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4 $5E i s * r *T* **%V$*$p*<i » •1111P§I1 Hill FOURTH OF JULY/63 As It Dawned for a Soldier at Gettysburg. HOLDING LITTLE ROUND TOP • each time we trudged away we faoeoT our friends across the river; they laid us out like brave fellows as they wore. When we found there was no use, we drifted back, without much ceremony or order, to the old camp anil went :o pegging away at our regular professional work as architects. Every time we had left some of the b.'st of the boys behind and the line grew shorter in front of the first sergeant at roll call. or jacket, bine would d Military Life as Seen from the Ranks of the Army. j In Camp and On a Maroh— Getting: Oat | of th« \Vll<lerne»«—How a Soldier Feels j On the Edge of a Fight—The Stage i Fright of a Battle—Green Soldiers and : Seasoned Ones—Forming for the Fight. ! [Most battle sketches are written from the standpoint of a commanding general or a war correspondent who saw and knew, or la supposed t o have seen and known, the whole field of nation. These sketches are more or lets valuable contributions t<> history, but they do not give the civic reader a very clear idea of what war really is. The fol- lowing intensely interesting sketch, written for us by Col. Charles E. Sprague, now secretary of the Union Dime Swings Insti- tution, of Now Y irk, who served at Gettys- burg in the ranks U the Forty-fourth New York regiment, tells what one soldier saw and experienced in a great battle. There is no description of grand operations in it, but as a picture of real experience in camp, on the march and on the field of battle, it is a most valuable contribution to the litera- ture of the war.—Editor.] Of all the homes that I have ever loved and left, the one that has made < he deepest impress on my mind is a little hut of one [ room, about 6x6x6, built of pine logs, sticks, j sod, mu 1 and canvas. It was built u by dajs' works\—a gooi many days—and the architects, builders, masons, carpenters, j> umbers and sanitary engineers were two young, fellows (Eugene and I|, both rather of the student cl iss than of any mechanical bent Tun residence of ours was situated in the state of Virginia, county of Stafford. Nrthln ' in that region is described by any closer geographical limit than the county. This part of \BiahCd' county held more population to the rquare mile at the time our mansion was standing than ever before or probably ever again, since the Yankee army, as our Virginia neighbors cahed us, had dropped down there to stay over night, and had lived there a good many months, \off and on,\ '•Mr-' THE HOUSE. It was a rule we soldiers learned to recog- nise, tbat if you, camped down at night with strict injunctions (jo be ready to march on at daybreak, with advice from your officers that you'd bet'er not waste any time in get- ting up comfortable shelter because this was the most temporary'kind of a halt, then for a oerta'nty, if you followed this advice, you were going to be kept 'right i i that bivouac long enough t o repent not going to work at getting comfortably housed. So after some exper encos we never • took any stock In as- surances of brief stay; we went right to work a ^ bout* building on th* as umption that we should stay a month; if \\ e marched next day no great harm was done but if we stayed a w. ek we were well paid for our trouble. This was our state of mind when we halted back of Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg, at a point on the railroad which thencefor- ward, possibly t o this day, b cams known as \Stoneman's Switch.\ We halted at night, and bivouacked in thick pine woodB, which extended for miles around. Before we left that spot for the last time that forest bad disappeared; every tree had been cut, first wastefully, at shoulder height from the ground, then down to a decent stump, and then this stump was cut to tho very quick. Finally we had no wood a t alL Being, a s I said, aware of the. long dura* tion of supposed temporary stays in military life, this house of ours (\shanty\ was the oorreot name in camp language) was promptly be;un. In our regiirent they were not so strenuous for uniformity of architecture as in some commands, and allowed scope for individuality; a • long as the line of front doors was pretty straight down the company streets, we could build our shanties of size and style to suit our tastes. Certainly, Eugene and I had about the worst looking one of the settlement It was, first, a cellar dug the full size of the ground plan, about two feet deep. Next came a wall of split pine logs, resting on the ground and held up by stakes, carrying up the cell'ur wall t o a height of five feet in all. Now, the roof was of canvas, made of severa of the little shelter tents, fastened together and stretched over