stern
breeze. To understand what they said was, of course, impossible to any
but an educated ear, and if I made out "Starr" and "Clipp'rr," it was
because I knew beforehand what must be the burden of their advertising
coranach.

I set out for Philadelphia on the morrow, Tuesday the twenty-third, there
beyond question to meet my Captain, once more united to his brave wounded
companions under that roof which covers a household of as noble hearts as
ever throbbed with human sympathies. Back River, Bush River, Gunpowder
Creek,--lives there the man with soul so dead that his memory has
cerements to wrap up these senseless names in the same envelopes with
their meaningless localities? But the Susquehanna,--the broad, the
beautiful, the historical, the poetical Susquehanna,--the river of
Wyoming and of Gertrude, dividing the shores where

"Aye those sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town,"--

did not my heart renew its allegiance to the poet who has made it lovely
to the imagination as well as to the eye, and so identified his fame with
the noble stream that it "rolls mingling with his fame forever?" The
prosaic traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a great
sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car,
on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's dolphin,--also that
mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, and ducks of
lower degree at other periods.

At Philadelphia again at last! Drive fast, O colored man and brother, to
the house called Beautiful, where my Captain lies sore wounded, waiting
for the sound of the chariot wheels which bring to his bedside the face
and the voice nearer than any save one to his heart in this his hour of
pain and weakness! Up a long street with white shutters and white steps
to all the houses. Off at right angles into another long street with
white shutters and white steps to all the houses. Off again at another
right angle into still another long street with white shutters and white
steps to all the houses. The natives of this city pretend to know one
street from another by some individual differences of aspect; but the
best way for a stranger to distinguish the streets he has been in from
others is to make a cross or other mark on the white shutters.

This corner-house is the one. Ring softly,--for the Lieutenant-Colonel
lies there with a dreadfully wounded arm, an