e North, I think, but
ripened in Georgia, incisive, prompt, but good-humored, wearing his
broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned felt hat with the least possible tilt on
one side,--a sure sign of exuberant vitality in a mature and dignified
person like him,--business-like in his ways, and not to be interrupted
while occupied with another, but giving himself up heartily to the
claimant who held him for the time. He was so genial, so cordial, so
encouraging, that it seemed as if the clouds, which had been thick all
the morning, broke away as we came into his presence, and the sunshine
of his large nature filled the air all around us. He took the matter in
hand at once, as if it were his own private affair. In ten minutes he
had a second telegraphic message on its way to Mrs. K--at Hagerstown,
sent through the Government channel from the State Capitol,--one so
direct and urgent that I should be sure of an answer to it, whatever
became of the one I had sent in the morning.

While this was going on, we hired a dilapidated barouche, driven by an
odd young native, neither boy nor man, "as a codling when 'tis almost an
apple," who said _wery_ for very, simple and sincere, who smiled faintly
at our pleasantries, always with a certain reserve of suspicion, and a
gleam of the shrewdness that all men get who live in the atmosphere of
horses. He drove us round by the Capitol grounds, white with tents,
which were disgraced in my eyes by unsoldierly scrawls in huge letters,
thus: THE SEVEN BLOOMSBURY BROTHERS, DEVIL'S HOLE, and similar
inscriptions. Then to the Beacon Street of Harrisburg, which looks
upon the Susquehanna instead of the Common, and shows a long front of
handsome houses with fair gardens. The river is pretty nearly a mile
across here, but very shallow now. The codling told us that a Rebel spy
had been caught trying its fords a little while ago, and was now at Camp
Curtin with a heavy ball chained to his leg,--a popular story, but a
lie, Dr. Wilson said. A little farther along we came to the barkless
stump of the tree to which Mr. Harris, the Cecrops of the city named
after him, was tied by the Indians for some unpleasant operation of
scalping or roasting, when he was rescued by friendly savages, who
paddled across the stream to save him. Our youngling pointed out a very
respectable-looking stone house as having been "built by the Indians"
about those times. Guides have queer notions occasionally.

I was at Niagara just when D