thrifty class of citizens, they know well how to get a living, and they bear an excellent reputation for honest industry throughout the country. Their chief fault seems to be that they persist in killing one of man's divinest faculties, as if the sweet and refining sense of beauty would have been given us but for a beneficent purpose. At the same time they do believe sincerely in solid worldly goods, as if they too were not, after all, quite as much one of the "wanities"! Think of it, my solemn long-bearded friend; you buy land, lay out your dollar in perishable dust, or you expend it in the cultivation of those gifts and graces which, if heaven is what I take it to be, you will find use for when you get there. Now which do you suppose will prove the better investment? All of religion does not consist in psalm-singing and sedate behavior. But I do wrong to criticise so worthy and unoffending a sect of Christians, who are no doubt nearer the kingdom than the most we call such; and I merely set out to say this: while we are in the world, all its interests, all its great struggles, concern We cannot sit indifferent. Non-intervention is unknown to the awakened soul. Help the good cause we must, and resist the evil; if we cannot fight, we can pray; and to think of keeping out of the conflict that is raging around us is the vainest thing of all, as yonder well-riddled plain people's church amply testifies.

us.

As it was beginning to rain, Lewy Smith carried me on to Sharpsburg, and there left me. A more lonesome place even than Boonsboro'; the battle alone renders it in the least interesting; a tossed and broken sort of place, that looks as if the solid ground-swell of the earth had moved on and jostled it since the foundations were laid. As you go up and down the hilly streets, the pavements, composed of fragments of limestone slabs, thrust up such abrupt fangs and angles at you, that it is necessary to tread with exceeding caution. As Sharpsburg was in the thick of the fight, the battle-scars it still carries add to its dilapidated appearance. On the side of the town fronting the Federal line of battle, every house bears its marks; and indeed I do not know that any altogether

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escaped. Many were well peppered with bullets, shot and shell. The thousand inhabitants of the place had mostly fled to the river, where they would have been in a sad plight if McClellan had followed up the Rebels on their defeat, and done his duty by them. Imagine a bent bow, with the string drawn. The bow is the river, and the string is the Confederate line after the battle. At the angle of the string is Sharpsburg; and between the string and the bow were the fugitives. Fortunately for them, as for the enemy, McClellan did not do his duty.

After dinner I started to walk to the bridge, known henceforth and for all time as "Burnside's Bridge," just as the road his corps cut for itself through the forests over the mountain, on his way hither from the Sunday fight, is known to everybody as "Burnside's Road."

A shower coming up by the way, I sought shelter under the porch of a stone house, situated on a rising bank near the edge of the town. I had scarcely mounted the steps when a woman appeared, and with cordial hospitality urged me to enter the sitting-room. Although the porch was the pleasanter place, overlooking the hills and mountains on the east, and affording a comfortable wooden bench, where I had thought to sit and enjoy the rain, I accepted her invitation, having found by experience that every dweller on a battle-field has something interesting to tell.

-

She and her neighbors fled from their homes on Tuesday before the battle, and did not return until Friday. She, like nearly every person I talked with who had acted a similar part, was sorry she did not remain in the cellar of the house.

"When we came back, all I could do was jist to set right down and cry." The house had been plundered, their provisions, and the household comforts they had been slowly getting together for years, had been swept away by the alldevouring armies. "Them that stayed at home did not lose anything; but if the soldiers found a house deserted, that they robbed."

I inquired which plundered the most, our men or the Rebels.

"That I can't say, stranger. The Rebels took; but the Yankees took right smart. We left the house full, and when we got home we had n't a thing to eat. Some wounded men had been fetched in, and they had got all the bedding that was left, and all our clothing had been torn up for bandages. It was a right hard time, stranger!"-spoken earnestly and with tears. "I haven't got well over it yet. It killed my old father; he overworked getting the fences up again, and it wore on him so he died within a year. We are jist getting things a little to rights again now, but the place a'n't what it was, and never will be again, in my day."

She showed me, in an adjoining room, a looking-glass hanging within an inch or two of a large patched space in the wall.

"That glass was hanging on that nail, jist as it hangs now, when a shell come in yer and smashed a bedstead to pieces for me on that side of the room, and the glass was n't so much as moved."

