reserve horses at one time, and found this false leg of his suspended from the saddle. He said he had tried five, at different times, to see which of the inventions was lightest and easiest to wear; "and I am obliged to confess, Mrs. Custer, much as you may imagine it goes against me to do so, that of the five—English, German, French, Yankee and Confederate—the Yankee leg was the best of all." When General Custer carefully helped the maimed hero down the cabin stairs and over the gangway, we bade him good-by with real regret—so quickly do soldiers make and cement a friendship when both find the same qualities to admire in each other.

The novelty of Mississippi travel kept even our active, restless party interested. One of our number played guitar accompaniments, and we sang choruses on deck at night, forgetting that the war-songs might grate on the ears of some of the people about us. The captain and steamer's crew allowed us to roam up and down the boat at will, and when we found, by the map or crew, that we were about to touch the bank in a hitherto unvisited State, we were the first to run over the gang-plank and caper up and down the soil, to add a new State to our fast-swelling list of those in which we had been. We rather wondered, though, what we would do if asked questions by our elders at home as to what we thought of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, as we had only scampered on and off the river bank of those States while the wooding went on. We were like children let out of school, and everything interested us. Even the low water was an event. The sudden stop of our great steamer, which, large as it was, drew but a few feet of water, made the timbers groan and the machinery creak. Then we took ourselves to the bow, where the captain, mate and deck-hands were preparing for a siege, as the force of the engines had ploughed us deep into a sand-bar. There was wrenching, veering and struggling of the huge boat; and at last a resort to those two spars which seem to be so uselessly attached to each side of the forward deck of the river steamers. These were swung out and plunged into the bank, the rope and tackle put into use, and with the aid of these stilts we were skipped over the sand-bar into the deeper water. It was on that journey that I first heard the name Mr. Clemens took as his nom de plume. The droning voice of the sailor taking soundings, as we slowly crept through low water, called out, "Mark twain!" and the pilot answered by steering the boat according to the story of the plumb-line.

The trip on a Mississippi steamer, as we knew it, is now one of the things of the past. It was accounted then, and before the war, our most luxurious mode of travel. Every one was sociable, and in the constant association of the long trip some warm friendships sprung up. We had then our first acquaintance with Bostonians as well as with Southerners. Of course, it was too soon for Southern women, robbed of home, and even the necessities of life, by the cruelty of war, to be wholly cordial. We were more and more amazed at the ignorance in the South concerning the North. A young girl, otherwise intelligent, thawed out enough to confess to me that she had really no idea that Yankee soldiers were like their own physically. She imagined they would be as widely different as black from white, and a sort of combination of gorilla and chimpanzee. Gunboats had but a short time before moored at the levee that bounded her grandmother's plantation, and the negroes ran into the house crying the terrible news of the approach of the enemy. The very thought of a Yankee was abhorrent; but the girl, more absorbed with curiosity than fear, slipped out of the house to where a view of the walk from the landing was to be had, and, seeing a naval officer approaching, raced back to her grandmother, crying out in surprise at finding a being like unto her own people, "Why, it's a man!"

As we approached New Orleans the plantations grew richer. The palmetto and the orange, by which we are "twice blessed" in its simultaneous blossom and fruit; the oleander, treasured in conservatories at home, here growing to tree size along the country roads, all charmed us. The wide galleries around the two stories of the houses were a delight. The course of our boat was often near enough the shore for us to see the family gathered around the supper-table spread on the upper gallery, which was protected from the sun by blinds or shades of matting.

We left the steamer at New Orleans with regret. It seems, even now, that it is rather too bad we have grown into so hurried a race that we cannot spare the time to travel as leisurely or luxuriously as we did then. Even pleasure-seekers going off for a tour, when they are not restricted by time nor mode of journeying, study the time-tables closely, to see by which route the quickest passage can be made.

CHAPTER II.