ill remain of uneasy morning slumber, in which red women, flying
carriage-lamps and respectable young men skulking in doorways and areas,
were very likely to be prominent.

CHAPTER VI.

COLONEL EGBERT CRAWFORD AND BELL CRAWFORD--SOME SPECULATIONS ON THE SPY
SYSTEM--JOSEPHINE HARRIS ON A RECONNOISSANCE, AND WHAT SHE SAW AND
HEARD.

At any other time than the present, before proceeding with the relation
of the events that transpired in the house on West 3-- Street after the
arrival of Colonel Egbert Crawford and Miss Bell Crawford,--it might be
both proper and politic to indulge in a disquisition on the meanness of
peeping and the general iniquity of the spy system. At any other
time--not now, when the country is deep in the horrors of a war that
principally seems to have been a failure on our side because we have not
"peeped" and "spied" enough.[2] The rebels have had the advantage of us
from the beginning,--not only because they were fighting comparatively
on their own ground and among a friendly population, but because they at
once applied the spy system when they began, and nosed out all our
secrets of army and cabinet, while we have neglected spying and
scouting, and made every important military movement a plunge in the
dark.

[Footnote 2: December 15th, 1862.]

Every military commander has blamed every other military commander for
inefficiency in this respect, and when brought to the test he has showed
that he himself had a _terra incognita_ to go over in making his first
advance. Quite a number of well-known people who were present may
remember a few words of conversation which took place on the Union
Course at one of the contests there between Princess and Flora Temple
(was it not?) in June, 1861. Schenck had just plunged a few regiments,
huddled up in railroad cars, into the mouths of the rebel batteries at
Vienna, as if he had been taking a contract to feed some great military
monster with victims as quickly and in as compact a form as possible.
The country was horrified over the slaughter, Ball's Bluff and
Fredericksburgh not having yet offered up their holocausts to dwarf it
by comparison. An officer of prominence under McDowell, then in command
of the Potomac Army under Scott, had come home on a furlough and was
present. Many inquiries were made of him by acquaintances, as to the
progress and prospects of the war. Among other things, the Vienna
blunder was called to his attention.

"Oh," said