eturn to their farms and families. The mass of
these were rebuffed, as Pope had inaugurated his campaign with a show of
severity, even threatening to drive all the non-combatants out of his
lines, unless they took the Federal oath of allegiance. He gave me a
pass willingly, and chatted pleasantly for a time. In person he was
dark, martial, and handsome,--inclined to obesity, richly garbed in
civil cloth, and possessing a fiery black eye, with luxuriant beard and
hair. He smoked incessantly, and talked imprudently. Had he commenced
his career more modestly, his final discomfiture would not have been so
galling; but his vanity was apparent to the most shallow observer, and
although he was brave, clever, and educated, he inspired distrust by his
much promising and general love of gossip and story-telling. He had all
of Mr. Lincoln's garrulity (which I suspect to be the cause of their
affinity), and none of that good old man's unassuming common sense.

The next morning, at seven o'clock, I embarked for Alexandria, and
passed the better half of the forenoon in negotiating for a pony. At
eleven o'clock, I took my seat in a bare, filthy car, and was soon
whirled due southward, over the line of the Orange and Alexandria
railroad. The country between Alexandria and Warrenton Junction, or,
indeed, between Washington and Richmond, was not unlike those masterly
descriptions of Gibbon, detailing the regions overrun by Hyder Ali. The
towns stood like ruins in a vast desert, and one might write musing
epitaphs at every wind-beaten dwelling, whence the wretched denizens had
fled in cold and poverty to a doubtful hospitality in the far South.
Fences there were none, nor any living animals save the braying hybrids
which limped across the naked plains to eke out existence upon some
secluded patches of grass. These had been discharged from the army, and
they added rather than detracted from the lonesomeness of the wild.
Their great mournful eyes and shaggy heads glared from copses, and in
places where they had lain down beside the track to expire. If we
sometimes pity these dumb beasts as they drag loaded wains, or heavy
omnibuses, or sub-soil ploughs, we may also bestow a tender sentiment
upon the army mules. Flogged by teamsters, cursed by quartermasters,
ridiculed by roaring regiments of soldiers, strained and spavined by
fearful draughts, stalled in bogs and fainting upon hillsides,--their
bones will evidence the sites of armies, when t