a ridge pole, which Was supported by two stout uprights in front and rear. The front, or door, was also of. canvas until we got ^ur chimney built, later on. Our next step was to caulk our wall with mud. Glorious Virginia mud I The one product of which there was always j enough. Piostio as butter, but tough as spruce gum when dried; for architectural purposes, admirable; for fc pedestrian uses, vile. We plastered our wall pretty tightly with this natural stucco, and banked up the lower edge. We ditched around our house, 1 and conducted the waters into the com- pany gutter. Our bed, which com- prised all our furniture, being also obair, sofa and table, was our next care. It was a spring bed. We split long, straight pine saplings and I laid them crosswise of the shanty on sup- I ports which held them about level with the surface of the ground. The bed was about three feet wide. Eugene and 1 were both slender. When sitting on the e.iga of the bed our feet rested against the front wall of our mansion. Here we talked; here we smoked; here we read; in pleasant weather, with our front canvas fastened back, we conversed with our neighbors, discussing every subjeot under heaven, and here we sat, Eugene and I, by our own fireside after the chimney was built Our chimney was a picturesque structure of sods. The mortar which held together these substitutes for brick was the aforesaid I mud. An open fireplace faced the right j hand man of the two inmates who sat on the bed, and that man did the cooking from j that position, Our chimney was a large j one, covering more than half the front of J the house and forming our front wall, vice j canvas removed. A wooden mant.d ... fl ed ; the top of tho fireplace. Above this the | chimney tapered somewhat and end<» i in a I barrel. Some of our comrades had double- j barreled chimneys, but we found it hard j enough to steal one barrel at a time to sup- ply those which caught Are; total loss; no j Insurance \ This is the biggest house which I have ! helped to build with my own hands, nnd as , I get to dreaming through my past life I always work back to it; just lik\ the house that Jfick built—I guess Jack was a soldier— ' and what made us more attache I to our - shanty was that we so many times bade it , good-by during the month we owned it; j DRIFTING BACK TO CAMP. Fir.-.t, wo wont on an excursion to Freder- icksburg; things were handled badly and back we en me to the old camp; Eugene and I bailed out the cellar, put up the roof and resumed housekeeping in our old dwell- ing. Theu our corps went on a Christmas trip up the river—a failure unrecorded in history—gave it up and came back \home.\ Then Burnside tried it again, and this time our old inend, Virginia mud, was against us and there was an effectual \tie up\ (as we now sny) of pack mules, cannon and wagons. Once more the old no'me welcomed ui and again we commenced improvements on our real estate in the very same spot.. We now looked upon ourselves as quar- tered there for the rest of the war. The housebuilding activity of the regiment was too great to be satisfied with- the private residences in the company streets and spent itseif upon a regimental church, really quite an imposing structure of logs, with seats and pulpit all complete, and well utilized, not only on Sundays, but on week day even- ings with debating pocieties, lectures and classes. So we lived ti l Joo Hooker issued invitations for another picnic, an eight day one, since known as Chanceliorsville. This time, we thought, siv ely wa* the last But now we came back once more, inside of the eight days, and worse us«d up than ever. All organization was pretty well suspended by unauimous consent and was s mply \go- as-you-please,\ but get to the old camp. That was a manoeuvre we had pretty we 1 earned, nnd thougii, like such movements ns \on the right, into line,\ it looked disor- derly, yet it got there. So iu thinking over our next trip, which fetched us up at Gettysburg, no wonder I had to drift back to (hat old Khauty in Staf- ford county,. It occurs to me that the little details of our camp life are lading away, and that they are well worth sketching for the present generation, which knows not war; for this year's voter was born after the war was over. Once more the old shanty was dismantled to the music of that lonj and solemn call which ev>ry soldier knew as \S rike Tents.