My breakfast dispatched, I joined my company behind a slight breastwork on the crest of the hill, where we blazed away at the rebel stockade with little, if any, intermission all day long. Heavy ordnance was brought into play as well as muskets, and gave and took solid shot and shell to our heart's content. All that day our army was hurrying up additional heavy ordnance onto the besieging line its whole extent, and each new piece, as it came up to its position joined its hoarse bark to the din of all our other war dogs. Such a jolly old racket it was to be sure! All day long the loopholes in the rebel stockade were spitefully spitting red fire in our faces, which fire we returned with a vengeance. We made a good deal of noise all that day and the next with very little execution, because both the enemy and ourselves were under cover. Some funny things happened in those first days of the investment. When we arrived at the rear of Vicksburg on the afternoon of the 18th a picnic party of about thirty ladies, mostly rebel officers' wives, was intercepted and forbidden to return to the beleaguered city. They plead and threatened, tearfully, scornfully, impertinently, to effect their release, but all to no purpose. They were informed that the city was then besieged, that the lid, as it were, was on, that none could now go in but armed men, and none could come out but prisoners. What could they do but submit? We were 30,000 strong. They were three ciphers less. We outnumbered them by a crushing majority. General Grant ordered them to be quartered in a large furnished double house, which the owners had abandoned upon our coming, and there under a safety guard they drew their U. S. army rations from day to day during the forty-two days of the siege and raised Ned generally. An old discordant piano happened to be in their prison, and they pounded the poor old thing until it would bellow like the bull of Bashon. One day General Grant and an adjutant general rode up in front of the house, and while there upon their horses, one of the ladies, who was promenading backward and forward across the piazza, observing that Grant was smoking a cigar, said to him, "Soldier, give me a cigar." "With pleasure, madam," said the General, handing her a weed. Adjutant General Robbins, understanding that the little lady was wholly unacquainted with the name or rank of the distinguished individual whom she was so flippantly addressing, said: "Madam, allow me to make you acquainted with General Grant, of the United States army." The poor frightened woman turned pale, stared wildly at the General, dropped her cigar, and fled inside the house. As the officers rode away, about thirty noses were flattened against the windows as those beautiful captives peered fearfully out to catch a glance of that terrible General whom the south feared most "of all."