I can recall one very remarkable incident. We had six guns, heavy old brass Napoleons. One afternoon we had to go uphill--in many cases it was _terribly_ steep--by a road like those in Devonshire, resembling a ditch. It rained in torrents and the water was knee-deep. The poor mules had to be urged and aided in every way, and half the pulling and pushing was done by us. All of us worked like navvies. So we went onwards and upwards for sixteen miles! When we got to the top of the hill, out of one hundred privates, Henry, I, and four others alone remained. R. W. Gilder was one of these, besides Landis and Lieutenant Perkins--that is to say, we alone had not given out from fatigue; but the rest soon followed. This exploit was long after cited as one of the most extraordinary of the war--and so it was. We were greatly complimented on it. Old veterans marvelled at it. But what was worse, I had to lie all night on sharp flints--_i.e._, the slag or _debris_ of an iron smeltery or old forge out of doors--in a terrible rain, and, though tired to death, got very little sleep; nor had we any food whatever even then or the next day. Commissariat there was none, and very little at any time. From all that I learned from many intimate friends who were in the war, I believe that we in the battery suffered to the utmost all that men can suffer in the field, short of wounds and death. Yet it is a strange thing, that had I not received at this time most harassing and distressing news from home, and been in constant fear as regards my brother, I should have enjoyed all this Emergency like a picnic. We often marched and camped in the valley of the Cumberland and in Maryland, in deep valleys, by roaring torrents or "on the mountains high," in scenery untrodden by any artist or tourist, of marvellous grandeur and beauty. One day we came upon a scene which may be best described by the fact that my brother and I both stopped, and both cried out at once, "Switzerland!" The beauty of Nature was to me a constant source of delight. Another was the realisation of the sense of duty and the pleasure of war for a noble cause. It was once declared by a reviewer that in my Breitmann poems the true _gaudium certaminis_, or enjoyment of battle, is more sincerely expressed than by any modern poet, because there is no deliberate or conscious effort to depict it seriously. And I believe that I deserved this opinion, because the order to march, the tramp and rattle and ring of cavalry and artillery, and the roar of cannon, always exhilarated me; and sometimes the old days of France would recur to me. One day, at some place where we were awaiting an attack and I was on guard, General Smith, pausing, asked me something of which all I could distinguish was "Fire--before." Thinking he had said, "Were you ever under fire before?" and much surprised at this interest in my biography, I replied, "Yes, General--in Paris--at the barricades in Forty-