\ First the brigade bugler had given it to us, i after twice repeating a preface, or heading, i as it were, to his proclamation, which, to J every Third brigade man seemed to chant the j name of our old commander, thus: | [The picture above rflpru««nts the flag of the Third brtpttdc, First division, Fifth army corps, Dan ButterneM's old brigade, which held the Little Round Top.] The Angel Gabriel iu his musical capacity is always associated with Gen. Butterfleld in the mind of any soldi r of our brigade If the bugler was not at hand, \Dan\ could even sound the call himself; in fact, there were few things which a oilie r of any grade ought to do, but that ho could and dared. But, though his trumpeted name rallied us on many a field, he was in a higher position at this time. Mike, the regimental bugier, next lifts his old battered copper horn to his good natured mouth, and easy as a b rd out floats his lit- tle son.;. His ov rture is a differ.'nt one; his musical me-sage is addressed thus : •. forty-four. And forty, Fort v. forty- 1 told you Btrlke-youi And good-by lo the old shanty. act come! strlk<>-vi>ur-tents, Strike-your-tenta.\ GEN. DAN BUTTKBFZBU). The last buzle note had ceased, and our regiment s.ood in line iu inarching order. This proc clure was an unusual one when on the march, for military ceremonies on actual campaign were dispensed with as far as possible. There is a degree of elasticity about military formalities. If this had been a review we should first have had the companies formed and taken charge of by the cjiptnins, then the companies would have marched out into line, and the regiment when complete would have been handed over by the adjutant to the colonel, who woui-1 have then marched to the place designated by the brigade commander and reported to him; and thus, in orderly, dig- nified, though prompt succession, we might. have be™ built up into diviions and corps But while we were actually on the march, this was all cut very short, and when the companies were once in ranks no mora time was wasted. The leadiug comp ny was marche 1 by its captain straight to the road we were to follow, in fours (or, as we then called it, \by the flank\) and the ojiher com- panies struck into i's wake, in order, by the shortest line and without wasting a yard of travel. The regiments swung into coiumn in the same easy and informal way, the lead- ing regiment picking up the others without a hitch and with no fuss. But to-day we had not quite dropped our camp manners, and as we stood there in line were a fair specimen of an American regiment. Wo stool about 800, rank and file. Few regiments had anything like the nominal strength which a regiment should have. We were a very sun burned, hearty- looking set of fellows; we looked as if we could eat a square meal whenever we got one. In fact, we wore a set of hoys. Th.- ages of our company averaged 24, and probably there were more men about 29 than of any other age. We were cot punc- tilious about the regulations as to dross. Our regimental uniforms ot semi-zouave pattern had been turned in before Chan- oellorsville, and we had frock coats, blouses lust as it happened; anything ne would do. In h:its and caps thoro wai al^o much variety—the hideous roiular army cloth cap, with .slanting peak, which some turned un and some turned down— each wav it looked wo'r.<e; or the more nobbv French sha'ie. with s rakrh' visor, or the McClellan cap with top f,i ling for- ward; those had been so:it on from home or purchased when on furlough; or (ho army black felt, which was gonornlly worn with the crown depressed in the center; or othor varieties of black poft. hits, which were worn in spite of regulations. But overyonc had on his cip or hat a red Maltose cross, the badgo of our division. Some had leggings, some had not; some old hands were in favor of stuffing the trousers into the stockfnrs and tying them there with strings The broad siio\s give out by the government and usually stvlod \gunboats\ wore the most fadiinnnb'e f< o wear; this was the only part of th i imifonr which private enterprise did not much im prove upon. O dy one thin? about oir get-up would have pleased a military crit c: our guns were clean and bright. The lo 1 1 carried on our shoulders also varied, n'l'i suited each man's idea of comfort, at th expense of exertion. Some cling to theii knapsacks—I Ihink only ono of th ^ • go' << Gettysburg in our company; some kept their overcoats, but thosi wero soon adorn n x tl>< roadsides during that hot summer, and t!,> darkies have been wearing them ever since The canteen, haversack and tin cun, it wa difficult to dispense with; then there was e difficulty in knowing which I o throw away. the rubber blanket, the woolen blanket or the pieo of shelter tent. These last, iiroueh Bome accidental confusion, we called \pon- chos;\ most of us kept as many as two out of the last group of articles, and 1 rather think the rubber was the mos: popular. The Confederates greatly etivied the '• Yankee gum blankets,\ and the r officers could always get them to charge very will- ingly if there were any likely to bo had. Some few frying pans were retained, not a handy thing to carry, but a mighty handy implement to have at night. I know one