'Mister, yer stocking is sticking out of yer pocket.'
I turned calmly around, and addressed him:
'Boy, I glory in those stockings. I am willing that the universe should behold them. My destiny is interwoven with them. Every stitch is instinct with life and love.'
'Don't see it, mister! Glory, hallelujah!' and he ended his speech by making an exclamation point of himself, by standing on his head—a very bad practice for small boys. I advise all precocious youngsters, who may read this article, to avoid such positions.
We broke camp, and started off in high spirits. I paraded through the streets with a bouquet of rosebuds on my bayonet. I found a note among them afterward, more fragrant than they.
When our regiment left Boston, it went from Battery Wharf. I went on board the Merrimac. Kate could not pass the lines, and stationed herself in a vessel opposite, where we could look at each other. I aimed a rosebud at her; it fell into the green water, and floated away. The second and third were more successful. She pressed one to her lips and threw it back again; the other she kept. Afterward, with the practical forethought which forms a part of her character, she bought out an apple woman, and stormed me with apples. The vessel left the wharf, and I looked back with eyes fast growing dim, and watched the figure on the dock, bravely waving her white handkerchief as long as I could see.
Well, it is hard for a man to leave home and friends, and all that he holds dear; but I do not regret it, though I have to rough it now. I am writing now beside a bivouac made of poles and cornstalks. My desk is a rude bench. I have just finished my dinner of salt junk and potatoes. On my feet is that pair of stockings. Profanity and almost every vice abounds; there are temptations all around me, but pure lips have promised to pray for me, and I feel that I shall be shielded and guarded, and kept uncontaminated, true to my 'north star,' which shines so brightly to me—true to my country and my God.
LITERARY NOTICES.
Sordello, Strafford, Christmas Eve, and Easter Day. By Robert Browning. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.