Nothing men can do—­except picnics, with ladies in straw flats with feathers—­is so picturesque as soldiering.  As soon as the Seventh halt anywhere, or move anywhere, or camp anywhere, they resolve themselves into a grand tableau.

Their own ranks should supply their own Horace Vernet.  Our groups were never more entertaining than at this halt by the roadside on the Alexandria road.  Stacks of guns make a capital framework for drapery, and red blankets dot in the lights most artistically.  The fellows lined the road with their gay array, asleep, on the rampage, on the lounge, and nibbling at their rations.

By-and-by, when my brain had taken in as much of the picturesque as it could stand, it suffered the brief congestion known as a nap.  I was suddenly awaked by the rattle of a horse’s hoofs.  Before I had rubbed my eyes the rider was gone.  His sharp tidings had stayed behind him.  Ellsworth was dead,—­so he said hurriedly, and rode on.  Poor Ellsworth! a fellow of genius and initiative!  He had still so much of the boy in him, that he rattled forward boyishly, and so died. Si monumentum requiris, look at his regiment.  It was a brilliant stroke to levy it; and if it does worthily, its young Colonel will not have lived in vain.

As the morning hours passed, we learned that we were the rear-guard of the left wing of the army advancing into Virginia.  The Seventh, as the best organized body, acted as reserve to this force.  It didn’t wish to be in the rear; but such is the penalty of being reliable for an emergency.  Fellow-soldier, be a scalawag, be a bashi-bazouk, be a Billy-Wilsoneer, if you wish to see the fun in the van!

When the road grew too hot for us, on account of the fire of sunshine in our rear, we jumped over the fence into the Race-Course, a big field beside us, and there became squatter sovereigns all day.  I shall be a bore, if I say again what a pretty figure we cut in this military picnic, with two long lines of blankets draped on bayonets for parasols.

The New Jersey brigade were meanwhile doing workie work on the ridge just beyond us.  The road and railroad to Alexandria follow the general course of the river southward along the level.  This ridge to be fortified is at the point where the highway bends from west to south.  The works were intended to serve as an advanced tete du pont,—­a bridge-head, with a very long neck connecting it with the bridge.  That fine old Fabius, General Scott, had no idea of flinging an army out broadcast into Virginia, and, in the insupposable case that it turned tail, leaving it no defended passage to run away by.

This was my first view of a field-work in construction,—­also, my first hand as a laborer at a field-work.  I knew glacis and counterscarp on paper; also, on paper, superior slope, banquette, and the other dirty parts of a redoubt.  Here they were, not on paper.  A slight wooden scaffolding determined the shape of the simple work; and when I arrived, a thousand Jerseymen were working, not at all like Jerseymen,—­with picks, spades, and shovels, cutting into Virginia, digging into Virginia, shovelling up Virginia, for Virginia’s protection against pseudo-Virginians.