left
them miles behind; how we killed nothing but chickens, wounded nothing
but our own silly pride, and captured nothing but green apples and
roasting ears; all this, and more, let history tell. The poor old
general kept us safe, at all events; and if the enemy, with half our
numbers, was left unharmed, and allowed quietly and leisurely to move
off and swell his force elsewhere, and so whip us in detail, what of it?
Didn't we save our wagon train? And isn't that, as everyone knows, the
highest result of strategy?

And then came the battle (the _battle!_) of Bull Run, with its first
glowing, crowing accounts of victory, and its later story of humiliation
and shame! Ah! let me shut up the page! My heart grows sick over this
mangy, scrofulous period of our national disease; give me air!

Luckily for me, I had a raging fever just after that awful 21st of July,
1861. When I awoke from my delirium, and had got as far as tea, toast,
and the door of the hospital, they told me of the great uprising of the
people, of General McClellan's appointment to command the Army of the
Potomac, of how 'our boys' had reenlisted for the war, and of how I, no
longer Sergeant-Major William Jenkins, was to be adjutant of the
regiment, and might now take off my _chevrons_, and put on my SHOULDER
STRAPS.

_She_ sent them to me in a letter. Wait a month, and I'll tell you.

THE FIRST FANATIC.

When Noah hewed the timber
Wherewith to build the ark,
Outside the woods one shouted--
'That wild fanatic!--_hark!_'

And when he drew the beams
And laid them on the plain,
One said,'He has no balance,
He surely is insane.'

And when he raised the frame,
One clear, sunshiny day,
'Poor fool of _one idea_,'
A smiling man did say.

When he foretold the flood,
And stood repentance teaching,
They sneered, 'You radical,
We'll hear no ultra preaching!'

And when he drove the beasts and birds
Into the ark one morn,
They shouted, 'Odd enthusiast!'
And laughed with ringing scorn.

When he and all his house went in,
They gazed, and said, 'Erratic!'
'A pleasant voyage to you, Noah!
You canting, queer fanatic!'

SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY.

V.--THE ADIRONDACS.

This interesting mountain region embraces the triangular plateau lying
between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario and the
Mohawk. The name was formerly restricted to the cent