rimmed up into Fort Runyon, feeling the solemnity of
the occasion impressed upon us with dramatic force by all the
surroundings--by our loneliness, by our character as the harbingers of
the advance of the armies of American freedom and American nationality,
and by the recent flight of the first squad of the enemy whom we had met
with hostile purpose: as we dreamily drink in all these and many other
vague ideas, up comes our battalion, and occupies the hill, the major
sending off a company to hold the bridge where the road crosses the
canal and forks to Arlington and Fairfax Court House. Presently there
pass by us regiments from Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and it may be
from other States which I forget. Some turn off to the right, to settle
on the hill which is now scooped into Fort Albany; others press forward
to Alexandria, the bells of which town very soon begin to ring a
frightened peal of alarm and confusion. We move out a half mile farther
and halt, our night's work being over, and other things in store; the
moonlight wanes, and grows insensibly into a chilly daylight, presently
reddened by the sun of to-morrow. All this seems to us to have occupied
scarcely half an hour, but it is broad day again for certain, and surely
we are a mortally tired and aching battalion as we march back listless,
hot, sleepy, and gastric, over the Long Bridge, to our armory, there to
fall asleep over breakfast in sheer exhaustion, and to spend the
remainder of the day in a dry, hard series of naps, not the least
refreshing--such as leave you the impression of having slept in hot
sand. As we--the quartermaster-sergeant and I--stroll down the avenue
that afternoon according to our wont, we hear the news of Ellsworth's
death, of the occupation of Alexandria by our forces, and of the flight
of the enemy's handful of silly, braggadocio Virginia militia, hastily
collected to brag and drink the town safe from the pollution of the vile
Yankee's invading foot. Ah! V'ginia; as thou art easily pleased to sing
of thy sister-in-law, Ma'yland,

'The taaeirahnt's foot is awn thai sho','

and will be likely to remain thar a right tollable peert length of time,
I expect.

Nothing but bridge guarding in the festering swamp on the Virginia side
of the Potomac, varied by multiplying details for extra duty as clerks
in all imaginable offices, falls to our lot until the 10th of June,
when, after a number of rumors, and many dark forebodings as to