her that I would read at least one verse in my Testament
each day. Not having done so that day was due to the fact that we had
been marching and to the excitement attending the reaching of the
battlefield and being put in position. I then took out my pocket
Testament and went to a picket fire near where I was, leaning over to
read a verse or two by its light, when I heard a rustle in the bushes.
Immediately I grasped my weapons and was on the alert, when a colored
man crawled through the bushes and said to me, "What's that you got
there, a Testament?" On admitting it, he said, "Do you know the chapter
General Washington always used to read before he went into a fight?" I
told him I did not, whereupon he said, "You turn to the Ninety-first
Psalm." "Now," he said, "you read it." I then read aloud:

"Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from
the noisome pestilence.

"He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings shalt
thou trust; His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night nor for the arrow
that flieth by day.

"Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the
destruction that wasteth at noon day.

"A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right
hand; but it shall not come nigh thee."

At the reading of each of these verses he exclaimed, "You see, he didn't
get hit." The contraband evidently was perfectly sincere in the belief
that if I read this verse before a battle I would never get hurt. He
then went away. This incident, coupled with the facts that I had only
been about ten days away from home, that I had seen the horrible sights
of the battlefield the previous afternoon, that I could see the enemy's
camp-fires across the valley, and that I was wondering what fate was in
store for me the following day,--all tended to impress this incident
upon my mind.

The next morning the regiment advanced to the Rapidan River, presumably
with the object of searching for the flank of Jackson's army. Just above
the ford, which I think was Robertson's, was the residence of the
Confederate General Taliaferro. Our picket line was between the house
and the river. Captain Walters of my regiment had arranged with Mrs.
Taliaferro to have breakfast at her house. She and her niece were
engaged in a good-natured altercation with some of the men of my
company, she repeatedly