cup of coffee.

And so, Saturday morning, the 18th, we took the boat at Amboy, within
two hours of home! But there was less hilarity than usual on the return
of a regiment. Our news from the city was not the latest, and our
grimmest work might be to come--and in New York! Woe to any show of a
mob we had met! The indignation was deep and intense.

But in two minutes after we landed on the Battery, papers were
circulated through the ranks, and we knew all was quiet.

So up Broadway. We were too early in the street to gather much of a
crowd. Those who were out hailed us heartily, and at the corner of Grand
street or thereabouts an ardent individual from a fourth-story window,
plying two boards cymbal-wise (_clap_-boards, say), initiated a
respectable noise. And so round the corner and into the armory at Centre
Market. The campaign was over, and a few days after we were paid off and
mustered out.

As I said, I went to see what it was like, and I saw. It is a strange
life, but a wholesome one, if you get a tolerable sufficiency to eat,
and not too heavy a dose of marching. So severe a time as we had is
terribly _physical_, and benumbs the brain somewhat. The campaign was
short, but the utmost was crowded into those thirty days.

The first portion was advance work, always arduous. General Knipe's work
was to check the rebel advance. He did so by going to the front and
meeting them, and then retreating slowly before them, making a stand and
demonstration of fight, at which their advance would fall back on the
main body, at whose approach he would up stakes, run a few miles, and
make another show. Thus he gained ten days' time, which enabled General
Couch, in command of the department, to fortify, and collect and
organize troops, and probably saved Harrisburg. And for the manner in
which he did it, without, too, the loss of a man, he deserves credit.

On the whole, did I like it? Well, I am glad I have been. But the exact
answer to that question is a sentence of Winthrop's, in his paper
'Washington as a Camp': 'It is monotonous, it is not monotonous, it is
laborious, it is lazy, it is a bore, it is a lark, it is half war, half
peace, and totally attractive, and not to be dispensed with from one's
experience in the nineteenth century.'

REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM.

CHAPTER VI.--TRUTH AND LOVE.

The Divine Attributes, the base of all true Art.

Art must be based upon a study of Nature, upon a clear and compreh