g, I am sorry to say, the prosaic name of Pumpkin
Vine Creek. I have my own reasons for suggesting that the name of that
water-course be altered to Sunday-School Run.

FOUR DAYS IN DIXIE

During a part of the month of October, 1864, the Federal and Confederate
armies of Sherman and Hood respectively, having performed a surprising and
resultless series of marches and countermarches since the fall of Atlanta,
confronted each other along the separating line of the Coosa River in the
vicinity of Gaylesville, Alabama. Here for several days they remained at
rest--at least most of the infantry and artillery did; what the cavalry
was doing nobody but itself ever knew or greatly cared. It was an
interregnum of expectancy between two regimes of activity.

I was on the staff of Colonel McConnell, who commanded an infantry brigade
in the absence of its regular commander. McConnell was a good man, but he
did not keep a very tight rein upon the half dozen restless and reckless
young fellows who (for his sins) constituted his "military family." In
most matters we followed the trend of our desires, which commonly ran in
the direction of adventure--it did not greatly matter what kind. In
pursuance of this policy of escapades, one bright Sunday morning
Lieutenant Cobb, an aide-de-camp, and I mounted and set out to "seek our
fortunes," as the story books have it. Striking into a road of which we
knew nothing except that it led toward the river, we followed it for a
mile or such a matter, when we found our advance interrupted by a
considerable creek, which we must ford or go back. We consulted a moment
and then rode at it as hard as we could, possibly in the belief that a
high momentum would act as it does in the instance of a skater passing
over thin ice. Cobb was fortunate enough to get across comparatively dry,
but his hapless companion was utterly submerged. The disaster was all the
greater from my having on a resplendent new uniform, of which I had been
pardonably vain. Ah, what a gorgeous new uniform it never was again!

A half-hour devoted to wringing my clothing and dry-charging my revolver,
and we were away. A brisk canter of a half-hour under the arches of the
trees brought us to the river, where it was our ill luck to find a boat
and three soldiers of our brigade. These men had been for several hours
concealed in the brush patiently watching the opposite bank in the amiable
hope of getting a shot at some unwary Confederate,