Suspecting that I might be keeping her from her work, I. urged her to return to it, and found she had indeed quitted some important household task, because "it did n't seem right to leave a stranger sitting alone." I arose at once, on making that discovery, telling her I would rest under the porch until the rain was over. She appeared for a moment quite distressed, fearing lest the subtle law of politeness should somehow suffer from her neglect. This woman's sense of hospitality was very strong, her whole manner carrying with it an earnest desire to make me comfortable and keep me entertained while in her house. Although troubled about her kitchen affairs, she seemed far more anxious about her duty to me, as if the accident of my being stopped by the rain at her gate had placed her under sacred obligations. At last she thought of a happy solution of the difficulty.

"I'll get some pears and treat ye!" I begged her not to take that trouble for me; but she insisted, repeating with pleased eagerness, "Yes, I'll get some pears and treat ye!"

She brought a dish of fruit, and afterwards sent two little

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girls, her nieces, to keep me company while I ate. They were pretty, intelligent, well-dressed misses of ten and twelve; the eldest of whom opened the conversation by saying,

"Right smart o' fruit cher." A phrase which I suspect every stranger might not have understood, notwithstanding her prettily persuasive smile. South of the Maryland and Pennsylvania line, and indeed in the southern counties of Pennsylvania, one ceases to hear of a plenty or a good deal; it is always a "heap," or "right smart." The word here, along the borders, is pronounced in various ways: here, rarely; yer, commonly; hyer, which is simply yer with an aspirate before it; jer, when the preceding word ends with the sound of d, and cher after a final t. "Rough road jer,” is the southern for "Rough road here"; "out cher," means, similarly, "out here"; the final d and t blending with the y of yer, and forming and ch, just as we hear "would jew" for "would you," and "can't chew" for "can't you," everywhere.

The little girls played their hospitable part very charmingly, and I was sorry to leave them; but the rain ceasing, I felt obliged to walk on. They took me to their aunt, whom I wished to thank for her kindness. Finding that I had not filled my pockets with the pears, as she had invited me to do, she brought some grapes and gave me. I bore the purple bunches in my hand, and ate them as I walked away from the house. They were sweet as the remembered grace of hospitality.

The bridge was a mile farther on. The road strikes the creek, and runs several rods along the right bank before crossing it. If the tourist is surprised at the strength of the posi tions on South Mountain, from which the Rebels were dislodged, he will be no less amazed at the contemplation of Burnside's achievement here. Above the road as it approaches the bridge, and above the creek below the bridge, rises a high steep bank, like a bluff. To approach from the opposite side, exposed to a concentrated infantry and artillery fire flashing all along this crest, to carry the bridge, and drive back the enemy from

their vantage-ground, -one would say was a feat for the heroes of the age of fable. But the truth is, though men are slow to receive it, there never was any age, called “of fable,” or another, better than this,-none that ever produced a more heroic race of men. We have worshipped the past long enough; it is time now to look a little into the merits of the present. Troy, and Greece, and Rome were admirable in their day, and the men of Israel did some doughty deeds; but the men of New England, of the great Middle States, and of the vast North-West, what have they done? The Homeric heroes and demigods are in no way superior, except in brag, to the hilarious lads of Illinois, or the more serious boys of Massachusetts. Of materials such as these the poet would have made a more resounding Iliad.

That Burnside's command could ever have crossed this bridge, from the high banks on the other side to the steep banks on this, in the face of superior numbers pouring their deadly volleys upon them, that is what astonishes you; and what grieves you is this: that reinforcements were not sent to enable him to hold what he gained. If Porter, who had the reserves, had been a man of right courage and patriotism, or anything but a pet of the commanding general, he would have gone into the fight when needed, for reserves were not invented merely to be kept nice and choice, and the results of that day would have been very different.

I spent some hours about the bridge, the Antietam Creek singing all the while its liquid accompaniment to my thoughts. It sang the same song that day, but its peaceful music was drowned by the roar and clash of the conflict. I sat down on a rock and watched a flock of buzzards perched on the limbs of a dead tree, looking melancholy, - resembling, to my mind, greedy camp-followers and army speculators, who remembered with pensive regret the spoils of the good old war-days.

The bridge is narrow, affording space for only one vehicle at a time. It is built of stone, and rests on two solid butments and two rounded piers. There are woods on both sides of the On the left bank they stand a little back from it: