e daring gamester, who
has played his soul and is waiting for the decision of the cards. I felt
all his suspense, _more_ than his hope; and withal, there was excitement
in the play. Now a whistling ball seemed to pass just under my ear, and
before I commenced to congratulate myself upon the escape, a shell, with
a showery and revolving fuse, appeared to take the top off my head. Then
my heart expanded and contracted, and somehow I found myself conning
rhymes. At each clipping ball,--for I could hear them coming,--a sort of
coldness and paleness rose to the very roots of my hair, and was then
replaced by a hot flush. I caught myself laughing, syllabically, and
shrugging my shoulders, fitfully. Once, the rhyme that came to my
lips--for I am sure there was no mind in the iteration--was the simple
nursery prayer--

"Now I lay me down to sleep,"

I continued to say "down to sleep," "down to sleep," "down to sleep,"
till I discovered myself, when I ceased. Then a shell, apparently just
in range, dashed toward me, and the words spasmodically leaped up:
"Now's your time. This is your billet." With the same insane pertinacity
I continued to repeat "Now's your time, now's your time," and "billet,
billet, billet," till at last I came up to the nearest battery, where I
could look over the crest of the hill; and as if I had looked into the
crater of a volcano, or down the fabled abyss into hell, the whole grand
horror of a battle burst upon my sight. For a moment I could neither
feel nor think. I scarcely beheld, or beholding did not understand or
perceive. Only the roar of guns, the blaze that flashed along a zigzag
line and was straightway smothered in smoke, the creek lying glassily
beneath me, the gathering twilight, and the brownish blue of woods! I
only knew that some thousands of fiends, were playing with fire and
tossing brands at heaven,--that some pleasant slopes, dells, and
highlands were lit as if the conflagration of universes had commenced.
There is a passage of Holy Writ that comes to my mind as I write, which
explains the sensation of the time better than I can do:--

"_He opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit,
as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened
by reason of the smoke of the pit._

"_And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth._"--Revelation,
ix. 2, 3.

In a few moments, when I was able to compose myself, the veil of cloud
blew away