The troops were marching very fast, and I did not come up with you for perhaps two hours after the advance guard received orders to countermarch. When the column was put in motion on the river road, which must have been after 4 o'clock, we were met by some staff officers of General Grant, Major Rawlins and Colonel McPherson, and another officer whom I did not know. They had some conversation with you, and then, for the first time I learned that our troops had been repulsed, and that we were then marching to join the right of the army, in its new position, at Pittsburg Landing. After some hard marching over execrable roads we reached our position about dusk. The road the division first marched on led directly to the right of the army in its position as stated above, and we would have joined it, had it not been repulsed, before 3 o'clock P.M. Having conversed with many of the division who were present on that day, it is the general impression that we marched between fifteen and eighteen miles. Now, considering that we had troops not inured to hard marching, some of them on their first march, the condition of the roads, almost impassible, and part of that distance through woods, without any road, at all, it certainly ought not to be intimated that you did not do your whole duty in endeavoring to reach the field. I am General, very respectfully, Your obedient servant, FRED KNEFLER. Late Colonel Seventy-ninth Regiment Indiana Volunteers. * * * * * REUBEN TRACY'S VACATION TRIPS. BY ELIZABETH PORTER GOULD. II. "O mamma, did'nt we have a good time at the Isles of Shoals last summer?" said Reuben Tracy to his mother one evening last July as they sat together on their piazza. "Did'nt the boys stare though when I told them all about it in our geography class. Ned Bolton said that I knew more about it than the geography did; and afterwards he asked me if I had ever seen a mountain. How I wish I could see one and climb to the very top of it. Oh my, would'nt I look!" And the boy's eyes looked as though they would look to the satisfaction of the most devoted teacher. "Well," my boy, replied Mrs. Tracy as she drew him nearer to her in loving admiration of such enthusiasm, "only yesterday I received a letter from your uncle in Northampton urging me to take you and come to make him a visit, and I thought then what a good opportunity it would be for you to see your first mountain. Now do you know what one I mean?" "Oh yes," answered Reuben; "but you mean two, do'nt you? Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke. I learned that in my geography. I can see it now in my book where it says that Mount Tom is twelve hundred feet high, and Mount Holyoke one thousand feet high." But Bob Phelps said that there were lots of Rattlesnakes on Mount Tom, so I should not dare to go there--but then--"