the Acheron of fable, and all these to be poor ghosts,
strangely clad in the mortal habiliments of woe, crowding the banks of
the fateful river, and waiting, sick with hope deferred, their turn to
cross; and your eyes wander curiously along the swollen, dashing stream
to catch sight of the unclean grizzly beard, Charon, the ferryman, and
his crazy skiff:--

"There stands
Charon, who rules the dreary coast--
A sordid god: down from his hoary chin
A length of beard descends, uncomb'd, unclean:

* * *

He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;
The freight of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears

* * *

An airy crowd came rushing where he stood,
Which filled the margin of the fateful flood--

* * *

Thick as the leaves in autumn strew the woods,
Or fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods,
And wing their hasty flight to happier lands--
Such and so thick the shiv'ring army stands,
And press for passage with extended hands.
Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:
The rest he drove to distance from the shore.

* * *

A hundred years they wander on the shore;
At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er."

Then you fancy them a collection of howling dervishes; or a
congregation of monks in Purgatory, the figures about the fires being
the working devils preparing to roast the poor monks for their
morning's course of expiatory torment.

While you are trying to drown your misery in this sort of musing the
fire is doing its work, and soon the pots boil, the fixens are tossed
in, and the coffee. Near by your own company fire--that is what most
interests you now--there is spread on the ground a rubber cloth, whose
irregular protuberant shape suggests agreeable things. The busy figure
at the fire approaches the mystery, raises the covering at one end and
draws forth bread, which he cuts in chunks, loaf after loaf; a crock of
apple butter--a Pennsylvanian Dutch dish somewhat analagous to the
apple sauce of the Yankees; and a can of brown sugar--a luxury which
only the prudent forethought of enterprising officers rendered
possible, intended doubtless for their own mess, but generously devoted
to the comfort of the company, now struggling under the terrible triple
load of fatigue, privation and