s not much over twenty) as they moved step by step toward
those bristling lines of steel in their front?

They were thinking of home. Far over the hills, "Way down south in
Dixie."

Step by step came the gray, nearer and nearer, when suddenly there was a
sound that shook the hills and made every heart quake. It was the signal
gun.

Simultaneously with the sound came a cannon ball hissing through the
air, and passing over the heads of the advancing columns, struck the
ground beyond.

Then suddenly the whole slope was wreathed in smoke and flame,
accompanied with a noise like the roar of a thousand cataracts.

Was it a huge volcanic eruption? No. The Blue and the Gray had met. The
smoke rose higher and higher, and spread wider and wider, hiding the
sun, and then gently dropping back, hid from human eyes the dreadful
tragedy.

But the battle went on and on, and the roar of the guns continued. After
a while, when the sun was sinking to rest, there was a hush. The noise
died away. The winds came creeping back from the west, and gently
lifting the coverlet of smoke, revealed a strange sight.

The fields were all carpeted, a beautiful carpet, a costly carpet, more
costly than axminster or velvet. The figures were horses and men all
matted and woven together with skeins of scarlet thread.

The battle is over and Gettysburg has passed into history.

The moon and the stars come out, and the surgeons with their attendants
appear with their knives and saws, and when morning came there were
stacks of legs and arms standing in the fields like shocks of corn.

The two armies confronted each other all day long, but not a shot was
fired. Up to noon that day, I think I can safely say there was not a man
in either army, from the commanders-in-chief to the humblest private in
the ranks, that knew how the battle had gone save one, and that one was
Gen. Robert E. Lee.

About 4 o'clock in the afternoon, while the cavalrymen were grazing
their horses in the rear of the infantry, a low, rumbling sound was
heard resembling distant thunder, except that it was continuous. A
private (one of my company) standing near me stood up and pointing
toward the battlefield said, "Look at that, will you?" A number of us
rose to our feet and saw a long line of wagons with their white covers
moving toward us along the road leading to Chambersburg.

Then he used this strange expression: "That looks like a mice." A slang
phrase often used at that t