and spoken of by every European officer who has seen their
action in battle, as the equals of any body of regulars of any service
in the world. The claims of business alone had prevented his being in
the ranks of that regiment, if in no higher position, when they marched
down Broadway on their departure in the summer of 1861, receiving the
merited compliment of being the finest-looking body of men, as to
physique and probable endurance, that had ever passed over that
procession-trodden pavement, and headed by a gallant officer (Colonel,
now General, Abram Duryea) who had been so largely instrumental in
making the Seventh Regiment famous for drill, discipline and readiness
for any service.

John Crawford, a younger brother of Richard (his _only_ brother, in
fact--the whole living family being comprised in Richard, Isabella and
John) had left his lucrative employment as a confidential dry-goods
clerk, in one of the largest down-town establishments, and joined the
Advance Guard. He had participated in nearly or quite all the battles
shared in by that lucky corps, from Big Bethel, where they performed the
wonderful feat of re-forming under fire in the space of four minutes,
after having been thrown into complete disorder by the discharge from an
ambuscade of artillery,--to the severe conflicts of the Peninsula, in
McClellan's advance upon Richmond; and only once had he been wounded,
even slightly. He seemed to bear a charmed life; and there was
something in the rollick and dash of his letters home, always full
charged with the very sense of bravery and physical enjoyment, well
calculated to arouse the feeling, if not the envy, of a brother quite as
patriotic and probably quite as brave as himself, but kept back by
circumstances and afterwards by ill-health from participating in the
same glorious conflicts. No matter whether he described the carnage of
the turning point in a day of battle; an hour beside a wounded soldier
in the hospital, talking of home and friends; or one of the
chicken-and-pig-foraging expeditions for which the Zouaves have been
almost as famous as for their fighting,--through all these shone the
spirit of the gay, rattling, contented soldier, who might have sat for a
portrait, any day, of Paddy Murphy, in the "Happy Man," making his
baggage-wagon, commissariat and camp-chest of a one-headed drum, ready
to fall in love with the first neat pair of ankles that peeped from
beneath a well-kept petticoat, a li