d
enjoyable, that afternoon, with the cloud-shadows playing over the yet
uncut wheat-fields, and the glints of sunlight falling on the roofs and
gables of cozy-looking farmsteads bordering the road on either hand or
peeping out from behind clumps of woods in the distance. The opened
back-curtains of the coach gave a delicious view, when they had
surmounted the height, of Utica lying on the slope below, stretching
downwards towards the Mohawk and the Canal, with its clustering domes
and spires and the melancholy Lunatic Asylum overlooking all from the
North-west. And a view not less pleasant opened before, of the long
stretch of valley lying in the distance, bounded on either side by a
continuous range of hills rising up with an almost even slope, crowned
with woods and diversified with the divisions of cultivated fields, and
here and there a glint of water, showing where the silver Sauquoit, most
laboriously taxed of all minor streams except those of the Naugatuck and
Housatonic Valleys, wound its busy way down to the Mohawk.

And when the eye tired of resting upon these, it could find variety in
studying the Welsh contour and primitive aspect of many of the Oneida
countrymen passing upon the road--the clumsy contrivances of a hundred
years ago, on which the gathered loads of hay were going homeward from
some of the out-lands--and the long, low wagons on which great pyramids
of boxes of cheese, the staple of the section, were being slowly dragged
towards Utica and a market.

But fair Oneida showed that war was in the land, removed though it might
be from the great centres of recruiting operations. Joe Harris had
noticed that a recruiting tent for McQuade's gallant Fourteenth stood
in the middle of Genesee Street, only a little way above the hotels,
with drums beating and flags and placards exhibited; and even in the
fields she saw traces of the effort to answer the President's last
demand for troops. Where on the visits of previous years she had seen
only men toiling in the sunshine, many women were laboring now, and the
change was significant. The homes of Oneida had already given of their
best and bravest to the cause of the nation, and still the Moloch of war
demanded more!--more, ever and continually more!

There was a reminder of the war, too, within the coach, and a reminder
of the mode in which the recruiting service was being conducted. On one
of the front seats sat a fine-looking young man, bright-eyed and
k