3. The fortifications are progressing. The men work four hours each day in the trenches. The remainder of the time they spend pretty much as they see fit.

General Garfield is now chief of staff. It is the first instance in the West of an officer of his rank being assigned to that position. It is an important place, however, and one too often held not merely by officers of inferior rank, but of decidedly inferior ability. General Buell had a colonel as chief of staff, and, until the appointment of Garfield, General Rosecrans had a lieutenant-colonel or major.

To-night an ugly and most singular specimen of the negro called to obtain employment. He was not over three feet and a half high, hump-backed, crooked-legged, and quite forty years old. Poking his head into my tent, and, taking off his hat, he said: "Is de Co'nel in?" "Yes." "Hurd you wants a boy, sah. Man tole me Co'nel Eighty-eighth Olehio wants a boy, sah." "What can you do? Can you cook?" "Yas, sah." "Where did you learn to cook?" "On de plantation, sah." "What is your master's name?" "Rucker, sah." "Is he a loyal man?" "No, sah, he not a lawyer; his brudder, de cussen one, is de lawyer." "Is he secesh?" "O, yas, sah; yas, he sesesh." "It is the Colonel of the Eighty-eighth Indiana you should see;" and I directed him to the Colonel's tent. As he turned to leave, he muttered, "Man tole me Eighty-eighth Olehio;" but he went hobbling over to the Eighty-eighth, with fear, anxiety, and hope struggling in his old face.

4. Major Kalfus, Fifteenth Kentucky, arrested on Sunday, and since held in close confinement, was dishonorably dismissed from the service to-day for using treasonable language in tendering his resignation. He was escorted outside the lines and turned loose. The Major is a cross-roads politician, and will, I doubt not, be a lion among his half-loyal neighbors when he returns home.

5. Our picket on the Manchester pike was driven in to-day. The cavalry, under General Stanley, went to the rescue, when a fight occurred. No particulars.

9. T. Buchanan Reid, the poet, entertained us at the court-house this evening. The room had been trimmed up by the rebels for a ball. The words, "Shiloh," "Fort Donelson," "Hartsville," "Santa Rosa," "Pensacola," were surrounded with evergreens. The letter "B," painted on the walls in a dozen places, was encompassed by wreaths of flowers, now faded and yellow. My native modesty led me to conclude that the letter so highly honored stood for Bragg, and not for the commander of the Seventeenth Brigade, U. S. A.

General Garfield introduced Mr. Reid by a short speech, not delivered in his usual happy style. I was impressed with the idea all the time, that he had too many buttons on his coat—he certainly had a great many buttons—and the splendor of the double row possibly detracted somewhat from the splendor of his remarks.

Mr. Reid is a small man, and has not sufficient voice to make himself heard distinctly in so large a hall. In a parlor his recitations would be capital. He read from his own poem, "The Wagoner," a description of the battle of Brandywine. It is possibly a very good representation of that battle; but, if so, the battle of Brandywine was very unlike that of Stone river. At Brandywine, it appears, the generals slashed around among the enemy's infantry with drawn swords, doing most of the hard fighting and most of the killing themselves. I did not discover anything of that kind at Stone river. It is possible the style went out of fashion before the rebellion began. It would, however, be very satisfactory to the rank and file to see it restored. Mr. Reid said some good things in his lecture, and was well applauded; but, in the main, he was too ethereal, vapory, and fanciful for the most of us leather-heads. When he puts a soldier-boy on the top of a high mountain to sing patriotic songs, and bid defiance to King George because "Eagle is King," we are impressed with the idea that that soldier could have been put to better use; that, in fact, he is entirely out of the line of duty. The position assigned him is unnatural, and the modern soldier-boy will be apt to conclude that nobody but a simpleton would be likely to wander about in solitary places, extemporizing in measured sentences; besides it is hard work, as I know from experience. I tried my hand at it the other day until my head ached, and this is the best I could do:

O! Lord, when will this war end?
These days of marchings, nights of lonely guard?
This terrible expenditure of health and life?
Where is the glory? Where is the reward,
For sacrifice of comfort, quiet, peace?
For sacrifice of children, wife, and friends?
For sacrifice of firesides—genial homes?
What hour, what gift, will ever make amends
For broken health, for bruised flesh and bones,
For lives cut short by bullet, blade, disease?
Where balm to heal the widow's heart, or what
Shall soothe a mother's grief for woes like these?
Hold, murmurer, hold! Is country naught to thee?
Is freedom nothing? Naught an honored name?
What though the days be cold, or the nights dark,
The brave heart kindles for itself a flame
That warms and lightens up the world!
Home! What's home, if in craven shame
We seek its hearthstone? Bitterest of cold.
Better creep thither bruised, and torn, and lame,
Than seek it in health when justice needs our aid.
Where is the glory? Where is the reward?
Think of the generations that will come
To praise and bless the hero. Think of God,
Who in due time will call His soldiers home.
How comfort mother for the loss of son?
What balm to which her heaviest grief must yield?
Ah! the plain, simple, ever-glorious words:
"Your son died nobly on the battle-field!"
What balm to soothe a widow's aching heart?
The grand assurance that in the battle shock
Foremost her husband stood, defying all,
For freedom and truth, unyielding as the rock.
Then, courage, all, and when the strife is past,
And grief for lost ones takes a milder hue,
This thought shall crown the living and the dead:
"He lived, he died, to God and duty true."

10. Rain has been descending most of the day, and just now is pouring down with great violence. A happy party in the adjoining tent are exercising their lungs on a negro melody, of which this is something like the chorus: