mission, and in defiance of all the custom or
courtesy which inspires gentlemen of the press.

"_May_ _8th_, _1893_.
"EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT, THE CENTURY MAGAZINE,
"UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK.

"MY DEAR LELAND: How your letter carries me back! Do you know that
one night when I was trudging along in the dark over a road-bed where
had been scattered some loose stones to form a foundation, I heard you
and another comrade talking me over in the way to which you refer in
your letter? Well, it was either you or the other comrade who said
you had given me something to eat, and I know that I must have seemed
very fragile, and at times woe-begone. I was possibly the youngest in
the crowd. I was nineteen, and really enjoyed it immensely
notwithstanding.

"I remember you in those days as a splendid expressor of our miseries.
You had a magnificent vocabulary, wherewith you could eloquently and
precisely describe our general condition of starvation, mud,
ill-equippedness, and over-work. As I think of those days, I hear
reverberating over the mountain-roads the call, 'Cannoneers to the
wheels!' and in imagination I plunge knee-deep into the mire and grab
the spokes of the caisson. {266a}

"Do you remember the night we spent at the forge? I burnt my knees at
the fire out-doors, while in my ears was pouring a deluge from the
clouds. I finally gave it up, and spent the rest of the night
crouching upon the fire-bed of the forge itself, most uncomfortably.

"You will remember that we helped dig the trenches at the fort on the
southern side of the river from Harrisburg, {266b} and that one
section of the battery got into a fight near that fort; nor can you
have forgotten when Stuart Patterson's hand was shot off at Carlisle.
As he passed me, I heard him say, 'My God, I'm shot!' That night,
after we were told to retire out of range of the cannon, while we were
lying under tree near one of the guns, an officer called for
volunteers to take the piece out of range. I stood up with three
others, but seeing and hearing a shell approach, I cried out, 'Wait a
moment!'--which checked them. Just then the shell exploded within a
yard of the cannon. If we had not paused, some of us would surely
have been hit. We then rushed out, seized the cannon, and brought it
out of range.

"By the way, General William F. Smith (Baldy Smith) h