words--skirmish, battle, defeat,
rout, massacre--by-and-by.

Well,--to be Xenophontic,--from the Race-Course that evening we marched
one stadium, one parasang, to a cedar-grove up the road. In the grove
is a spring worthy to be called a fountain, and what I determined by
infallible indications to be a _lager-bier_ saloon. Saloon no more! War
is no respecter of localities. Be it Arlington House, the seedy palace
of a Virginia Don,--be it the humbler, but seedy, pavilion where the
tired Teuton washes the dust of Washington away from his tonsils,--each
must surrender to the bold soldier-boy. Exit Champagne and its goblet;
exit _lager_ and its mug; enter whiskey-and-water in a tin pot. Such are
the horrors of civil war!

And now I must cut short my story, for graver matters press. As to
the residence of the Seventh in the cedar-grove for two days and two
nights,--how they endured the hardship of a bivouac on soft earth and
the starvation of coffee _sans_ milk,--how they digged manfully in the
trenches by gangs all these two laborious days,--with what supreme
artistic finish their work was achieved,--how they chopped off their
corns with axes, as they cleared the brushwood from the glacis,--how
they blistered their hands,--how they chafed that they were not
lunging with battailous steel at the breasts of the minions of the
oligarchs,--how Washington, seeing the smoke of burning rubbish, and
hearing dropping shots of target-practice, or of novices with the musket
shooting each other by accident,--how Washington, alarmed, imagined a
battle, and went into panic accordingly,--all this, is it not written
in the daily papers?

On the evening of the 26th, the Seventh travelled back to Camp Cameron
in a smart shower. Its service was over. Its month was expired. The
troops ordered to relieve it had arrived. It had given the other
volunteers the benefit of a month's education at its drills and parades.
It had enriched poor Washington to the tune of fifty thousand dollars.
Ah, Washington! that we, under Providence and after General Butler,
saved from the heel of Secession! Ah, Washington, why did you charge us
so much for our milk and butter and strawberries? The Seventh, then,
after a month of delightful duty, was to be mustered out of service, and
take new measures, if it would, to have a longer and a larger share in
the war.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS.

I took advantage of the day of rest after our return to have a gallop
about t