personal danger, I have been able, even in my limited experience as a traveler, to find quite a number of places that were to me equally as pleasant as being under fire even for the first time. I speak, of course, only for myself. Men's tastes differ in this as widely perhaps as in other matters, and I do not claim that mine was a universal or even a common experience. I only claim that while I had been curious to know how I would feel under such circumstances, my curiosity was satisfied in a little while, in a very little while. This may have been due to the fact that my temperament is conservative and that I did not care to be an extremist even in a little matter of this kind—possibly, ah, yes, possibly.

MY FIRST PICKET DUTY.

For several miles in our front, the road leading towards Cheat Mountain ran through a narrow valley and then crossing the river, wound up the mountain side. On an outpost near this road my first picket service was rendered. From an aesthetic, rather than a military point of view the scenery from this post was really enchanting. Just beyond the river lay a range of mountains broken in its contour by a partial gap. In its rear and forming a background, rose a loftier range, the whole constituting in appearance a mammoth alcove. The foliage of the forest growth, that studded the slopes from base to summit, alchemized by the autumn frosts had changed its hues to gold and crimson and with its blended tints forming to the eye an immense bouquet, the picture was worthy an artist's brush and has lingered in my memory during all these years. But the scene changes. Night comes on cold and drizzly and starless. No fire is allowed by the officer of the guard. Standing alone on an outpost in Egyptian darkness and numbed with cold, while the muffled patter of the rain drops on the fallen leaves continually suggests the stealthy footfall of an approaching foe, I reach the conclusion that it subjects a man to some inconvenience to die for his country.

A few nights afterwards the picket at this post was attacked by the enemy and driven in. As they retired under fire Joe Derry was knocked down by a buck and ball cartridge that riddled his cap and grazed his scalp but inflicted no wound. When they had rallied on the reserve post and Joe had opportunity to take his bearings he found that while unwilling to remain and extend to his Northern friends any social courtesies, he had been kind enough to leave with them a lock of his hair. The clipping was made without pecuniary charge, but Joe has probably preferred since to patronize a professional barber even at the expense of his bank account.

MY FIRST BATTLE.

On Oct. 3rd, '61, Gen. Reynolds, thinking, possibly, that military etiquette required that he should return the call we had made him on Sept. 12th, came down, attended by his entire force and knocked at the door of our outer picket posts in the early morning hours with the evident purpose of making an informal visit to our camp. The knock was loud enough to arouse Col. Ed. Johnson, who went out and took command of the pickets in person in order that the reception given our visitors might be sufficiently warm and cordial. Under his personal direction every foot of the Federal advance was stubbornly contested. A little fellow belonging to our regiment finally grew tired of falling back and running up to Johnson said: "Colonel, let's charge 'em." Johnson, with that peculiar nervous twitching of the lip that characterized him in battle, commended the little fellow for his grit, but did not think it good military judgment to charge an entire army of five thousand men with a squad of fifty pickets. By 8 a. m. Gen. Reynolds had taken position in our front and his artillery had opened on our line. The main attack was expected on our right, and to its defence the 1st and 12th Ga. were assigned. Forming into line and lying down to escape the shot and shells from the Federal batteries, we awaited the attack. A nervous officer in the regiment kept walking up and down the line saying: "Keep cool, boys, keep cool," until Lieut. Ben Simmons of the Oglethorpes, suggested to him that he was wasting his breath, that the boys were cool. Gen. Jackson came down to our position to overlook the field, and while there a courier rode up and said: "General, the wagoners are cutting the traces and running off with the horses." The General grew very much excited and turning to his son, Harry Jackson, said, "Go up there, Henry and shoot the first wagoner that cuts a trace or leaves his team." Harry galloped off, trying to get his pistol from the holster. After the cannonade had lasted several hours an infantry attack was made on our left and was repulsed. Then Gen. Reynolds ordered an assault on our right. As the attacking column debouched from the woods on the further bank of the shallow Green Brier, we were double-quicked to the front to oppose their passage. Just then Shoemaker's Va. Battery began to throw grape shot into their ranks and the men refused to cross. The officers stormed at them and rode their horses into the ranks in the effort to force them to advance, but without avail. The column fell back to the road where they were joined by their right wing and by 1 p. m. the entire force was making tracks for Cheat Mountain. Thus ended my second lesson in "Jomini," or my first battle, if battle it can be called. The losses on both sides, probably, did not aggregate two hundred. The official report of the engagement was, however, so elaborate that it was subjected to criticism and ridicule by the merciless pen of Jno. M. Daniel, of the Richmond Examiner. It was reported that he said that there were more casualties from overwork and exhaustion in setting up type for that report than from shot and shell in the battle.

Among the wounded that day was a member of the Bainbridge company of our regiment, who had been shot down in the early morning as the pickets were retiring before the Federal advance and, whose comrades were forced to leave him where he fell. As the Union troops passed him again on their return a surgeon was asked as to the propriety of taking him along as a prisoner. "No," said he. "Give him a canteen of water. He'll be dead in a few hours." The wounded man looked up at him and quoting, as Dr. McIntyre would say, very liberally from profane history, told him that he didn't intend to die. They left him, nevertheless, and when, at 3 o'clock next morning, he was brought into camp, both of our surgeons pronounced his wound fatal. He dissented very strongly from their opinions, was sent to the hospital and came out a well man, saved largely, as I believe, by his dogged determination not to die.

A NIGHT STAMPEDE.

There are panics commercial and panics military, bearing no special relation to each other and yet produced possibly by similar causes. One is attributed to a lack of confidence in others; the other is possibly due to a want of the same mental condition in regard to ourselves. In war fear as well as courage is contagious. The conspicuous bravery of a single soldier has sometimes steadied a wavering line, while one man's inability to face the music has begun a rearward movement that ended in a rout. Gen. Dick Taylor says that in Jackson's Valley Campaign he one day quieted the nervousness of his men under a heavy fire by standing on the breastworks and coolly striking a match on the heel of his boot to light a cigar. His apparent indifference to the danger was probably feigned but it produced the desired result. Heroism in battle and out of it is probably not so much the result of what is termed personal courage as it is the effect of lofty pride of character,