man who stuck to his pan, but never had the trouble' to carry it himself. Tom would carry it till noon every day for the privilege of fiying next after the owner a t night; Dick and Harry would take the burden the rest of the day for a similar concession. So the owner of the frying pan reveled in its enjoy- meut in the Bweat of other fellows' brows A perfect capitalist, but he had had the nerve t o go in on the ground floor and de- velop the enterprise. In our own little partnership Eugene car- ried the most of the grub and I most of the Bhelter, and we seldom separated. O her syndicates were formed of three, four or five m;n on similar terms. We had forty rounds of cartridges be- sides, an l these we never used to throw away. A man always kept his cartridges, somehow. They were of piper, and though he tactics told us to bite them, we always broke them with our lingers a t the muzzle and poured in the powder. The days of i ireeeh loaders had not yet fully come, and ve mod the clumsy ramrod. But if we felt ;,he ball slide down easily, we knew that a smart bang of the butt on the ground would lo the ramming just as well. When cur colonel bad called us to atten- tion, he sat on his horse a moment perfectly still, but with his eyes gravely scrutiuizing ur ranks from right to left; then, quickly tracing himself, rang out in his clear tenor /oice the few commands which put us in motion on a journey of which no one knew he end. And now we swing along the rough Vir- ginia roads in route step. There is very little nonsense, talk or skylarking. We iave loug since go ^ bey on 1 that stage of our ducation and don't waste any strength in hose ways. We keep approximately in our fours, bub very loo ely. Our \guns\ slant >ver our right or left shoulder. We might 'sling 1 them by the leather strap, but 1 have seldom seen that done. Apparently the weight is easiest carried on the shoulder, where a slight shifting eas.s the muscles. The officers interfere very little with us and command as little as possible. They want their breath, too, for other purposes and un- derstand that too much fussy meddling won't go down with us. Not that we should openly \kick but the officer would find that he was thus losing his hold on the j men. j To-day our regimeutleads.the brigade and our brigade leads the division. To-morrow we drop back to the rear, and then grad- ually work up to the head again. Tuis alter- nation equalizes the difficulties of marching. The head of the column has the easiest time of i t When the roads ara bad the column | gets \strung out.\ The bend of the column is halted and enjoys a square rest of fifteen minutes, while the rest are getting closed up, and ti e last regiment just gets tto its proper d stance in time to start again. One of the lessons of the march is t o lie down at every chance. The green soldier will stand in his tracks because he thinks the stoppage is merely a \jam\ and that it won't be worth while to get down and gat right up again But the seasoned marcher v\ ill go for the roadside like a shot, and drop; and if it gives him thirty seconds' horizontal rest he gets u p lighter and f res.her. About eight hours a day was enough of this kind of thing and that was usually di- vided into equal stretches morning and even- ing. There was a good deal of straggling, and not much notice taken of it. It was oi two kinds—the weary'or lazy, who could not or would not keep up, and gradually drop- ped back, and the independent spirits who occasionally preferred the freedom of the woods and the side roads to the monotony of the column. \Coffee boiling'' or \coffee cooling\ was our name for these erratic ex- cursions. The coffee coolers usually turned up a t night, because it was not very safe to get too far from the troops. Coffee was a great sustainer—the prime necessity at every halt. The most approved way of boiling waB by suspending the cup by its bail at the end of a stick, and thus, as it were, fishing for coffee. This was found a great improvement over balancing your cup on an unsteady atio: of wood, which was likely to give way just at the critical moment of the boil, and demonstrate that hot coffee will put out a fire just as soon as cold water. 