r the wires that very evening, and
we even interrupt one with our sword bayonets. Then we hear the truth
about that Baltimore business. The Southern operators and clerks crow
over and denounce us. We feel gulpy about the throat, and those of us
who yet tremble at the thought of 'fratricide,' wish they were out of
this, until Smallweed effects a diversion by dexterously, though quite
accidentally, upsetting the longest-haired, loudest-mouthed operator
into the biggest and dirtiest spittoon. But worse than this is in store
for the unlucky sympathizers, for, after thinking sadly over his feat,
the same melancholy Smallweed suddenly asks them what tune the Southern
Confederacy will adopt as its national air. One incautious Georgian
suggests 'Dixie,' he reckons. ''Spittoon,' I should think,' says
Smallweed mournfully. For which he is pronounced by the same gentleman
from Georgia to be a divinely condemned fool. How hungry we grew, and
how pale and seedy, before the relief came at 8 A.M., with the great
news that the other detail had seized the Alexandria boat!

This is the age of seizures. We seize all the steamers. We seize the
railroad, A train comes in, and we seize the cars. Then there is a let
up: the Confederate lexicon still at work, flashing out the last feeble
jerks of its poison. We release the telegraph; we release the railway;
we release the steamers. One of the latter, the George Page, goes down
to Alexandria, straightway to become a _ram_, terrible to the
weak-minded, though harmless enough in reality. Then we seize them all
again, and, this time, with the railway--praised be Allah!--a train of
cars! Presently a detachment, envied by the disappointed, goes out from
our company on this train to reconnoitre. Communication with the great
North is cut off. Every stalk of corn in all Maryland rises up, in the
nightmare that seems to possess the capital, a man, nay, a 'Southron,'
terrible, invincible, Yankee-hating. Will relief never come? Where are
those seventy-five thousand? Where is the Seventh? Officers in mufti are
known to have been sent out to Annapolis and Baltimore with orders and
for news. Others arrive in Washington filled with strange and vague
tidings of impending disaster. But as yet these doves have no news save
of the deluge. Presently an early _reveille_ startles us from our beds
of soft plank, and, as we fall in sleepily, fagged and exhausted in mind
and body by this work, so new and so trying, we a