of some awful calamity about to fall upon the inhabitants of the city grew until a great multitude were filled with terror. At the usual hour for morning service, I went to church. On my way thither, I saw but few going to the different houses of worship. My own congregation was about one third of its usual size. Most of the church officers were absent. At the close of the service, groups of the small audience exchanged with each other a few words, declaring that in their judgment there was no danger, that the general fright was baseless, and then evidently with some degree of anxiety quickly departed for their homes. It was now between twelve and one. The clouds of the morning were gone. The sun shone brightly. But the few people venturing out into the streets seemed even more cheerless and terror-stricken than earlier in the day. Here and there a carriage, filled with anxious faces, was driven hurriedly along. Just after my dinner, about two o’clock, my landlord and next-door neighbor, a moderate secessionist, cautious, conservative, phlegmatic, called to see me. He asked, apparently with great coolness: “Do you think that we are in any special danger?” I answered, “No, I do not think we are. The Germans, who have inspired so many with alarm, have no ill will towards us. The fear, now agitating so many in the city, has not a particle of foundation.” “Well,” he replied, “that is just what I think, but”—and here he betrayed his suspicion that there might be some danger which did not appear on the surface—“do you think when General Harney declared this morning in his proclamation that there was no cause for alarm, he concealed anything from the public?” I assured him that I fully believed that the general was acting a truthful and honorable part. He said: “I think so too,” and bade me good day; but within thirty minutes, an open two-horse carriage drove up to his door; his family brought out satchels, bags and pillow-cases, hastily stuffed with necessary articles of clothing, threw them pell-mell into the vehicle, and unceremoniously clambering in after them, drove away at breakneck speed as though they were pursued by some invisible demon. This led me to go out and walk hither and thither through the central part of the city. The scene presented to my view was surpassingly strange. Carriages and wagons filled with trunks, valises, hastily made bundles, and frightened men, women and children were flying along the streets towards every point of the compass. Some scared souls, unable to obtain a vehicle of any kind, were walking or running with breathless haste, carrying all sorts of bundles in their hands, under their arms or on their shoulders. All these were fleeing from imaginary danger. But the fancied conflagration and slaughter which they believed themselves to be escaping were to them awful realities, enacted, with all their attendant horrors, over and over again within their minds.