4. CHASING A FBNOB. Luckily we did not have much rain as we trudged northward. It is a very close thing between Virginia mud and Virginia dust, but I think I prefer th*\ latter. So we pushed along piettv steadily, though Lee, away off at tb^ left, certainly got ahead of us, which was a goorl thngin the end. One day was like another, except such little diversity aw resulted from a fight at Aldie, where we took a hand with the cavalry. A» we began to make fou\ or five crossings of Goose run every day, we knew we were ap- proaching the Potomac. We crossed at Edwards'Ferry, where the water was as clear as Lake George. We halted and rested a few days at Frederick on a beautiful farm, where the mil* house was built over the most wo:iderful spring I had ever seen, which bubbled out in a stream as large as a barrel. Here we heard that Hooker's place had been given to our own Meade, whom we knew as a resolute, though not a kindly, man; not a man like \C.iarley Grifflu,\ whom we co;dd like, though equally reso- lute, because he really liked us. Again we heard the old familiar sound of '•Dan—Dan—Dan—Hutterfte id—Butterfleld\ with his call for us to. break up our camp on the noble Maryland fnrm and once more march—northward still. Cherries were now ripe and we ate all we could hold. I have no doubt the acid fruit did us p;ood on the whole, though some of us got badly doubled u p We felt in good spirits too; we knew that we were going to fight, but somehow we felt that i t was going to be a different affair from the bucking against their forti- fications which we had tried so many times. We talked it over and concluded the fight was going to be something like Antietam. The very atmosphere, the looks of the people and the beautiful country aB we went through Maryland reminded us of our homes in the north, and as we drew near the border, we had wonderful fancies of the country north of Mason and Dixon's line, where most of us had not been for two years. We pictured it as an earthly paradise. THE COLONEL BEFORE HIS LAST FIGHT. When w.* reache I th« line, something unusual occurred We were brought to attention; the colors, which always were covered with case-*, were taken out, tlv j drummer* and fifers plaved, \Ain t You Glad to G fc^Out o' the Wildernes 1 n while we marched steadily in the \cadencad step\ across the border into a free state. This made a good deal of impression on us, some- what weakened afterward by finding that, as to wood and water, we were not so free as before, We wero now in the last days of June. On the firs day of July we made our biggest march—thirty odd miles iiom sun to bun. That day we found that there were twe kinds of people in Pennsylvania, and that only one kin 1 were \like our own folks.\ as we said. In the afternoon we heard firing away rfl? ahead, and rumors reached us of fighting in iront By this time there was a settled conviction in the ranks that there would be a big fight near Gettysburg. That night we halted at midnight. The ooioiel commandin ; the brigade (it was the last fight for him) sat on his horse close to a tree, at whose foot Eugene and I had rolled ourselves up, utterly exhausted, .\dike the bugler, tvas finishing his go-to-bed call of tattoo; and that > olonel calmly said: \Re- veille a t SC I think this was the most in- tensely disagreeable remark I ever heard. I resolve I to defy discipline and sleep as long as I liked, but whei morning came I got up with the rest. The most of that day we were just on the j edge of a fta;ht, and that is the time you feel most uncomfortable. If a man ever tells you he felt jolly in such circumstances, you had better change the su 'ject, as you are not getting reliable information. To hear\ j a Jot of firing a little way off, and -a ' lot of nasty, buzzing, squealing, whin- ing noises let loose uncomfortably near you, and then to have to keep still and think of everything you don't want to think about, with no chance to blaze away in return, is not so much maddening as sickening. I know Ldidn't like it a bltVS^d would have been glad to be excuse 1. Any man, if he once gets where the, shooting\sn't all one- j sided, can stay;._Jie is generallyHoo much in- terested to think\abou'; going. This day at Gat/ysburg, i did not feel the sta^efrirht as usual, because 1 was too sleepy, Every little while, as we lay down in various places, I took a snooze. Perhaps I was saved a good deal of anguish this way, and perhaps Co). Vincent did us a good turn in ordering that very early reveilK Certainly I would rather feel sleepy than scared. in the most reckless manner 1 ever saw, at least one wheel in the air all the while, while we double-quicked up at our beat speed. It is queer how in .^u^h a moment of ex- citement your mind is busy with, some ab- surdly trifling thought, and how plainly you remember this afterward. At Freder- icksburg we were under a very warm en- filading fire, and the captain of Company B reported the fact to the major. My thoughts ran like this: \Enfilading 1 Never heard that word pronounce!, though I have read it all my life. Now, first time I hear it, I am enfiladed. Practical example, like Bqueers' teaching at Dotheboys Hall.