was given. First came the wild cries of the pickets rushing in, accompanied by the scattering shots of the enemy, and followed instantly by shells hurtling through the tents, in which the inmates were just rousing from sleep; then, sweeping like an avalanche through the woods, the terrible resistless battlefront of the enemy.

Into the just-aroused camps thronged the Rebel regiments, firing sharp volleys as they came, and springing towards our laggards with the bayonet. Some were shot down as they were running, without weapons, hatless, coatless, toward the river. Others fell as they were disentangling themselves from the flaps that formed the doors to their tents; others as they were buckling on their accoutrements; a few, it was even said, as they were vainly trying to impress on the cruelly-exultant enemy their readiness to surrender. Officers were wounded in their beds, and left for dead, who, through the whole two days' struggle, lay there gasping in their agony, and on Monday evening were found in their gore, inside their tents, and still able to tell the tale." 1

The houses all along the road were burned. In Prentiss's front was a farm, all laid waste, the orchard shot to pieces and destroyed by balls. The woods all around were killed, perforated with countless holes, as by the bills of woodpeckers.

Striking the Hamburg and Purdy road, we went west to the spot where the Rebel General Sydney A. Johnston fell, pierced by a mortal wound. Zeek then piloted me through the woods to the Corinth Road, where, time pressing, I took leave of him, sorry I could not accept his invitation to go home with him to dinner. It was five miles to his father's house; it was twenty miles to Corinth; and the day was already half spent.

1 "Agate," in the Cincinnati Gazette, who furnished the best contemporaneous account of this battle.

CHAPTER XLVI.

WAITING FOR THE TRAIN AT MIDNIGHT.

STOPPING Occasionally to talk with the people along the road, and dining at a farm-house, I did not reach Corinth until sunset. The first thing I noticed, in passing the fortifications, was that the huts of the negro garrison were dismantled; and I found the citizens rejoicing over the removal of the troops. I returned to Mr. M's house, and was welcomed by Mrs. who seemed almost to have forgotten that I was not only a Yankee, but a "bad Yankee" from Massachusetts. And here I may remark that, whatever hostility was shown me by the Southern people on account of my Northern origin, it usually wore off on a short acquaintance. Mrs. M

had

a private room for me this time; and she caused a great, glowing fire to be made in it for my comfort. After supper she invited me into her sitting-room, where we talked freely about the bad Yankees, the war, and emancipation.

Both her husband and father claimed to be Union men: but their Unionism was of a kind too common in the South. They hated the secession leaders almost as bitterly as they hated the Yankee government.

Mrs. M: "Slavery was bad economy, I know; but oh, it was glorious!"-spoken with a kind of romantic enthusiasm. "I'd give a mint of money right now for servants like I once had, to have one all my own!" in the ardor of that passionate wish.

- clasping her hands

"Ladies at the North," she went on, "if they lose their ser vants, can do their own work; but we can't, we can't!"

She bemoaned the loss of a girl she formerly owned; a bright mulattress, very pretty and intelligent. "She could read and write as well as I could. There was no kind of work

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that girl could n't do. And so faithful!-I trusted everything to her, and was never deceived."

I asked if she could feel in her heart that it was right to own such a creature.

"I believed in it as much as I believed in the Bible. We were taught it from our infancy, we were taught it with our religion. I still think it was right; but I think it was because we abused slavery that it was taken from us. Emancipation is a worse thing for our servants than for us. They can't take care of themselves."

"What has become of that favorite girl of yours?

"She is in St. Louis. She works at her trade there; she 's a splendid dressmaker. Oh, if I only had her to make my dresses now, like she used to! She owns the house and lot where she lives; she has bought it with the money she has earned. She's married to a very fine mulatto man."

"It seems she can take care of herself a good deal better than you can," I remarked. "It is she who is independent; it is you whom slavery has left helpless."

"Well, some of them have made money, and know how to keep it. But they are very few."

"Yet do not those few indicate what the race may become? And, when we consider the bondage from which they have just broken, and the childish improvidence which was natural to them in that condition, is it not a matter of surprise that so many know how to take care of themselves?" She candidly confessed that it was.

As an illustration of a practice Southern ladies too commonly indulge in, I may state that, while we were conversing, she sat in the chimney-corner, chewing a dainty little quid, and spitting into the fire something that looked marvellously like tobacco juice.

As I was to take the train for Memphis at two o'clock in the morning, I engaged a hackman to come to the house for me at one. Relying upon his fidelity, I went to bed, slept soundly, and awoke providentially at a quarter past the hour agreed upon. I waited half an hour for him, and he did not appear

Opening the door to listen for coming wheels, I heard the train whistle. Catching up my luggage, which luckily was not heavy, I rushed out to search, at dead of night, in a strange town, lampless, soundless, and fast asleep, for a railroad depot, which I should scarce have thought of finding even by daylight without inquiring my way. Not a living creature was abroad; not a light was visible in any house; I could not see the ground I was treading upon. Fortunately I knew the general direction in which the railroad lay; I struck it at last; then I saw a light, which guided me to the depot.

But where was the train? It was already over-due. I could hear it whistling occasionally down the track, where some accident had happened to it. The depot consisted of a little framed box just large enough for a ticket-office. You stood outside and bought your ticket through a hole. This box contained a stove, a railroad lantern, and two men. The door, contrary to the custom of the country, was kept scrupulously shut. In vain were all appeals to the two men within to open it. They were talking and laughing by their comfortable fire, while the waiting passengers outside were freezing. Two hours we waited, that cold winter's night, for the train which did not come. There was an express-office lighted up near by, but there was no admittance for strangers there either.

Seeing a red flame a short distance up the railroad track, and human forms passing at times before it, I went stumbling out through the darkness towards it. I found it an encampment of negroes. Twelve men, women, and children were grouped in gypsy fashion about a smoky fire. They were in a miserable condition, wretchedly clad, hungry, weary, and sleepy, but unable to sleep. One woman held in her arms a sick babe, that kept up its perpetual sad wail through the night. The wind seemed to be in every direction, blowing the smoke into everybody's eyes. Yet these suffering and oppressed creatures did for me what men of my own color had refused to do, they made room for me at their fire, and hospitably invited me to share such poor comforts as they had. The incident

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was humiliating and touching. One man gave me an apple, for which I was but too glad to return him many times its cost. They told me their story. They had been working all summer for a planter in Tishemingo County, who had refused to pay them, and they were now hunting for new homes. Two or three had a little money; the rest had none. It made my heart sick to look at them, and feel that it was out of my power to do them any real, permanent service. But they were not discouraged. Said the spokesman of the party, cheerfully, – an old gray-haired man in tatters," I 'll drap my feet into de road in de mornin'; I'll go till I find somefin'!"

Hearing the train again, whistling in earnest this time, I took leave of them, and reached the depot just as it arrived.