I have already detailed the experiences with Geno, who so gracefully handled a guitar in her beautifully-formed bare arms, as she skillfully played an accompaniment to "Juanita." It was that old, old song and "them" eyes that put me in Old Capitol Prison.

I would advise any of the young lady readers, with black hair and pretty eyes, to get a guitar and practice "Juanita" on the boys. It will bring them down every time.

Another old favorite is "Evangeline," which so fully expresses my sentiments on the past.

Surely, there never was a sweeter and more appropriate love song than my "Lost Evangeline." While the song of separation is the sweetly familiar "In the Gloaming."

Another beautiful air and words is entitled "Someday"—strikingly expressive of future hopes. This I heard sung first in the parlor of a hotel in the far, far West, when I was traveling in California, where it had the effect of making me homesick.

Since the close of the war, I have wandered all over the land, like Gabriel in search of his Evangeline. I was shipwrecked on the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River, in the extreme Northwest. I sailed up the Columbia River with some such feelings as an explorer must experience on discovering a new continent. I visited the eternally snow-capped Mount Hood, rode around Puget Sound to British Columbia, went over the Cascades and The Dalles, in Oregon, to the western slope of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, thence over miles of wild mountain roads in Oregon and California on stage coaches, where Indians and stage-robbers thrive. I have lived in San Francisco, spent part of a winter in Los Angeles, lived among the Mormons in Utah for six months; in truth, I have been everywhere, but I have not yet found a trace of the long-lost Geno. While I have not exactly been searching for Geno on these travels, I have never given up the hope of some day seeing her, and as long as I live I never shall.

I don't know how it may be with Geno; it is likely she has a good husband—better than I would have been—and that she is devoted to him and her family; but, in my secret heart, I hope the old saying will prove true, that a woman never forgets her first love, and that some day, in some unseen manner, Geno may read this and see that I have not forgotten her. This has been to my life only a sweet memory, which I shall cherish fondly as such to the end. "Her bright smile haunts me still."

"Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
Oh, death in life! the days that are no more."

After leaving Falmouth, the headquarters of Cavalry corps were quartered in an old house somewhere convenient to the railroad and telegraph wires that run into Alexandria. It was probably close by the Sixth Corps' position, as General Sedgwick occupied the same house with his Staff, and as their horses were tied about the fences.

One little incident will serve to locate me. General Pleasonton was then the Chief of Cavalry, to whose General Staff I was afterward attached. He also occupied rooms in this same building. Late one night a message was brought in to me to deliver to the General. The building we were in had been apparently deserted by the family. I was told by some of the officers that I'd find General Pleasonton in his room up stairs. I went tramping up the uncarpeted steps, with my big cavalry boots and spurs rattling and resounding through the great empty hall in the "wee sma' hours," so that I awakened Colonel Blake, who was wrapped up in his blanket trying to sleep on the hall floor. The old Colonel gave me a terrific blast from his bugle mouth, which awakened every officer in the house. Some one crawling from under another blanket pointed to General Pleasonton's room, which I entered unceremoniously, glad enough to get any place out of sound of the old Colonel's voice.