22. Our Board has resumed its sessions at the Alabama House, Stevenson. The weather is intensely hot. Father Stanley stripped off his coat and groaned. Hobart's face was red as the rising sun, and the anxious candidates for commissions did not certainly resemble cucumbers for coolness.
Hobart rides a very poor horse—poor in flesh, I mean; but he entertains the most exalted opinion of the beast. This morning, as we rode from camp, I thought I would please him by referring to his horse in a complimentary way. Said I: "Colonel, your horse holds his own mighty well." His face brightened, and I continued: "He hasn't lost a bone since I have known him." This nettled him, and he began to badger me about an unsuccessful attempt which I made some time ago to get him to taste a green persimmon. Hobart has a good education, is fluent in conversation, and in discussion gets the better of me without difficulty. All I can do, therefore, is to watch my opportunity to give him an occasional thrust as best I can. Father Stanley is slow, destitute of either education or wit, and examines applicants like a demagogue fishes for votes.
Brigadier-General Jeff. C. Davis and Colonel Hegg called to-day. Davis is, I think, not quite so tall as I am, but a shade heavier. Met Captain Gaunther. He has been relieved from duty here, and ordered to Washington. He is an excellent officer, and deserves a higher position than he holds at present. I thought, from the very affectionate manner with which he clung to my hand and squeezed it, that possibly, in taking leave of his friends, he had burdened himself with that "oat" which is said to be one too many. Hobart says that Scribner calls him Hobart up to two glasses, and further on in his cups ycleps him Hogan.
Wood had a bout with the enemy at Chattanooga yesterday; he on the north side and they on the south side of the river. Johnson is said to have reinforced Bragg, and the enemy is supposed to be strong in our front. Rosecrans was at Bridgeport yesterday looking over the ground, when a sharpshooter blazed away at him, and put a bullet in a tree near which the General and his son were standing.
24. Deserters are coming in almost every day. They report that secret societies exist in the rebel army whose object is the promotion of desertion. Eleven men from one company arrived yesterday. Not many days ago a Confederate officer swam the river and gave himself up. For some time past the pickets of the two armies have not been firing at each other; but yesterday the rebels gave notice that they should commence again, as the "Yanks were becoming too d—n thick."
26. To-day we were examining a German who desired to be recommended for a field officer. "How do you form an oblique square, sir?" "Black square? Black square?" exclaimed the Dutchman; "I dush not know vot you means by de black square."
As I write the moon shines down upon me through an opening in the branches of the beech forest in which we are encamped, and the objects about me, half seen and half hidden, in some way suggest the half-remembered and half-forgotten incidents of childhood.
How often, when a boy, have I dreamed of scenes similar to those through which I have passed in the last two years! Knightly warriors, great armies on the march and in camp, the skirmish, the tumult and thunder of battle, were then things of the imagination; but now they have become familiar items of daily life. Then a single tap of the drum or note of the bugle awakened thoughts of the old times of chivalry, and regrets that the days of glory had passed away. Now we have martial strains almost every hour, and are reminded only of the various duties of our every-day life.
As we went to Stevenson this morning, Hobart caught a glimpse of a colored man coming toward us. It suggested to him a hobby which he rides now every day, and he commenced his oration by saying, in his declamatory way: "The negro is the coming man." "Yes," I interrupted, "so I see, and he appears to have his hat full of peaches;" and so the coming man had.
28. Rode to the river with Hobart and Stanley. The rebel pickets were lying about in plain view on the other side. Just before our arrival quite a number of them had been bathing. The outposts of the two armies appear still to be on friendly terms. "Yesterday," a soldier said to me, "one of our boys crossed the river, talked with the rebs for some time, and returned."