years of age to meet in Broad
Street to-morrow, Sunday.

I learn, however, that there are some 25,000 or 30,000 of the enemy at
Yorktown; but if we can get together 12,000 fighting men, in the next
twenty-four hours, to man the fortifications, there will not be much use
for the militia and the clerks of the departments, more than as an
internal police force. But I am not quite sure we can get that number.

JUNE 28TH.--By order of Brig.-Gen. G. W. Custis Lee, the department
companies were paraded to-day, armed and equipped. These, with the
militia in the streets (armed by the government to-day), amounted to
several thousand efficient men for the batteries and for guard duty.
They are to rendezvous, with blankets, provisions, etc., upon the
sounding of the tocsin. I learn that 8000 men in the hospitals within
convenient reach of the city, including those in the city, can be
available for defense in an emergency. They cannot march, but they can
fight. These, with Hill's division, will make over 20,000 men; an ample
force to cope with the enemy on the Peninsula. It has been a cool,
cloudy day (we have had copious rains recently), else the civilians
could not have stood several hours exercise so well. A little practice
will habituate them by degrees to the harness of war. No one doubts that
they will fight, when the time for blows arrives. Gen. Jenkins has just
arrived, with his brigade, from the south side of the James River.

I was in the arsenal to-day, and found an almost unlimited amount of
arms.

We get not a word from Gen. Lee. This, I think, augurs well, for bad
news flies fast. No doubt we shall soon hear something from the Northern
papers. They are already beginning to magnify the ravages of our army on
_their_ soil: but our men are incapable of retaliating, to the full
extent, such atrocities as the following, on the Blackwater, near
Suffolk, which I find in the Petersburg _Express_:

"Mr. Smith resided about one mile from the town, a well-to-do farmer,
having around him an interesting family, the eldest one a gallant young
man in the 16th Virginia Regiment. When Gen. Longstreet invested Suffolk
a sharp artillery and infantry skirmish took place near Mr. Smith's
residence, and many balls passed through his house. The Yankees finally
advanced and fired the houses, forcing the family to leave. Mrs. Smith,
with her seven children, the youngest only ten months old, attempted to
escape to the woods and into the C