Gettysburg, and forgot that we had ever felt otherwise.

Vicksburg and Gettysburg, by the way, and their coincidence with the
Fourth of July, have furnished me with a reminiscence quite otherwise
agreeable. The ship in which I then was spent that Fourth at Spithead,
England. We dressed ship with multicolored signals, red, white, and
blue, at every yard-arm, big American ensigns at the three mast-heads
and the peak, presenting a singularly gay and joyful aspect, which
could profitably be viewed from as many points as Mr. Pecksniff looked
at Salisbury Cathedral. At noon we fired a national salute, all the
more severely punctilious and observant, because by the last mail
things at home seemed to be looking particularly blue. The British
ships of war, though I fear few of their officers then were other than
pleased with our presumed discomfiture, dressed likewise, as by naval
courtesy bound, and also fired a salute. The _Times_ of the day
arrived from London in due season, and had improved the occasion to
moralize upon the sad condition to which the Republic of Bunker Hill
and Yorktown was reduced: Grant held up at Vicksburg,[10] Lee marching
victoriously into Pennsylvania, no apparent probability of escaping
disaster in either quarter. The conclusion was couched in that vein of
Pecksniffian benevolence of which we hear so much in life. "Let us
_hope_ that so much adversity may be tempered to a nation, afflicted
with evil as unprecedented as its former prosperity; and this will
indeed be the case if America ... is led on this day of festivity, now
converted into a day of humiliation, to review past errors, and to
consider that, if her present policy has led her so near ruin, in its
reversal must lie the only path that can conduct her to safety." I
wonder, if there had been a cable, would that editorial have been
headed off. It was not.

"And there it stands unto this day,
To witness if I lie."

It was bitter then to my taste; but sweet were the chuckles which I
later had, when the actual transactions of that anniversary came to
hand.

Whatever their sympathies, the British naval officers during that stay
in British waters had no difficulty in paying us all the usual
personal attentions; but a particular incident showed for our
susceptibilities a nicety of consideration, which could not have been
exacted and was very grateful at the time. We were at Plymouth, under
the breakwater, but some distance from