re was any promise of war, and who turned out, pluckily, when
the strife began. Perhaps public sentiment or pride of organization
influenced them. They were all good-looking and tidy, and their
dress-parades, held in the main street, were handsome affairs. I have
never seen better disciplined columns, and the youthful faces of the
soldiers, with the staid locality of the exhibition,--young women,
negroes, dogs and babies, and old men looking on,--seemed to contradict
the bloody mission of the troops. The old men, referred to, were
villagers of such long standing that had the Court of Saint James, or
the Vatican, or the battle of Waterloo been moved into their country,
they would have still been villagers to the last. They met beside the
Warrenton Inn, under the shade of the trees, at eleven o'clock every
morning, and borrowed the New York papers of the latest date. One
individual, slightly bald, would read aloud, and the rest crouched or
stood about him, making grunts and remarks at intervals. They did not
wish to believe the Federal reports, but they must needs read, and as
most of them had sons in the other army, their pulses were constantly
tremulous with anxiety. I think that Pope's resolve to transport these
harmless old people beyond his lines was very barbarous, and the
soldiers denounced it in similar terms. They spoke of Pope, as of some
terrible despot, and wished to know when he was coming to town, as they
had appointed a committee, and drafted a petition, asking his
forbearance and charity. When these villagers found me out to be a
Newspaper Correspondent, they regarded me with amusing interest, and
marvelled what I would say of their town. A villager is very sensitive
as to his place of residence, and these good people read the----daily,
confounding me with all the paper,--editorial, correspondence, and, I
verily believe, advertisements. One of them wished me to board at his
residence, and I was, after a time, invited out to dinner and tea
frequently.

The negroes remained in Warrenton, in great numbers, and held carnival
of evenings when the bands played. "Contrabands" were coming daily into
town, and idleness and vice soon characterized the mass of them. They
were ignorant, degraded, animal beings, and many of them loved rum; it
was the last link that bound them to human kind. Servants could be hired
for four dollars a month and "keep;" but they were "shiftless" and
unprofitable. The Provost-Marshal of th