purpose of these pages to retell the well-known story of
the war. My life became a series of ups and downs--mainly
downs--the word being from day to day to fire and fall back; in the
Johnston-Sherman campaign, I served as chief of scouts; then as an aid
to General Hood through the siege of Atlanta, sharing the beginning of
the chapter of disasters that befell that gallant soldier and his army.
I was spared the last and worst of these by a curious piece of special
duty, taking me elsewhere, to which I was assigned in the autumn of 1864
by the Confederate government.

This involved a foreign journey. It was no less than to go to England to
sell to English buyers some hundred thousand bales of designated cotton
to be thus rescued from spoliation, acting under the supervision and
indeed the orders of the Confederate fiscal agency at Liverpool.

Of course I was ripe for this; but it proved a bigger job than I had
conceived or dreamed. The initial step was to get out of the country.
But how? That was the question. To run the blockade had been easy enough
a few months earlier. All our ports were now sealed by Federal cruisers
and gunboats. There was nothing for it but to slip through the North and
to get either a New York or a Canadian boat. This involved chances and
disguises.

IV

In West Tennessee, not far from Memphis, lived an aunt of mine. Thither
I repaired. My plan was to get on a Mississippi steamer calling at one
of the landings for wood. This proved impracticable. I wandered many
days and nights, rather ill mounted, in search of some kind--any
kind--of exit, when one afternoon, quite worn out, I sat by a log
heap in a comfortable farmhouse. It seemed that I was at the end of my
tether; I did not know what to do.

Presently there was an arrival--a brisk gentleman right out of Memphis,
which I then learned was only ten miles distant--bringing with him a
morning paper. In this I saw appended to various army orders the name of
"N.B. Dana, General Commanding."

That set me to thinking. Was not Dana the name of a certain captain, a
stepson of Congressman Peaslee, of New Hampshire, who had lived with us
at Willard's Hotel--and were there not two children, Charley and Mamie,
and a dear little mother, and--I had been listening to the talk of the
newcomer. He was a licensed cotton buyer with a pass to come and go at
will through the lines, and was returning next day.

"I want to get into Memphis--I am a nephew