,
singing merrily, no doubt thinking of "_Home, sweet home_."

A VISIT TO THE OUTPOSTS WITH GEN. JEFF C. DAVIS.

General Davis I found an active, intelligent gentleman, with an eye
denoting great determination, and very pleasing in his conversational
powers; always on the alert, leaving nothing to subordinates that he
could do himself. The General's division commanded the Shelbyville
pike. I spent two nights with Colonel Heg, who had a brigade occupying
the most dangerous position. The 25th Illinois and 8th Kansas were in
his brigade.

Colonel Heg's regiment is mostly composed of Norwegians, or
Scandinavians. They are generally from, and are known as the 15th
Wisconsin; are a splendid body of well-disciplined men, and all speak
our language fluently. I heard an amusing anecdote of one of their
captains, who, a short time since, took a lot of rebel prisoners. As
this Norwegian captain had them drawn up in line, he said to them, in
broken English, and in accent very like the German: "Say, you fellers,
you putternuts, I vant you all to schwear a leetle. It do you goot to
schwear mit de Constitution. I schwear him tree year ago; now you
schwear him. Now, recollect, you schwear him goot; no d----n nonsense.
You schwear him, and keep him down, and not _puke him up again_!"

The 24th Illinois are close at hand, also the 8th Kansas. These boys
are in view of the rebels every day.

There is in the 24th Illinois Regiment a very clever officer who has
an intolerably red nose. He says he can't "help it;" he strives to
temper it, but it is no go. A friend inquired of him, how much it cost
to color it out here; his reply was, "$2.50 a canteen."

The "rebs" played quite a trick upon the chaplain of the 24th
Illinois. After they received his papers, they refused to send any in
return. This would have been termed a nasty _Yankee trick_, had any of
our boys committed such a breach of faith with them. But such is
Southern _honor_.

REBEL WITTICISMS.

The following is copied from the Chattanooga _Rebel_:

If it is true that General Marmaduke hung the regiment of armed
negroes at Helena, he certainly made a center shot at old Abe's
emancipation-insurrection scheme; for he "knocked the _black_ out"
every time he hung a darkey.

We do not know for certain that the price of negroes is going up; but
there must have been a slight _advance_ upon a regiment of them at
Helena, the other day, if the wires were correct.

Grant's pe