ssible, that I might communicate with scouts, contrabands, and
citizens. Many odd personages were revealed to me at the farm-houses on
the way, and I studied, with curious interest, the native Virginian
character. They appeared to be compounds of the cavalier and the boor.
There was no old gentleman who owned a thousand barren acres, spotted
with scrub timber; who lived in a weather-beaten barn, with a
multiplicity of porch and a quantity of chimney; whose means bore no
proportion to his pride, and neither to his indolence,--that did not
talk of his ancestry, proffer his hospitality, and defy me to an
argument. I was a civilian,--they had no hostility to me,--but the
blue-coats of the soldiers seared their eyeballs. In some cases their
daughters remained upon the property; but the sons and the negroes
always fled,--though in contrary directions. The old men used to peep
through the windows at the passing columns; and as their gates were
wrenched from the hinges, their rails used to pry wagons out of the mud,
their pump-handles shaken till the buckets splintered in the shaft, and
their barns invaded by greasy agrarians, they walked to and fro,
half-weakly, half-wrathfully, but with a pluck, fortitude, and devotion
that wrung my respect. Some aged negro women commonly remained, but
these were rather incumbrances than aids, and they used the family meal
to cook bread for the troops. An old, toothless, grinning African stood
at every lane and gate, selling buttermilk and corn-cakes. Poor mortal,
sinful old women! They had worked for nothing through their three-score
and ten, but avarice glared from their shrivelled pupils, and their last
but greatest delight lay in the coppers and the dimes. One would have
thought that they had outlived the greed of gold; but wages deferred
make the dying miserly.

The lords of the manors were troubled to know the number of our troops.
For several days the columns passed with their interminable teams,
batteries, and adjuncts, and the old gentlemen were loth to compute us
at less than several millions.

"Why, look yonder," said one, pointing to a brigade; "I declar' to
gracious, there ain't no less than ten thousand in _them_!"

"Tousands an' tousands!" said a wondering negro at his elbow. "I wonda
if dey'll take Richmond dis yer day?"

Many of them hung white flags at their gate-posts, implying neutrality;
but nobody displayed the Federal colors. If there were any covert
sympathizers wi