One of the privates in the regular army has just been punished with fifty lashes on the bare back, for taking from a private house a lady's furs and a silk dress.
This morning I passed a group of the Iowa privates, resting beside the road, along which they were bringing buckets of water to their camp. They were debating the question whether a heavy national debt tends to weaken or to strengthen a Government! These are the men whom the southern Press calls "ignorant mercenaries."
St. Louis, July 12.
The Missouri State Journal, which made no disguise of its sympathy with the Rebels, is at last suppressed by the military authorities. It was done to-day, by order of General Lyon, who is pursuing the Rebels near Springfield, in the southwest corner of the State. Secessionists denounce it as a military despotism, but the loyal citizens are gratified.
Camp Tales of the Marvelous.
Are you fond of the marvelous? If so, here is a camp story about Colonel Sigel's late engagement at Carthage:
A private in one of his companies (so runs the tale), while loading and firing, was lying flat upon his face to avoid the balls of the Rebels, when a shot from one of their six-pounders plunged into the ground right beside him, plowed through under him, about six inches below the surface, came out on the other side, and pursued its winding way. It did not hurt a hair of his head, but, in something less than a twinkling of an eye, whirled him over upon his back!
If you shake your head, save your incredulity for this: A captain assures me that in the same battle he saw one of Sigel's artillerists struck by a shot which cut off both legs; but that he promptly raised himself half up, rammed the charge home in his gun, withdrew the ramrod, and then fell back, dead! This is, at least, melo-dramatic, and only paralleled by the ballad-hero
——"Of doleful dumps,
Who, when his legs were both cut off,
Still fought upon his stumps."