of calm
resolution worthy of the general commanding and his troops. Nobody that
I remember criticised the tautological expression, "The progress of this
army must be forward." We were prepared for a hard fight, for we knew
that the enemy was strongly posted. Most of us were to be under fire for
the first time, and there was some talk about the chances of the morrow
as we lay down to sleep. Moralizing of that sort gets less and less
common with experience in the business, and this time the moralizing may
have seemed to some premature. But wherever the minie ball sang its
diabolical mosquito song there was death in the air, and I was soon to
see brought into camp, under a flag of truce, the lifeless body of the
heir of Mount Vernon, whose graceful riding I had envied a few days
before. However, there was no serious fighting. The advance on the
enemy's position had developed more strength in front than we had
counted on, or some of the spider's legs had failed to close in. A
misleading report had been brought to headquarters. A weak point in the
enemy's line had been reinforced. Who knows? The best laid plans are
often thwarted by the merest trifles,--an insignificant puddle, a
jingling canteen. This game of war is a hit or miss game, after all. A
certain fatalism is bred thereby, and it is well to set out with a stock
of that article. So our resolute advance became a forced reconnaissance,
greatly to the chagrin of the younger and more ardent spirits. We found
out exactly where the enemy was, and declined to have anything further
to do with him for the time being. But in finding him we had to clear
the ground and drive in the pickets. One picket had been posted at the
end of a loop in a chain of valleys. The road we followed skirted the
base of one range of hills. The house which served as the headquarters
of the picket was on the other side. A meadow as level as a board
stretched between. I remember seeing a boy come out and catch a horse,
while we were advancing. Somehow it seemed to be a trivial thing to do
just then. I knew better afterwards. Our skirmishers had done their
work, had swept the woods on either side clean, and the pickets had
fallen back on the main body; but not all of them. One man, if not more,
had only had time to fall dead. The one I saw, the first, was a young
man, not thirty, I should judge, lying on his back, his head too low for
comfort. He had been killed outright, and there was no distortion of