Every thing thus far said has been of the combatants. But there were others on the battle-field. There were the inhabitants of this valley, non-combatants, inviolate by the rules of civilized warfare. Of this sort were the rustic people at Widow Glenn’s, where General Garfield passed the most memorable days of his life. The house was a Tennessee cabin. Around it lay a little farm with small clearings. Here the widow lived with her three children, one a young man, the others a girl and boy of tender age. As General Garfield took up his head-quarters there it is said to have reminded him powerfully of his own childhood home with his toiling mother. All the life of these children had been passed in this quiet valley. Of the outside world they knew little, and cared less. They did not know the meaning of the word war. They were ignorant and poverty-stricken, but peaceful. Shut in by the mountains of ignorance, as well as the lofty ranges along the valley, they had known no event more startling than the flight of birds through the air or the rustle of the wind through the forest. The soil was rocky and barren like their minds; yet, unvisited by calamity, they were happy. But suddenly this quiet life was broken into. The forests were filled with armed men. The cabin was taken possession of by the officers. A sentinel stood at the door. Outside stood dozens of horses, saddled and bridled. Every moment some one mounted and dashed away; every moment some other dismounted from his breathless and foam-flecked steed and rushed into the cabin. The widow, stunned and frightened, sat in the corner with an arm around each of her children. The little girl cried, but the boy’s curiosity got somewhat the better of his fear. A time or two General Garfield took the little fellow on his knee, and quieted his alarm. The fences were torn down and used for camp fires. Great trees were hastily felled for barricades. In front of the house passed and repassed bodies of troops in uniform, and with deadly rifles. Now and then a body of cavalry dashed by in a whirlwind of dust. Great cannon, black and hideous, thundered down the rocky road, shaking the solid earth in their terrible race. The cabin-yard was filled with soldiers. The well was drained dry by them to fill their canteens. It was like a nightmare to the trembling inhabitants of the cabin. Their little crops were tramped into dust by the iron tread of war. On a hill in front of the cabin, where nothing more dangerous than a plow had ever been, a battery frowned. The valley which had never been disturbed by any thing more startling than the screech of an owl, or the cackle of the barn-yard, was filled with a muffled roar from the falling trees and the shouts of men.