\ An- other time, at Chanceliorsville, I was listen- ing, during that heavy artillery fire, to some little birds, whose high treble notes did not seem t o be in the least interfered with by the deeper tones. I noticed several things, as we ran along. One was « cannon ball which looked as if it was passing jusi in front of our alert little major's face—just above his horse's ears it seemed—-probably it was further off. \He must have diSffifounted soon, for I did not see any horses after that. Another thing I noticed was a fox—the onlv wild one I ever •aw at large; the little fellow must have been so frightened by an exploding shell, or somothini-', as to lose all fear of men, and he ran almost undo:- our feet. Oh the way up, but before we got far, there was an oil sto :e ho:iso, over which was the red flag. 1 recollect calling out: \Boys there's a hospital; we'd better re- member the way back to it \ Asa punish- ment, i.erhaps, for my prophecy of evil, I was the only on9 of the company who got there; but still i t was a good thing to know. Pretty soon V e went through the woods, and as we came out there stood our old friends of the Sixteenth Michigan, who seemed to be just getting into a very scrambling sort of i.ue, but we knew that it was there to stay. We heard the command, up at the head | of our regiment: \On the right by file into line. March!\ Now, ihough we did not by any means go througti the motions of that very complex movement as we had learned it When drilling, yet it told us just about where the colonel wonted to place us, and we got thore with a rush. The command was not to be executed literally, but it was a graphic in dcati u of our intended posi- tion. If any one thinks that drill is of no use became it can't be used in a fight, let him imagine in what words he would explain off- hand to a procession of citizens, four abreast, how he wanted them to get \on the right\ into line. The principal feature of the ground there was rocks. Not what they term rocks in prairie states, where a rock is the size that a small boy can throw, but what would have been recognized even in Vermont as rocks— weighing half a ton or more. Those were elegant things to get behind and shoo, over; we appreciated them fully, for we always had to scoop up our own protection, and never had had ready-made works; ours were custom goods. The ground in front of us ran steeply down and was lull of rocks and trees. It would have been a considerable exertion for a fat man t o come up without opposition. Almost the instant our company got behind the rocks some one said, \There they come,\ and justfo- a half S9cond I could see \them\ dodging zig-zag among the trees down the hilL I never saw them again distinctly, for instantly we began to fiie. There was no order to do so-—there seldom is; on the con- trary I heard the colonel yelling \Cease fir- ing!\ and M.ke repeating it with his bugle. It reminded me of the birds at Chanceliors- ville—and we did not heed it any more than we should the birds. It was bangity, bang, bang into the smoke ahead of i.s, and rip, zip, i qui ch just over our he ads. The latter sounds were from the Johnnies' bullets, and very likely ours went over their heads, too. Oni e in a whi.e they would get very close and a red star of flame would jump right out ot the smoke at every discharge. These times'they would be pretty apt to hit sAne of our boy j . As 1 was kneeling down and loading, one of our hoys, partly in front of me, got a bullet through Loth legs—so I knew alter ward, for he died in the hospi al near me, my mother standing by him. The bullet, anyway, after doing this work-, struck me on the in- I side of the leg without cu:ting my trowsers, and I saw it drop. I\. must have been spent by crushing through his two legs. I thought how I wished I bad time to pick it up as a souvenir. A week or two after, when I next undre-sed, I was reminded of this ball by j flndiug quite a big bruise on my leg. I don' i t hink an , ono was afraid now, or j cared for anything but getting rid of his cartridges. We were not good marksmen; I suppose if we had been we should have j been m ueliberace and should have mad'. { less r..uo;ce and do.ie more execution. Tar- j get practice had been very little atiended t< 1 don't know how long it was before the got me. I know we had not budged froi our general position, though many wn fci led in their tracks. I c in't rememb seeing any one go away wound d. As o of those ro.l fl idles cam a out of :h> smoke feltsom-.' one poke me very hard, jab m^, ; fact, on the left shoul ier with a big still from the end of the tick spread in every i. reefcion r.eedlepricks, lik i anelecric batier That's the way it felt; the fact was a rM ball had bored through me. I did nob t .