amned the six in mass. He would
have made a dutiful overseer. The soldiers had shown quite as little
consideration for the residences along the way. I came to one dwelling
where some pertinacious Vandal had even pried out the window-frames, and
imperilled his neck to tear out the roof-beams; a dead vulture was
pinned over the door by pieces of broken bayonets.

"Langley's,"--a few plank-houses, clustering around a tavern and a
church,--is one of those settlements whose sounding names beguile the
reader into an idea of their importance. A lonesome haunt in time of
peace, it had lately been the winter quarters of fifteen thousand
soldiers, and a multitude of log huts had grown up around it. I tied my
horse to the window-shutter of a dwelling, and picked my way over a
slimy sidewalk to the ricketty tavern-porch. Four or five privates lay
here fast asleep, and the bar-room was occupied by a bevy of young
officers, who were emptying the contents of sundry pocket-flasks. Behind
the bar sat a person with strongly-marked Hebrew features, and a
watchmaker was plying his avocation in a corner. Two great dogs crouched
under a bench, and some highly-colored portraits were nailed to the
wall. The floor was bare, and some clothing and miscellaneous articles
hung from beams in the ceiling.

"Is this your house?" I said to the Hebrew.

"I keepsh it now."

"By right or by conquest?"

"By ze right of conquest," he said, laughing; and at once proposed to
sell me a bootjack and an India-rubber overcoat. I compromised upon a
haversack, which he filled with sandwiches and sardines, and which I am
bound to say fell apart in the course of the afternoon. The watchmaker
was an enterprising young fellow, who had resigned his place in a large
Broadway establishment, to speculate in cheap jewelry and do itinerant
repairing. He says that he followed the "Army Paymasters, and sold
numbers of watches, at good premiums, when the troops had money."
Soldiers, he informed me, were reckless spendthrifts; and the prey of
sutlers and sharpers. When there was nothing at hand to purchase, they
gambled away their wages, and most of them left the service penniless
and in debt. He thought it perfectly legitimate to secure some silver
while "going," but complained that the value of his stock rendered him
liable to theft and murder. "There are men in every regiment," said he,
"who would blow out my brains in any lonely place to plunder me of these
watches."