ant _was_ dead, and
laid out in dingy sheets, with a big gun firing great volleys over him!
The cannon which that morning thundered Glory! Hallelujah! through the
columns of the "Whig" and the "Examiner" no doubt brought him to life
again. No such jubilation, I believe, disgraced our Northern journals
when Stonewall Jackson fell.

Breakfast over, the Colonel and I packed our portmanteaus, and sat down
to the intellectual repast. It was a feast, and we enjoyed it. I always
have enjoyed the Richmond editorials. If I were a poet, I should study
them for epithets. Exhausting the dictionary, their authors ransack
heaven, earth, and the other place, and into one expression throw such a
concentration of scorn, hate, fury, or exultation as is absolutely
stunning to a man of ordinary nerves. Talk of their being bridled! They
never had a bit in their mouths. Before the war they ran wild, and now
they ride rough-shod over decorum, decency, and Davis himself. But the
dictator endures it like a philosopher. "He lets it pass," said Judge
Ould to me, "like the idle wind, which it is."

At last, ten o'clock--the hour when we were to set out from
Dixie--struck from a neighboring steeple, and I laid down the paper, and
listened for the tread of the Judge on the stairs. I had heard it often,
and it had always been welcome, for he is a most agreeable companion,
but I had not _listened_ for it till then. Then I waited for it as "they
that watch for the morning," for he was to deliver us from the "den of
lions,"--from "the hold of every foul and unclean thing." Ten, twenty,
thirty minutes I waited, but he did not come! Why was he late, that
prompt man, who was always "on time,"--who put us through the streets of
Richmond the night before on a trot, lest we should be a second late at
our appointment? Did he mean to bake us brown with the mid-day sun? or
had the mules overslept themselves, or moved their quarters still
farther out of town? Well, I didn't know, and it was useless to
speculate, so I took up the paper, and went to reading again. But the
stinging editorials had lost their sting, and the pointed paragraphs,
though sharper than a meat-axe, fell on me as harmless as if I had been
encased in a suit of mail.

At length eleven o'clock sounded, and I took out my watch to
count the minutes. One, two, three,--how slow they went! Four,
five,--ten,--fifteen,--twenty! What was the matter with the watch? Even
at this day I could affirm on o