ral Garfield is now chief of staff. It is the first instance in the
West of an officer of his rank being assigned to that position. It is an
important place, however, and one too often held not merely by officers
of inferior rank, but of decidedly inferior ability. General Buell had a
colonel as chief of staff, and, until the appointment of Garfield,
General Rosecrans had a lieutenant-colonel or major.

To-night an ugly and most singular specimen of the negro called to
obtain employment. He was not over three feet and a half high,
hump-backed, crooked-legged, and quite forty years old. Poking his head
into my tent, and, taking off his hat, he said: "Is de Co'nel in?"
"Yes." "Hurd you wants a boy, sah. Man tole me Co'nel Eighty-eighth
Olehio wants a boy, sah." "What can you do? Can you cook?" "Yas, sah."
"Where did you learn to cook?" "On de plantation, sah." "What is your
master's name?" "Rucker, sah." "Is he a loyal man?" "No, sah, he not a
lawyer; his brudder, de cussen one, is de lawyer." "Is he secesh?" "O,
yas, sah; yas, he sesesh." "It is the Colonel of the Eighty-eighth
Indiana you should see;" and I directed him to the Colonel's tent. As he
turned to leave, he muttered, "Man tole me Eighty-eighth Olehio;" but he
went hobbling over to the Eighty-eighth, with fear, anxiety, and hope
struggling in his old face.

4. Major Kalfus, Fifteenth Kentucky, arrested on Sunday, and since held
in close confinement, was dishonorably dismissed from the service to-day
for using treasonable language in tendering his resignation. He was
escorted outside the lines and turned loose. The Major is a cross-roads
politician, and will, I doubt not, be a lion among his half-loyal
neighbors when he returns home.

5. Our picket on the Manchester pike was driven in to-day. The cavalry,
under General Stanley, went to the rescue, when a fight occurred. No
particulars.

9. T. Buchanan Reid, the poet, entertained us at the court-house this
evening. The room had been trimmed up by the rebels for a ball. The
words, "Shiloh," "Fort Donelson," "Hartsville," "Santa Rosa,"
"Pensacola," were surrounded with evergreens. The letter "B," painted on
the walls in a dozen places, was encompassed by wreaths of flowers, now
faded and yellow. My native modesty led me to conclude that the letter
so highly honored stood for Bragg, and not for the commander of the
Seventeenth Brigade, U. S. A.

General Garfield introduced Mr. Reid by a short speech, not deliv