tional behavior exhibited by individuals there to our officers and men, during the war. But the common people, rich or poor, were the narrowest and most conceited of mankind, as arrogant as the negroes on the Gambia River; and, by the way, it looks as if the editors of the Southern press were in all times selected from this class. The invasion of Northern farmers, mechanics, engineers, tradesmen, lawyers and students did more than forty years of peace had done to educate the South. "This will be a slow business," writes our Concord captain home, "for we have to stop and civilize the people as we go along." It is an interesting part of the history, the manner in which this incongruous militia were made soldiers. That was done again on the Kansas plan. Our farmers went to Kansas as peaceable, Godfearing men as the members of our school-committee here. But when the Border raids were let loose on their villages, these people, who turned pale at home if called to dress a cut finger, on witnessing the butchery done by the Missouri riders on women and babes, were so beside themselves with rage, that they became on the instant the bravest soldiers and the most determined avengers. And the first events of the war of the Rebellion gave the like training to the new recruits. All sorts of men went to the war, the roughs, men who liked harsh play and violence, men for whom pleasure was not strong enough, but who wanted pain, and found sphere at last for their superabundant energy; then the adventurous type of New Englander, with his appetite for novelty and travel; the village politician, who could now verify his newspaper knowledge, see the South, and amass what a stock of adventures to retail hereafter at the fireside, or to the well-known companions on the Mill-dam; young men, also, of excellent education and polished manners, delicately brought up; manly farmers, skilful mechanics, young tradesmen, men hitherto of narrow opportunities of knowing the world, but well taught in the grammar-schools. But perhaps in every one of these classes were idealists, men who went from a religious duty. I have a note of a conversation that occurred in our first company, the morning before the battle of Bull Run. At a halt in the march, a few of our boys were sitting on a rail fence talking together whether it was right to sacrifice themselves. One of them said, "he had been thinking a good deal about it, last night, and he thought one was never too young to die for a principle." One of our later volunteers, on the day when he left home, in reply to my question, How can you be spared from your farm, now that your father is so ill? said: "I go because I shall always be sorry if I did not go when the country called me. I can go as well as another." One wrote to his father these words: "You may think it strange that I, who have always naturally rather shrunk from danger, should wish to enter the army; but there is a higher Power that tunes the hearts of men, and enables them to see their duty, and gives them courage to face the dangers with which those duties are attended." And the captain writes home of another of his men, "B- comes from a sense of duty and love of country, and these are the soldiers you can depend upon." None of us can have forgotten how sharp a test to try our peaceful people with, was the first call for troops. I doubt not many of our soldiers could repeat the confession of a youth whom I knew in the beginning of the war, who enlisted in New York, went to the field, and died early. Before his departure he confided to his sister that he was naturally a coward, but was determined that no one should ever find it out; that he had long trained himself by forcing himself, on the suspicion of any near danger, to go directly up to it, cost him what struggles it might. Yet it is from this temperament of sensibility that great heroes have been formed. Our first company was led by an officer who had grown up in this village from a boy. The older --- among us can well remember him at school, at play and at work, all the way up, the most amiable, sensible, unpretending of men; fair, blonde, the rose lived long in his cheek; grave, but social, and one of the last men in this town you would have picked out for the rough dealing of war, — not a trace of fierceness, much less of recklessness, or of the devouring thirst for excitement; tender as a woman in his care for a cough or a chilblain in his men ; had troches and arnica in his pocket for them. The army officers were welcome to their jest on him as too kind for a captain, and, later, as the colonel who got off his horse when he saw one of his men limp on the march, and told him to ride. But he knew that his men had found out, first that he was captain, then that he was colonel, and neither dared nor wished to disobey him. He was a man without conceit, who never fancied himself a philosopher or a saint; the most modest and amiable of men, engaged in common duties, but equal always to the occasion; and the war showed him still equal, however stern and terrible the occasion grew, disclosed in him a strong good sense, great fertility of resource, the helping hand, and then the moral qualities of a commander, — a patience not to be tired out, a serious devotion to the cause of the country that never swerved, a hope that never failed. He was a Puritan in the army, with traits that remind one of John Brown, - an integrity incorruptible, and an ability that always rose to the need. You will remember that these colonels, captains and lieutenants, and the privates too, are domestic men, just wrenched away from their families and their business by this rally of all the manhood in the land. They have notes to pay at home; have farms, shops, factories, affairs of every kind to think of and write home about. Consider what sacrifice and havoc in business arrangements this war-blast made. They have to think carefully of every last resource at home on which their wives or mothers may fall back; upon the little account in the savings-bank, the grass that can be sold, the old cow, or the heifer. These necessities make the topics of the ten thousand letters with which the mail-bags came loaded day by day. These letters play a great part in the war. The writing of letters made the Sunday in every camp: - meantime they are without the means of writing. After the first marches there is no letter-paper, there are no en velopes, no postage-stamps, for these were wetted into a solid mass in the rains and mud. Some of these letters are written on the back of old bills, some on brown paper, or strips of newspaper; written by firelight, making the short night shorter; written on the knee, in the mud, with pencil, six words at |