opening into the house, and no windows.
The stairs are like ladders, and the colonel's contraband valet won't
risk his neck taking down water, but pours it through the windows on
people's heads. We sha'n't stay in it. Men are at work closing up the
caves; they had become hiding-places for trash. Vicksburg is now like
one vast hospital--every one is getting sick or is sick. My cook was
taken to-day with bilious fever, and nothing but will keeps me up.
_July 23._--We moved again two days ago.
_Aug. 20._--Sitting in my easy-chair to-day, looking out upon a grassy
slope of the hill in the rear of this house, I have looked over this
journal as if in a dream; for since the last date sickness and sorrow
have been with me. I feel as if an angry wave had passed over me,
bearing away strength and treasure. For on one day there came to me from
New Orleans the news of Mrs. B.'s death, a friend whom no tie of blood
could have made nearer. The next day my beautiful boy ended his brief
life of ten days, and died in my arms. My own illness caused him to
perish; the fatal cold in the cave was the last straw that broke down
strength. The colonel's sweet wife has come, and I do not lack now for
womanly companionship. She says that with such a prenatal experience
perhaps death was the best for him. I try to think so, and to be glad
that H. has not been ill, though I see the effects. This book is
exhausted, and I wonder whether there will be more adventures by flood
and field to cause me to begin another.
THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE IN GEORGIA
BY WILLIAM PITTENGER
The railroad raid to Georgia, in the spring of 1862, has always been
considered to rank high among the striking and novel incidents of the
civil war. At that time General O.M. Mitchel, under whose authority it
was organized, commanded Union forces in middle Tennessee, consisting of
a division of Buell's army. The Confederates were concentrating at
Corinth, Mississippi, and Grant and Buell were advancing by different
routes toward that point. Mitchel's orders required him to protect
Nashville and the country around, but allowed him great latitude in the
disposition of his division, which, with detachments and garrisons,
numbered nearly seventeen thousand men. His attention had long been
strongly turned toward the liberation of east Tennessee, which he knew
that President Lincoln also earnestly desired, and which would, if
achieved, strike a most damaging blow at the reso
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