On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of the car may be made transparent.  New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a traveller, a double-headed suburb rather than a State.  Its dull red dust looks like the dried and powdered mud of a battle-field.  Peach-trees are common, and champagne-orchards.  Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by, feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs.  I had a mighty passion come over me to be the captain of one,—­to glide back and forward upon a sea never roughened by storms,—­to float where I could not sink,—­to navigate where there is no shipwreck,—­to lie languidly on the deck and govern the huge craft by a word or the movement of a finger:  there was something of railroad intoxication in the fancy, but who has not often envied a cobbler in his stall?

The boys cry the “N’-York Heddle,” instead of “Herald”; I remember that years ago in Philadelphia; we must be getting near the farther end of the dumb-bell suburb.  A bridge has been swept away by a rise of the waters, so we must approach Philadelphia by the river.  Her physiognomy is not distinguished; nez camus, as a Frenchman would say; no illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman’s dress that trails on the sidewalk.  The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves, elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the walls of a hock-glass.

I went straight to the house in Walnut Street where the Captain would be heard of, if anywhere in this region.  His lieutenant-colonel was there, gravely wounded; his college-friend and comrade in arms, a son of the house, was there, injured in a similar way; another soldier, brother of the last, was there, prostrate with fever.  A fourth bed was waiting ready for the Captain, but not one word had been heard of him, though inquiries had been made in the towns from and through which the father had brought his two sons and the lieutenant-colonel.  And so my search is, like a “Ledger” story, to be continued.

I rejoined my companions in time to take the noon-train for Baltimore.  Our company was gaining in number as it moved onwards.  We had found upon the train from New York a lovely, lonely lady, the wife of one of our most spirited Massachusetts officers, the brave Colonel of the ——­th Regiment, going to seek her wounded husband at Middletown, a place lying directly in our track.  She was the light of our party while we were together on our pilgrimage, a fair, gracious woman, gentle, but courageous,

  —­“ful plesant and amiable of port,
  —­estatelich of manere,
  And to ben holden digne of reverence.”

On the road from Philadelphia, I found in the same car with our party Dr. William Hunt, of Philadelphia, who had most kindly and faithfully attended the Captain, then the Lieutenant, after a wound received at Ball’s Bluff, which came very near being mortal.  He was going upon an errand of mercy to the wounded, and found he had in his memorandum-book the name of our lady-companion’s husband, who had been commended to his particular attention.