Ames College occupies a site here, and the Car Shops are important and extensive. One hundred and Ninth Day. _Duncombe House_, DECATUR, MICHIGAN, _August Twenty-eighth_. Taking an early train, I returned to this place in the morning, where I had decided to remain for a few days in order to allow more time for the treatment of my horse, and to give my brother and Babcock an opportunity to insure a full house at Farwell Hall, Chicago, where I was announced to lecture on the eleventh of September. I had begun to fear that the irritation on _Paul's_ back would develop into that most disgusting and painful disease of horses known as fistula; and although he never showed any impatience, I had not the heart to ride him while in this condition. My quarters were quite comfortable at the only hotel in town, and I thanked my stars that I was not stranded in some little backwoods place with the choice of "the softest boards on the floor for a bed," and other accommodations to match--a state of affairs which a waylaid journeyman once had to face, who, with the soul of a Stoic, left on his window-pane the comforting couplet: "Learn hence, young man, and teach it to your sons: The easiest way's to take it as it comes." In fact I was doubly fortunate. No sooner had I reached Decatur than I lost the consciousness of being "a stranger within the gates," having been so cordially made to feel that I was among friends, and that the cause which I had taken up in Michigan met with their hearty sympathy. [Illustration: RURAL SCENE IN MICHIGAN.] One hundred and Tenth Day. _Duncombe House_, DECATUR, MICHIGAN, _August Twenty-ninth_. Met George L. Darby, an old comrade of the "Harris Light," in the afternoon. He had noticed my signature on the hotel register, and came at once to my room, where after the heartiest of greetings we sat down for a long talk. Thirteen years had slipped away since the time of our capture at New Baltimore, Virginia, which led him to Belle Isle and me to Libby Prison, and yet as we discussed it all, the reality of those events seemed undiminished. Kilpatrick, Stuart, Fitzhugh Lee--their clever manoeuvring, and our own unfortunate experiences on that day, kept us as enthusiastically occupied as though it were not an old story: but soldiers may be pardoned for recurring to those events which, while they impressed themselves upon witnesses with indelible distinctness, may yet have lost their bitterness, when it is remembered that before many years they and their stories will have passed away. To those who indulge in the absurd belief that such topics are discussed with malicious intent, no justification need be made.