If the task of poring over these epistles of all kinds, day after day, is, on the whole, tiresome and wearing, there are certainly many incidents to relieve the tedium of the occupation. Incidents, I say; letters, I should say. The deep respect we entertain for a well-known army officer was justified to me by the insight his own letters gave me into his character. It is against the rules of the post-office department to read any part of a letter, unless it is necessary to do so in order to discover the correct address of the writer; but, as the general's handwriting is a little hasty and peculiar, and his military honors and titles were not appended to these letters I speak of, it was natural that they should be read by the clerks, in order to ascertain whether they could be returned to the place they were written from. One of these letters had been written to an old lady (I judged so from the fact of his inquiring about her son and grand-children) somewhere in the South, who, it appeared, had entertained the general at her house, one day during the war, when the general was very much in want of a dinner to eat. He had not forgotten her kindness and hospitality, though it was now after the close of the war; but the old lady had probably removed from the little village to which the letter was directed, or, perhaps, she had died: so the letter came into our hands, and was returned to the general. Another was to an old friend of the general's. They had played together as boys, perhaps, but his friend had not risen to fame and fortune, like himself; he was giving words to his deep sympathy with a misfortune or bereavement that had befallen his friend--sympathy expressed with such tender, true feeling, that we felt as though it were another bereavement that he should have lost this letter of the general's.