nd after a brief delay I was
requested to sign a parole and duplicate, specifying my loyalty to the
Federal Government, and my promise to publish nothing detrimental to its
interests. I was then given a circular, which stated explicitly the kind
of news termed contraband, and also a printed pass, filled in with my
name, age, residence, and newspaper connection. The latter enjoined upon
all guards to pass me in and out of camps; and authorized persons in
Government employ to furnish me with information.

Our Washington Superintendent sent me a beast, and in compliment to what
the animal might have been, called the same a horse. I wish to protest,
in this record, against any such misnomer. The creature possessed no
single equine element. Experience has satisfied me that horses stand on
four legs; the horse in question stood upon three. Horses may either
pace, trot, run, rack, or gallop; but mine made all the five movements
at once. I think I may call his gait an eccentric stumble. That he had
endurance I admit; for he survived perpetual beating; and his beauty
might have been apparent to an anatomist, but would be scouted by the
world at large. I asked, ruefully, if I was expected to go into battle
so mounted; but was peremptorily forbidden, as a valuable property might
be endangered thereby. I was assigned to the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps
in the anticipated advance, and my friend, the _attache_, accompanied me
to its rendezvous at Hunter's Mills. We started at two o'clock, and
occupied an hour in passing the city limits. I calculated that,
advancing at the same ratio, we should arrive in camp at noon next day.
We presented ludicrous figures to the grim sabremen that sat erect at
street corners, and ladies at the windows of the dwellings smothered
with suppressed laughter as we floundered along. My friend had the
better horse; but I was the better rider; and if at any time I grew
wrathful at my sorry plight, I had but to look at his and be happy
again. He appeared to be riding on the neck of his beast, and when he
attempted to deceive me with a smile, his face became horribly
contorted. Directly his breeches worked above his boots, and his bare
calves were objects of hopeless solicitude. Caricatures, rather than
men, we toiled bruisedly through Georgetown, and falling in the wake of
supply teams on the Leesburg turnpike, rode between the Potomac on one
side and the dry bed of the canal on the other, till we came at last t