excess, which is heating, and
therefore serves still more to subdivide, as well as to expand or
distend the floating moisture in the atmosphere (of which it is never
entirely deprived) into infinitesimal vesicles, or globules, like minute
soap bubbles, and thus from such an infinite number of refracting
surfaces is produced the haze, as well as the obscuration of the
landscape and the reddened disks of the sun and moon, by the absorption
of their heat or red rays, so characteristic of great droughts. This
same infinitesimal vesicular condition of suspended moisture, is also
the sufficient cause of there being no deposition of dew on such
occasions, except where a local change of electric condition cools the
air, thus temporarily clearing the atmosphere, and permitting a local
deposition of the previously suspended moisture, in the form of dew.

All fogs are due to this same cause, as well as that which, in extreme
wintry cold, overhangs the open water, as it yields its comparative heat
to the air. The formation and suspension of clouds, in all their varied
characteristics, have the same origin. That highly attenuated haze which
invests the distant landscape, particularly mountains, with its magical
purple hue, is due to the same, but still more ethereal interposition of
infinitesimal globules of suspended moisture. In corroboration of this
being the true explanation of the phenomena of haze, fogs, etc., is the
fact, that as soon as clouds prevail, denoting an electric change in the
atmosphere, all haze immediately disappears, or becomes embraced in the
larger vesicles or globules, forming clouds.

FLY LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER.

PART II.--CHEVRONS.

She sewed them on upside down. Please to remember that this was in May,
1861 (or was it 1851? it seems a long time ago), when a young lady of
the most finished education, polished to the uttermost nine, could not
reasonably be expected to know what a sergeant-major was, much less the
particular cut and fashion of his badge of rank. I told her, exultingly,
that I was appointed sergeant-major of our battalion. 'What's that?' she
inquired, simply enough. I explained. The dignity and importance of the
office was scarcely diminished in her mind by my explanation; and,
indeed, I thought it the grandest in the army. Who would be a
commissioned officer, when he could wear our gorgeous gray uniform,
trimmed with red, the sleeves wellnigh hidden behind three broad