many men
has General Ambrose Everett Burnside got, anyhow?"--"Burnside's been to
dances before in Fredericksburg! Some of the houses are burning now that
he's danced in, and some of the women he has danced with are wandering
over the snow. I hope he'll like the reel presently."--"He's a good
fellow himself, though not much of a general! He can't help fighting
here if he's put here to fight."--"I know that. I was just stating
facts. Hear that music, music, music!"

Up from Deep Run, a little in the rear of the grey centre, rose a bold
hill. Here in the clinging mist waited Lee on Traveller, his staff
behind him, in front an ocean of vapour. Longstreet came from the left,
Stonewall Jackson from the right. Lee and his two lieutenants talked
together, three mounted figures looming large on the hilltop above Deep
Run. With suddenness the fog parted, was upgathered with swiftness by
the great golden sun.

That lifted curtain revealed a very great and martial picture,--War in a
moment of vastness and grandeur, epic, sublime. The town was afire;
smoke and flame went up to a sky not yet wholly azure, banded and barred
with clouds from behind which the light came in rays fierce and bright,
with an effect of threatening. There was a ruined house on a high hill.
It gave the appearance of a grating in the firmament, a small dungeon
grating. Beyond the burning town was the river, crossed now by six
pontoon bridges. On each there were troops; one of the long sun rays
caught the bayonets. From the river, to the north, rose the heights, and
they had an iron crown from which already came lightnings and thunders.
There were paths leading down to the river and these showed blue, moving
streams, bright points which were flags moving with them. That for the
far side of the Rappahannock, but on this side, over the plain that
stretched south and west of the smoke-wreathed town, there moved a blue
sea indeed. Eighty thousand men were on that plain. They moved here,
they moved there, into battle formation, and they moved to the crash of
music, to the horn and to the drum. The long rays that the sun was
sending made a dazzle of bayonet steel, thousands and thousands and
thousands of bayonets. The gleaming lines went here, went there,
crossed, recrossed, formed angles, made a vast and glittering net. Out
of it soared the flags, bright hovering birds, bright giant blossoms in
the air. Batteries moved across the plain. Officers, couriers, galloped