f the latter (only one,
also) had set ours afire, when the men were ordered to take their side
arms. They thought it was to board the Essex, assembled together, when
the order was given to fire the Arkansas and go ashore, which was done
in a few minutes. Several of the crew were around us then, and up and
down the road they were scattered still in crowds.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PAGE FROM THE DIARY]

Miriam must have asked the name of some of the officers; for just then
she called to me, "He says that is Mr. Read!" I looked at the foot of
the levee, and saw two walking together. I hardly recognized the
gentleman I was introduced to on the McRae in the one that now stood
below me in rough sailor pants, a pair of boots, and a very thin and
slazy lisle undershirt. That is all he had on, except an old straw hat,
and--yes! he held a primer! I did not think it would be embarrassing to
him to meet me under such circumstances; I only thought of Jimmy's
friend as escaping from a sad fate; so I rushed down a levee twenty
feet high, saying, "O Mr. Read! You won't recognize me, but I am
Jimmy's sister!" He blushed modestly, shook my hand as though we were
old friends, and assured me he remembered me, was glad to meet me, etc.
Then Miriam came down and talked to him, and then we went to the top of
the levee where the rest were, and watched the poor Arkansas burn.

By that time the crowd that had gone up the road came back, and we
found ourselves in the centre of two hundred men, just we five girls,
talking with the officers around us as though they were old friends.
You could only _guess_ they were officers, for a dirtier, more forlorn
set I never saw. Not _dirty_ either; they looked clean, considering the
work they had been doing. Nobody introduced anybody else; we all felt
like brothers and sisters in our common calamity. There was one
handsome Kentuckian, whose name I soon found to be Talbot, who looked
charmingly picturesque in his coarse cottonade pants, white shirt,
straw hat, black hair, beard, and eyes, with rosy cheeks. He was a
graduate of the Naval Academy some years ago. Then another jolly-faced
young man from the same Academy, pleased me, too. He, the doctor, and
the Captain, were the only ones who possessed a coat in the whole
crowd, the few who saved theirs carrying them over their arms. Mr. Read
more than once blushingly remarked that they were prepared to fight,
and hardly expected to meet us; but we preten