‘I have no proof but my remembrance of him as a lad, and an inward conviction that you have been deceived. Did his mother believe him guilty?’
‘I cannot say. I did not allow her to mention him. My two youngest daughters are not aware they have a brother.’
The Colonel did not press the matter further, but changed the subject, relating incidents of his life abroad, and making the time pass pleasantly to his old friend. But that night the Colonel sat in deep thought over the decaying embers of his fire, and had come to a resolution before he sought his couch. The result was that Dobson the butler furnished him with full particulars of the sad event; and unknown to Oliver Peregrine the prosperity of that worthy was on the wane.
[EXPERIENCES IN CAMP AND COURT.]
An interesting and gossiping volume of personal reminiscences, entitled Camp, Court, and Siege: a Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation during two Wars, 1861-65, 1870-71 (Sampson Low & Co.), has been given to the world by Colonel Hoffman, an officer whose position during two great wars enabled him to record much that escaped the notice of other observers. Colonel Hoffman held an important post in the Federal army during the American civil war, and at its close received an appointment in the diplomatic service of his country. As Secretary to the American Legation in Paris, and chargé d'affaires during the temporary absence of the United States minister, Mr Washburne, he witnessed the events which preceded the Franco-German war, and afterwards remained in Paris, in common with other members of his Embassy, during the siege. The recollections he has strung together relate rather to the byways than to the beaten track of history during these periods; and it is this fact which gives his unpretending volume its chief interest and novelty. Our readers will probably be amused in spending with us a short time over its pages.
Colonel Hoffman was in 1862 captain on the staff of Brigadier-general Williams at Hatteras, an island which lies in the direct route of vessels bound from the West Indies to Baltimore, New York, &c. The ‘guileless natives’ of this place are, we are informed, well known as wreckers, and in pursuit of this calling they adopt a plan which is simple but effective. A half-wild kind of horse called a ‘marsh pony,’ is bred upon the island, and one of these animals is caught, one of its legs is tied up, a lantern slung to its neck, and the pony is thus driven along the beach on a stormy night. The effect is just that of a vessel riding at anchor; but other ships approaching are soon made unpleasantly aware of the difference between a merchantman riding out the gale, and this Hatteras decoy.
From Hatteras, Captain Hoffman was ordered to join General Butler's expedition to New Orleans, and proceeded in a vessel which took three regiments, numbering three thousand souls. A fact which transpired on the voyage he commends to the attention of those parish authorities in England who refuse to enforce the Vaccination Act. A man who had been ill with small-pox, but was supposed to be cured, was on board this vessel, and two days after they had sailed his disease broke out again. The men among whom he lay were packed as close as herrings in a barrel, yet only one took it. They had all been vaccinated within sixty days.
Ship Island, off Mobile in the Gulf of Mexico, was their first destination to await supplies for the expedition. An odd thing here was the abundance of fresh water obtainable everywhere by digging a hole two feet deep in the sand; in two hours it became full, but after using it for a week the water would be found brackish, when all that was necessary to procure another supply was to dig a hole as before. And yet the island scarcely rises five feet above the sea. While staying at this place the writer witnessed a curious freak of lightning. Eight prisoners were sleeping side by side in a circular tent, when a terrible thunderstorm broke out. The sentry stood leaning against the tent-pole, with the butt of his musket on the ground and the bayonet touching his shoulder. The lightning struck the tent-pole, leaped to the bayonet and tore the stock to splinters, but only slightly stunned the sentry; thence it passed along the ground and struck the first prisoner, killing him; glided by the six inside men without injury to them, but struck and killed the eighth man as it disappeared.
We now come to the writer's reminiscences of warfare.