• > actly realize what had happened; I was n knocked over, my gun was still in my rii! hand; I did not understand it yet I look at my shoulder and saw a hole in the jacke knowing that no hole bad been there a lit.' before it dawned at last upon my stupid;! that I was hi... It seems s J queer t o a m that he should be struck: so very natir that it should be some one else. As soon as saw the h >lo in front I twisted my he : around to see if there was another behin to my relief t here was one. I had a gre dread ;* a ba\ in me which would have be extracted. my shoulder. He obeyed with alacrity; perhaps he was relieved at finding I did not drive him t o his regiment. The water toon enabled iris t o get up and go on, and I went straight to the old stono house where I had seen the hospital flag; I d o not think, how- ever, I went a t all by the same road tbat the regiment had come A FRIENDLY COHRADB. As 1 reached the back door of the stone house some very Germ tn person received m> with the remark: \O.i we em't do noting for you here.\ Still 1 { ushed in, assisted by an able-bodied Confederate .yh.o proved more hospitab.e than th^ hose. He had stayed in our lines in order to bAvith a Confederate officer, Gen. Sibley, wholw-as dying. I walked into the middle room of the house, which was the \old folks'\ bedroom In front was a par- 1QI>, the floor covered with wounded men of boih armies. As I lay on the floor with my , head unsupported I felt a* if my neck was 1 breaking; and when a middle-aged woman \ came into the room I asked her to put some- thing under my h ai , but she did not seem to understand. Luckily, a s I was not in good condition for gesticulating, I knew enough German to say: ''Etwai unter dem kopf,\ and she obligingly put some old matting under me. The \old folks' * bedtime came rather early. Soon after the firing had ceased for the night my worthy German host and hostess came into my bedroom and climbed up on their high, fat bed. In the meantime each soldier lying in the house had adopted soma kind of a sound which he repeated at pretty regular interval. I can hear some of them now as I think of i t These smoth> ered groans, and s.ghs and breathings—none of them very loud, but intense—recurred often enough to be rather depressing, Soon there were added to the strange concert a snore by the old man and another, a different one, by the old woman. And so we passed the night, each repeating bis own note of endurance, and the \old folks\ c > 1mlv sleep- ing through it all The most painful sound was the word \water.\ I think it must have bean that Confederate general who repeated it. The clock was just as unconcerned as its owners and struck the hours at immensely long intervals. I hear 1 them all. and they were the only sounds I was gla I to hear that night. My elderly roommates seemed much refreshe i next morning, but I did not see any- thing more of them, as they went down cel- lar and very se isibly stayed there all the next day, which was the day of the artil- lery. Such a nois> was made tha' I a m not surprised that persons, especially nervous, sensitive people, should wish to avoid it. Th • younger woman brought me some chicken broth, or something'like it, in the morning. , I dreaded another night in that old house. I t quite s warm d with surgeons and chaplains that day. until some shell i exploding quite near reminded those officers of duties which called them away. After dark, as I began to dread the chorus of wounded men, distress- ing thro :gh the. day, but far more so in the .'ti 1 night, I wis carted away irra racking ombu iuttce and laid on straw near the creek. My roof was a sagging piece of canvas which, when saturated,- conducted the rain dir, ctly uimn rn••>; and if on the next morn- ing an old chaplain «ho knew me had not given ire a full tumbler of whisky I think the 4t of July then dawning would have been my la^t.. CHABLBS E. SPRAOTJB. Whe n yo u wan t a nice etove or rang e GATE S & SPRATT' S is the place to go. The finest oil stoves in the marke t are sold at rock bottom prices a t GATES & SPBATT'S . Whe n in wan t of tinwar e fight shy of the tin peddler, because GATES & SPBATT sell^a bettnr and more durabl e article for the same money. There are man y novelties to-day in stove trimmings, and the best of the m are sold by GATES &• SPBATT. A few condition GATE S <fc .SPBATT'S . old iron. second han d stoves in good awaitin g purchasers at Al most as c h ea p as Have yo u seen those ne w styles of tea and coffee pots at GATES & SPBATT'S? You r wife want s one. Pure Drugs -AND- Patent Medicines, Toilet & Fancy Articles. TRUSSES, Supporters & Shoulder Braces, PAINTS, OILS, VAHMSHKS, WINDOW GLASS , PUTTY, Etc . Pure Wines and Liquors. Give us a call. We guarantee satisfaction. Mothersell & Holden, Woodruff House drug Store. W. W. CONDE has become noted a*s ihe leading Hardware Merchant in Watertown, because he keeps the most Complete Assortment of goods in his line. He cheerfully meets Syracuse competition aad can sell to Country Merchants ehe«per than they can buy elsewhere. OOJNTIDIE'JS is the place for bargains