November 12th, you might have seen the magnificent spectacle a great war alone affords. Mounted on his steed, his cork hand on the rein, General Howard led the right wing in bristling ranks, to the sound of martial airs, from Atlanta. And here I must tell you about that cork hand. You may recollect that the heroic chief lost his arm at Fair Oaks, fighting under General McClellan. He returned soon after to his home in Lewiston, Maine. It happened that I was there upon a beautiful summer day, when the Sabbath-school children had a meeting in Rev. Mr. Adams’s church, at Auburn, across the river. General Howard was present, the first time he had attended a public gathering since the wound was received. And many hearts were touched to hear him talk earnestly of truth and duty, while the yet unhealed stump would try to gesticulate, as the arm did of old. He is a complete man, and appreciated by his general-in-chief. The imposing pageant of the advancing host was repeated on the 14th, when General Slocum marched at the head of the left wing from the doomed city. Then General Sherman, with his staff and body-guard, gave a last look, and took his road to Macon. “Let Hood go North; our business is down South,” was his brief comment upon the rebel general’s movements. The torch was applied to the public buildings and railroad depots, flinging at night a lurid light over the dismantled ruined fortifications, and upon the surrounding hills. The scene was grand and awful, memorable to all who witnessed this burning of the “Gate City.” No private residences were designedly given to the flames. “The evidence of the rebels themselves has since appeared to show, that though Atlanta had been besieged, captured, and depopulated, there was no heartless or unavoidable destruction of private property, such as the enemy have delighted to charge upon General Sherman. Thus abandoned, it was left in the rear of our army, whose face was now seaward, and the hand of time, with a higher degree of civilization, can only efface the marks inflicted by a warlike occupation. Before the war Atlanta was one of the most thriving inland cities of the South, and contained 12,000 inhabitants.