er heart, pity the
poor devils in the valley who are being rained on continually. Is it a
pleasant home? Has he wife and children in that mountain nest? Is he a
man of dogs and guns, who spends his years in the mountains and glens
hunting for bear and deer? May it not be the baronial castle of "old
Leather Breeches" himself?

Away off to the east a cloud, black and heavy, is resting on a peak of
the Cheat. Around it the mountain is glowing in the summer sun, and
appears soft and green. A gauze of shimmering blue mantles the crest,
darkens in the coves, and becomes quite black in the gorges. The rugged
rocks and scraggy trees, if there be any, are at this distance
invisible, and nothing is seen but what delights the eye and quickens
the imagination.

We see by the papers that Ohio is preparing to organize a grand Union
party, with a platform on which both Republicans and Democrats can
stand. I am glad of this. There should be but one party in the North,
and that party willing to make all sacrifices for the Union.

24. Last night a sentinel on one of the picket posts halted a stump and
demanded the countersign. No response being made, he fired. The entire
Fifteenth Indiana sprang to arms; the cannoniers gathered about their
guns, and a thousand eyes peered into the darkness to get a glimpse of
the approaching enemy. But the stump, evidently intimidated by the first
shot, did not advance, and so the Hoosiers returned again to their
couches, to dream, doubtless, of the subject of a song very common now
in camp, to wit:

"Old Governor Wise,
With his goggle eyes."

25. The Twenty-third Ohio, Colonel Scammon, will be here to-morrow.
Stanley Matthews is the lieutenant-colonel of this regiment, and my old
friend, Rutherford B. Hayes, the major. The latter is an accomplished
gentleman, graduate of Harvard Law School, and will, it is said, in all
probability, succeed Gurley in Congress. Matthews has a fine reputation
as a speaker and lawyer, and, I have been told, is the most promising
young man in Ohio. Scammon is a West Pointer.

26. Five companies of the Twenty-third Ohio and five companies of the
Ninth Ohio arrived to-day, and are encamped in a maple grove about a
mile below us. A detachment of cavalry came up also, and is quartered
near. Other regiments are coming. It is said the larger portion of the
troops in West Virginia are tending in this direction; but on what
particular point it is propose