iu HARDWARE, MECHANIC'S TOOLS, CUTLERY, anrl everything to be found in a first-class Hardware Store. jr. LOOKING B\OK THE BULLET HOLE So I found myself a wounded man befoiv £ knew it My next reflection was ihat it hadn't hurt much. One tooth-pulling is Who Is I t t This space belongs to a Watertown clothier who does not believe that newspaper advertis- ing pays. He is selling goods, ready made and made to order, at prices so low that the poorest can afford to be -well'dressed. A Word to People. Paddock & Hermes have just received a complete line of Paints, Oils and Colors, and are ready to give the very lowest market price. Also a complete line of IDirxxgrs, Medicines, Fancy Soaps AND TOILET ARTICLES, Prescriptions a Specialty. —I'J iH Give us a call and save money. No. 6 Washington St. Ne w Stack!! » I BOILING OOWKK. As to (far hves, I can t romi'mbe:' how it was that wo always had matches. I rmppose we got them from the sutler Bui wood was abundantly supplied, at least for a short stay. The Virginians had a custom, worthy from our point of view, of the highest com- mendation. They had lavishly piled all over their lands, in the form of zig/apr fences, the most elegant rails of hard wood; as fences they were neither useful uov ornamental; as firewood, they were superb. When we had finally halted for the night, it was a race for the most eligible fences. I have chafed a vanishing fence for some distance, at the best speed of my long legs and could not catch up with its melting lengths. No matter how wet the rail, ti.,- wood just below the surface was dry and seasoned, and we had men, ex- pert file lighters, who would build up a cheerful blazo in the middle of a plowed field in a pom ing rain, with some fence rails and one m. eh. Along in the afternoon, thing; seemed to j worse than a dozen shootings like that. : thicken up. They had our regiment in clo-e ' Now I laid down my gun and resolved to , column by division, and all the other regi- : retire. We were not at the crest of the hill, i ments in the corps seemed to bo formed in ' but a little down; so in going back I had ' the •-ame way, an l these masses to be in a j first t o go u p hill a little}. Hore the rip-z i > i pretty compact line. I remomber that the l noises were a good deal thicker than wher regulars (who constituted the bu'k of t v ie J I had been; these were the same balls tha 1 Second division) lay on our left in the same ! went over our heads, formation; that I saw the Hundred an i I saw one of our officers, and pointed to Forty-sixth New York, of that same division, 'th e hole in my coat aa an excuse for my in their singular light blue and uniform, coming up in place with the otheis, an ! noticed a college friend at the head of his company. As I remember, we were on pretty hirh ground, with higher still in ft ont, and back on the plain cam'' a long slender ribbon of infantry. The corps fl ig at the head with its Greek cross, told that thin wa< ihe Sixth corps, who were finishing * tremendous march, such as we had mad j the day before. But now our old brigade call of \Dan! Dan! D.tn! Butterfleld! Butterfleld!\ rang out in sni'h an emphcic way as I never heard before, nnd brought us itist.intly 'o our feet. It was the last time I ever heard it in UBe. It seemed h-ir liy a minute bei'or- / we were mnrehing off Wo weren't told that we wore going to hold the Little Roun I Top, but that was our mission. Some staff officer seemed to be riding ahead and show- ,.• j • ,.,. intr the way. and a battery was plunging up ^ dowo *>Y him and told bun to oour it on leaving the entertainment. The excuse saemed aoceptabla. As I got over the erest of the hill the bullets did not annoy me any more. I had ob iqued to the left in retreating, having the histhiL't to flud that hospital flag. So I passed behind part of the Sixteenth again, and had my last glimpse of Col. Vincent, The Sixteenth seemed to have fallen back, but in an orderly way, so that I supposed it was by command, As I went on my arm was very awkward. It hung straight down and was very heavy. I was like a young mother with her first baby and did not know how to carry it. .. had to walk slowly and felt very tired. Probably I had bh'l a -ood deal Away back behind a tree I found a soldier; he was on the opi> site s.de jf the tree to the shoot- ing and appeared to have a chid. Ashe seemed to have his canteen full of water I J. M. FAIRBANKS, CIVIL ENGINEER AND SURVEYOR, 6 1-2 Washington Place, Watertown, N. Y. NEW PRI JE. -D. BUCK, Parker Block, Corner Franklin and Goodale Streets, Watertown, N. Y fKe Finest Groceries, The Finest Canne d Goods, Gilt-Edge Butte r an d Choice Cheese, Teas, Coffees an d Spices, all at Hard Pan Prices Cheap Gash Store. MEYER, ROSS & CO., Carthage, N. Y. 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