nally designed
for St. Louis.

As the army lay at Jefferson City, preparing for the field, some
twelve or fifteen journalists, representing the prominent papers
of the country, assembled there to chronicle its achievements. They
waited nearly two weeks for the movement to begin. Some became sick,
others left in disgust, but the most of them remained firm. The
devices of the journalists to kill time were of an amusing nature.
The town had no attractions whatever, and the gentlemen of the press
devoted themselves to fast riding on the best horses they could
obtain. Their horseback excursions usually terminated in lively races,
in which both riders and steeds were sufferers. The representatives
of two widely-circulated dailies narrowly escaped being sent home with
broken necks.

Evenings at the hotels were passed in reviving the "sky-larking"
of school-boy days. These scenes were amusing to participants and
spectators. Sober, dignified men, the majority of them heads of
families, occupied themselves in devising plans for the general
amusement.

One mode of enjoyment was to assemble in a certain large room, and
throw at each other every portable article at hand, until exhaustion
ensued. Every thing that could be thrown or tossed was made use of.
Pillows, overcoats, blankets, valises, saddle-bags, bridles, satchels,
towels, books, stove-wood, bed-clothing, chairs, window-curtains,
and, ultimately, the fragments of the bedsteads, were transformed into
missiles. I doubt if that house ever before, or since, knew so much
noise in the same time. Everybody enjoyed it except those who occupied
adjoining rooms, and possessed a desire for sleep. Some of these
persons were inclined to excuse our hilarity, on the ground that the
boys ought to enjoy themselves. "The boys!" Most of them were on the
shady side of twenty-five, and some had seen forty years.

About nine o'clock in the forenoon of the day following Price's
evacuation of Lexington, we obtained news of the movement. The mail at
noon, and the telegraph before that time, carried all we had to say of
the affair, and in a few hours we ceased to talk of it. On the evening
of that day, a good-natured "contractor" visited our room, and,
after indulging in our varied amusements until past eleven, bade us
good-night and departed.

Many army contractors had grown fat in the country's service, but this
man had a large accumulation of adipose matter before the war broke
out. A rap