greatly
enlarged since 1865. Entering upon his work at the very beginning of
the war, he was, we believe, almost the only field correspondent who
continued steadily to the end, coming out of it with unbroken health
of body and mind.

How he managed to preserve his strength and enthusiasm, and to excel
where so many others did well and nobly, is an open secret. In the
first place, he was a man of profoundest religious faith in the
Heavenly Father. Prayer was his refreshment. He renewed his strength
by waiting upon God. His spirit never grew weary. In the darkest days
he was able to cheer and encourage the desponding. He spoke
continually, through the _Journal_, to hundreds of thousands of
readers, in tones of cheer. Like a great lighthouse, with its mighty
lamps ever burning and its reflectors and lenses kept clean and clear,
Carleton, never discouraged, terrified, or tired out, sent across the
troubled sea and through the deepest darkness the inspiriting flash of
the light of truth and the steady beam of faith in the Right and its
ultimate triumph. He was a missionary of cheer among the soldiers in
camp and at the front. His reports of battles, and his message of
comfort in times of inaction, wilted the hopes of the traitors,
copperheads, cowards, and "nightshades" at home, while they put new
blood in the veins of the hopeful.

Carleton was always welcome among the commanders and at headquarters.
This was because of his frankness as well as his ability and his
genial bonhomie and social qualities. He did not consider himself a
critic of generals. He simply described. He took care to tell what he
saw, or knew on good authority to be true. He did probe rumors. From
the very first he became a higher critic of assertions and even of
documents. He quickly learned the value of camp reports and items of
news. By and by his skill became the envy of many of less experienced
readers of human nature, and judges of talk and despatches. While
shirking no hard work in the saddle, on foot, on the rail, or in the
boat, he found by experience that by keeping near headquarters he was
the better enabled to know the motions of the army as a whole, to
divine the plans of the commanding general, and thus test the value of
flying rumors. He had a genius for interpreting signs of movement,
whether in the loading of a barge, the riding of an orderly, or the
nod of a general's head. His previous training as an engineer and
surveyor enabled h