, and there was no sign of life in or about them.
Aladdin passed them and turned into an alley of great trees. By looking
skyward he could keep to the road they bounded. As he drew near the
mansion itself a great smell of box and roses filled his nostrils with
fragrance. But to him, standing under the pillared portico and knocking
upon the door, came no word of welcome and no stir of lights. He gave
it up in disgust, mounted, and rode back through the rich mud to the
stables. Had he looked over his shoulder he might have seen a face at
one of the windows of the house.

He found a door of one of the stables unlocked, and went in, leading his
horse. Within there was a smell of hay. He closed the door behind him,
unsaddled, and fell to groping about in the dark. He wanted several
armfuls of that hay, and he couldn't find them. The hay kept calling to
his nose, "Here I am, here I am"; but when he got there, it was hiding
somewhere else. It was like a game of blindman's-buff. Then he heard
the munching of his horse and knew that the sought was found. He moved
toward the horse, stepped on a rotten planking, and fell through the
floor. Something caught his chin violently as he went through, and in
a pool of filthy water, one leg doubled and broken under him, he passed
the night as tranquilly as if he had been dosed with laudanum.