readily undertaken. This applies only to the field-hands; the house
servants were treacherous and wholly unreliable. Very many of our men
who managed to get away from the prisons were recaptured through their
betrayal by house servants, but none were retaken where a field hand
could prevent it.

We were much interested in watching the negro work. They wove in a great
deal of their peculiar, wild, mournful music, whenever the character of
the labor permitted. They seemed to sing the music for the music's sake
alone, and were as heedless of the fitness of the accompanying words,
as the composer of a modern opera is of his libretto. One middle aged
man, with a powerful, mellow baritone, like the round, full notes of a
French horn, played by a virtuoso, was the musical leader of the party.
He never seemed to bother himself about air, notes or words, but
improvised all as he went along, and he sang as the spirit moved him.
He would suddenly break out with--

"Oh, he's gone up dah, nevah to come back agin,"

At this every darkey within hearing would roll out, in admirable
consonance with the pitch, air and time started by the leader--

"O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

Then would ring out from the leader as from the throbbing lips of a
silver trumpet,

"Lord bress him soul; I done hope he is happy now!"

And the antiphonal two hundred would chant back

"O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

And so on for hours. They never seemed to weary of singing, and we
certainly did not of listening to them. The absolute independence of the
conventionalities of tune and sentiment, gave them freedom to wander
through a kaleideoscopic variety of harmonic effects, as spontaneous and
changeful as the song of a bird.

I sat one evening, long after the shadows of night had fallen upon the
hillside, with one of my chums--a Frank Berkstresser, of the Ninth
Maryland Infantry, who before enlisting was a mathematical tutor in
college at Hancock, Maryland. As we listened to the unwearying flow of
melody from the camp of the laborers, I thought of and repeated to him
Longfellow's fine lines:

THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT.

And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strong emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.

Paul and Silas, in their prison,
Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen,
And an earthquake's arm of might
Broke their dungeon gate