the command, absent, while Second Lieutenant George B. McClellan, the officer on duty, was making the rounds of the camp. The artist at once repaired to the gun which he wished to sketch, and was engaged in doing so, when McClellan, with an armed guard at his heels, stepped up, with the martial air of one "dressed in a little brief authority," and demanded to know who the intruder was, and by what authority he was there engaged in sketching. The artist, smiling at the manner of the young man, very quietly handed him Captain Hooker's authority for the work he was doing. On reading it McClellan dismissed the guard, and opened a conversation with the intruder, asking him various questions, and at last eliciting the fact that he had been for several years past a resident of the city of Mexico. Instantly McClellan's interest was excited, and he propounded innumerable questions to the artist on--not the history, wealth, resources, defenses, etc., of the city, as one would naturally suppose a young soldier might consistently do, but upon the condition, character, wealth, standing, etc., of the best families of the first society of the city! He asked particularly after the most fashionable, and aristocratic, and wealthy houses, and more particularly still about the leading dames of the fashionable circles. He finally concluded by complaining to his informant that he found it difficult to get introduced to the first families, and had been much disappointed in not getting admitted into the best Mexican society. The story was too good to keep, and Hooker, Pillow, and all the staff afterward enjoyed the artist's frequent relation of the story of the young man who "fought to get into the best Mexican society." I have often thought that the young Napoleon conducted his Potomac campaigns as if his purpose was to place himself on such a footing that, on arriving at Richmond, he would be readily admitted into "the best Southern society." Advising a man of McClellan's character, as Hooker once did, to disobey orders and move on Richmond, with the encouraging comment that he "might as well die for an old sheep as a lamb," was like throwing pearls to swine.