that of the Union, the reason being, it was said, that in the service of the South were scores of intelligent women of position who were successful in obtaining at Washington, New York and elsewhere in the North, correct information of the plans and intentions of the Union generals. This was the case in regard to the battle of Bull Run, when a Mrs Greenhow obtained from a Northern politician information as to the advance of the Federal troops. Indeed, the operations of wealthy women-spies in the secret service of the South, during the Civil War, is one of the most curious features of that event. Nor were they all Southern women; many of them were Northerners, and at all events every one of them owed her fortune and position to the principles for which the Union stood. These women watched and waited at official doors until chance or the unguardedness of an employee allowed them to learn the particular secret intelligence they were looking for; they stole maps and plans and most of them had taken lodgings close by the War Office, to which they were wont to invite young departmental secretaries to whom they offered the pleasures of the tea-table and an enlightened discussion of Federal iniquities. Mr Perley Poore, writing in the well-known magazine, _The Chautauquan_, in January 1887, says: "They smuggled the information which they obtained, in the linings of honest-looking coats and hid the army secrets in the mysteries of innocent-looking bustles; they burned signal lights from garret-windows and crossed the Potomac below Alexandria at dead of night and with muffled oars. At one time the Government had caught and hived over a dozen of these busy Confederate bees in a house at Washington where, in a few days, they beguiled the young officers charged with guarding them and carried on their vocations as before." One of the best known of these creatures was Belle Boyd, the daughter of a Federal official; according to report she was sharp-featured, black-eyed, quick-tongued, of wonderful energy and spirits, twenty-five and—very free. She wore a revolver in her belt, rode a mettlesome horse and easily attracted the attentions and interest of the younger officers from whom she extracted valuable information, though what the officers extracted in return, we are not told. Boyd organised her own corps of women spies who were very much of the same type and character, and if not worse than herself, were apparently no better than they ought to have been.