is your chance to
look upon them for the last time."

As Samyule spoke thus, a small blue object, carrying a drum, toddled
forth from the ranks, and saluted. It was a small Mackerel drummer, my
boy, who had enlisted only ten days before, and his small eyes were wet
with tears. The heroic child wiped his little nose on his sleeve, and
says he:

"_My_ mother gave me something."

Samyule was greatly affected, and says he:

"Was it the Family Bible, sweet cherub?"

"No-o-o," sobbed the innocent, as though his little heart would break.

Samyule wiped his tear-dimmed spectacles, and says he:

"Perhaps it was her daguerreotype?"

The infant wept afresh, and says he:

"No-o-o."

"Then," says Samyule, in a broken voice, "it must have been her
blessing."

"No! no-o-o," cried the small Mackerel drummer, with quivering lips.

"Then what in thunder was it that your mother gave you?" says Samyule,
greatly bewildered.

"It was a spanking!" screamed the affectionate little creature,
cramming both his little fists into his little eyes, and blubbering
unrestrainedly.

Samyule gazed a moment at the child, and says he:

"Well may affection bid thee weep, thou tender little one! When a
sweetheart blushingly places a rose upon her lover's breast, the scene
is affecting; but my own memory of childhood tells me that a far deeper
feeling is excited when the tender mother selects a different flower,
and places upon the back of her child the modest lady's slipper."

Immediately after this affecting little incident, my boy, Samyule led
his men to their duty, and they marched into one end of the defile as
soldiers, to pass out of the other as spirits.

Along the front, "Forward!" was the word, and the Conic Section swept
to the assault, like a sea of bayonets dashed against a shore of
adamantine rock from the hollow of an Almighty hand. Were it possible,
my boy, for bullets to ascend perpendicularly until they just reached
the top of mountain breastworks, and then slant down at an acute angle
to where the foe lay hidden, it is possible that the frequent volleys
from the Conic Section might have produced some carnage; but as the
face of the hill before our troops was straight up and down, with the
noisy Confederacies on the extreme summit, the Mackerel musketry simply
occasioned a rise in Federal lead, without a fall in Confederate
leaders.

Some Confederacies in their lofty intrenchments just tipped over a few
cannon, so th