me. The grazing pastures
were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle
looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the
fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this
region was called the England of Pennsylvania. The people whom we saw
were, like the cattle, well nourished; the young women looked round and
wholesome.

"Grass makes girls." I said to my companion, and left him to work out my
Orphic saying, thinking to myself, that as guano makes grass, it was a
legitimate conclusion that Ichaboe must be a nursery of female
loveliness.

As the train stopped at the different stations, I inquired at each if
they had any wounded officers. None as yet; the red rays of the
battle-field had not streamed off so far as this. Evening found us in
the cars; they lighted candles in spring-candle-sticks; odd enough I
thought it in the land of oil-wells and unmeasured floods of kerosene.
Some fellows turned up the back of a seat so as to make it horizontal,
and began gambling, or pretending to gamble; it looked as if they were
trying to pluck a young countryman; but appearances are deceptive, and no
deeper stake than "drinks for the crowd" seemed at last to be involved.
But remembering that murder has tried of late years to establish itself
as an institution in the cars, I was less tolerant of the doings of these
"sportsmen" who tried to turn our public conveyance into a travelling
Frascati. They acted as if they were used to it, and nobody seemed to
pay much attention to their manoeuvres.

We arrived at Harrisburg in the course of the evening, and attempted to
find our way to the Jones House, to which we had been commended. By some
mistake, intentional on the part of somebody, as it may have been, or
purely accidental, we went to the Herr House instead. I entered my name
in the book, with that of my companion. A plain, middle-aged man stepped
up, read it to himself in low tones, and coupled to it a literary title
by which I have been sometimes known. He proved to be a graduate of Brown
University, and had heard a certain Phi Beta Kappa poem delivered there a
good many years ago. I remembered it, too; Professor Goddard, whose
sudden and singular death left such lasting regret, was the Orator. I
recollect that while I was speaking a drum went by the church, and how I
was disgusted to see all the heads near the windows thrust out of them,
as if the buildin